Roman Law and Economics Volume II by Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Dennis P. Kehoe

Author:Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Dennis P. Kehoe [Dari-Mattiacci, Giuseppe & Kehoe, Dennis P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780191091001
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

18.2. History of Land Demarcation in Ancient Rome

Classical scholars typically divide the history into three periods that coincide with three distinct political regimes: the Kingdom or Monarchy (753–509 bce), the Republic (509–27 bce), and the Empire (27 bce–476 ce).6 The Republic was marked by a political system in which authority was given to elected magistrates and unelected senators. During this early period territorial expansion was moderate with Roman territory consisting of Italy, Spain, Sicily, and parts of Gaul, North Africa, and the Near East (Cornell and Matthews 1982). The start of the Imperial period marked an era of more aggressive territorial expansion with the Empire ultimately spanning about 6.5 million square kilometers (2.5 million square miles) at its peak under Emperor Trajan.

In the later Empire the focus shifted from expansion to defense against invading enemies (Adkins and Adkins 2004). Diocletian first divided the Empire into an eastern and western half in 293 ce and it was permanently divided in 395 with the establishment of the Byzantine Empire and the Western Roman Empire. In 476 ce, Germanic invasions caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire,7 but the Byzantine Empire did not fall until 1453 when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks.

Figure 18.2 shows a map of the Roman Empire in the first century ce when the Empire was at it largest extent. The map reveals the division of the Empire into provinces such as Africa and the Hispaniae (Spain), in addition to Italia (Italy). Table 18.1 contains a summary of the history of Rome relevant for our study. For each century it shows the system of government, land area and colonization, population, and major events.

Figure 18.2. Ancient Rome at its greatest extent under Trajan (c.117 ce).

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