Geography and demography

Main articles: Demography of the Roman Empire and Borders of the Roman Empire

Further information: Classical demography

The Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe,
North Africa, and the Middle East.[37] The Latin phrase imperium sine fine ("empire without end"[38][n 7])
expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Vergil's epic poem
the Aeneid, limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by their supreme deity Jupiter.[38][39][40]
[41][42]
This claim of universal dominion was renewed and perpetuated when the Empire came under
Christian rule in the 4th century.[n 8]

In reality, Roman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern
Europe were conquered in the 1st century AD, when Roman control in Europe, Africa and Asia was
strengthened. During the reign of Augustus, a "global map of the known world" was displayed for the
first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the composition of the most comprehensive work
on political geography that survives from antiquity, the Geography of the Pontic Greek writer Strabo.
[43]
When Augustus died, the commemorative account of his achievements (Res Gestae) prominently
featured the geographical cataloguing of peoples and places within the Empire.[44] Geography,
the census, and the meticulous keeping of written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial
administration.[45]

A segment of the ruins of Hadrian's Wall in northern England

The Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (reigned 98117),[42] encompassing an area of
5 million square kilometres. The traditional population estimate of 5560
million inhabitants[46] accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total
population[47] and made it the largest population of any unified political entity in the West until the mid-
19th century.[48] Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak ranging from 70
million to more than 100 million.[49] Each of the three largest cities in the EmpireRome, Alexandria,
and Antioch was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.[50]

As the historian Christopher Kelly has described it:

1
Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked
banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great RhineDanube river system, which snaked across
the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the
North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled
the Mediterranean ... referred to by its conquerors as mare nostrum'our sea'.[46]

Trajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire.
Borders (fines) were marked, and the frontiers (limites) patrolled.[42] The most heavily fortified borders
were the most unstable.[15] Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was
perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort. [51][52][53]