Ancient Italy, like Greece, was also dotted with a number of city- States, among which was that of Rome. Like the Greek city-States, Rome also began as a monarchy and then became an aristocracy, and a republic and, finally, an empire. By this transformation it repeated, to some extent, the history of despotism of the ancient oriental empires. But there were also differences between .the two. Unlike the oriental empires, the Roman Empire was, to some extent, a city-State writ large. The Roman ruling classes realised very early in their career of conquest and expansion that their vast empire thus they preserved only by extending the rights and privileges of citizenship to the cqnquered peoples also. So they were made citizens and not subjects.<\/p>