Thus, by the time the Romans are conquering places, other Indo-European or Middle Eastern civilizations have already done so. Thus, the Romans are taking less civilized (in terms of urbanism, technology, agriculture, etc) and making them more civilized. But "less" is still closer to the Romans terms of development than no civilization at all. For example, the Celts, the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Phoenicians (the main areas Rome conquered to get their empire) were all true civilizations BC by the time the Romans got there (300-50BC) all those places had become part of the civilized world.

In contrast, the Phoenicians where bringing civilization to places that were just barely coming out of being hunter gatherer or had minimal agriculture but no cities. They were the first one to bring writing to most of those places, while when Rome showed up, they already had it (BC of Phoenicians 800-1200 years earlier).