It would be a bold historian who attempted to fix a date for the beginnings of Roman imperialism, to say nothing of a Roman empire. From the earliest traces we have within the historical record of Rome as a functioning community, in the sixth century BC, the city's political institutions were based on the structures of its army; and, in just over a century from the capture of Veii in 396, Roman control spread across the whole of the Italian peninsula. Moreover there can be no doubt that Roman society throughout this time was decidedly military, and perhaps even militarist, in character. This could well be described as imperialism, and Rome's patchwork of military alliances and settlements as an empire. Although traditionally the period of Roman imperialism is reckoned to have begun with its expansion overseas, and thus with the first war against the Carthaginians (264– 241 BC), there are obvious continuities between the extension of control over Italy and the move into Sicily, which brought Rome face to face with Carthage, as indeed there are between the Italian conquest and the wars for dominance over the Latin league which preceded it.

For the purposes of this present study, however, which is focussed on the language used to describe the emerging empire and the institutions which created it, the period from the mid third century down to the changes wrought by the dictator, L. Cornelius Sulla, in the late 80s bc does make an appropriate starting point.