Politics and marriage

The ‘imperfect’ tense does not describe an action executed poorly or deficiently in any way. It simply means ‘unfinished’. This tense is used to describe an unfinished or repeated or on-going action in the past:

iacēbant tot Rōmānōrum mīlia, peditēs passim equitēsque

so many thousands of Romans were lying (on the ground), infantry and cavalry everywhere [3.6]