From the founding of the Republic in 509 BCE to the deposition of the last western emperor in 476 CE, Rome expanded from a central-Italian city-state into a Mediterranean-wide power governed first by elected magistrates, the Senate and assemblies, and from Augustus onwards by emperors. It integrated conquered peoples through grants of citizenship, a codified body of law, a network of paved roads, and the systematic founding of colonies and provinces. Engineering works — aqueducts, fora, amphitheatres — served administration and control. Latin language and Roman institutions spread across the territory.
Rome bequeathed its law, citizenship and republican institutions to later Europe, and exported the gridded colonial town (castrum), centuriated rural land division, aqueducts and the long-distance road as the lasting template of the Western city and landscape.