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The Romans used provincial and local governments to govern conquered territories without having to rule them directly.
Although Rome ruled a vast empire, it needed strikingly few imperial officials to run it. This relatively light ruling administrative overview was made possible by the tendency to leave to local government much administrative business and to private enterprise many of the tasks associated with governments in the modern world. Especially important within this system was the city, where the magistrates, councils, and assemblies of urban centers governed themselves and areas of the countryside around them. These cities could vary enormously both in population and territory from the tiny Greek poleis of several hundred citizens to the great metropoleis such as Alexandria or Antioch. Despite these differences, these cities shared certain governmental structures and were free, in varying degrees depending on the community’s status, to manage their own affairs.
There were also important differences in the statuses of communities, which were arranged in a hierarchy of prestige, with Roman coloniae at the top, followed by municipia (some of which had full citizen rights, others, the Latin rights), and cities that had no citizenship rights at all. Cities in this last group could be tribute-paying cities (civitates), free cities (civitates liberae), and free cities with treaties (civitates liberae et foederatae)