Mary Beard

So there's a whole series of people known as, charmingly, as client kings.

I mean, basically, a client king is someone who the Romans think they've got under their thumb, who is a king of some tribe somewhere, but will toe the Roman line.

And basically, it is an empire that takes cash.

It's an exploitative empire.

Its tax collection is bizarrely privatized.

It's not a state tax collecting system.

There are companies of so-called tax farmers who bid for the contracts to raise the cash from some poor province and then hand it over to Rome, meanwhile, creaming off their own profit.

And there are some truly appalling stories in this Republican empire of financial exploitation.

But when push comes to shove, the Romans want their subject communities not to make a fuss, not to rebel, not to get out of line.

The Romans want them to do what the Romans want.

That's right.

And it probably takes three months for the message to get there.

Right.

I mean, you haven't got a Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

You haven't got a Roman Army HQ.

Right.

And transport is extremely slow, and sending messages are extremely slow.

So in a way, you say, look, if they wanted to have that kind of hands-on control that often comes with our image of an empire, they haven't really got the mechanisms to do it anyway.

One's tempted to use the word, it's a light-touch empire,

That would probably be a bit misleading because there is some pretty nasty bits of violence going on.