Even though Rome came to dominate the world through a series of often unjust wars it was its civic and assimilative virtues which it never lost that enabled Rome to maintain its position and to be of service to humanity Behind the legions came the merchants and farmers who as conquest spread implanted the civic standards the name the language and the institutions of the mother country in the new territories While assimilating some of the character and customs of the vanquished peoples Rome imparted to them some of its own thus fusing all peoples, lands, and cultures into a homogeneous entity and finally as its crowning gift granting citizenship first to the Italian people themselves and later to all nations within the Roman Empire