Empire98 CE – 180 CE · 82 years
Roman Empire (Trajan)
The largest and longest-lived Mediterranean empire — and the model every later European state quoted.
What it was
At its peak under Trajan in 117 CE, Rome ruled from Britain to the Persian Gulf and from the Rhine to the Sahara. The empire was held together by roads, citizenship law, professional legions, and a remarkably durable Latin–Greek bureaucracy that outlived even the western half by a thousand years in Byzantium.
Why it mattered
Roman law, the calendar, the alphabet, and the very idea of a continent-spanning state shaped everything from medieval canon law to the U.S. Senate.
From Wikipedia
The Roman Empire was a state that controlled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa during the classical period. The Roman Republic had previously conquered most of these territories, which became ruled by emperors following triumvir Octavian's rise to power and establishment of a Principate regime in 27 BC. By the 4th century AD the empire split into western and eastern halves. The Western Empire collapsed in 476 AD, while the Eastern Empire endured until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Wikipedia: Roman Empire·CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders & accuracy
Solid borders are reconstructed from canonical historical-basemap data or hand-crafted from scholarly atlases.
- SOURCEaourednik / historical-basemaps
- DETAILhistorical-basemaps
- SNAPSHOT117 CE
- POLITY TYPEstate
Wars of this empire12
Conflicts whose belligerents name this polity, best-documented first.
- First Dacian War101–102 CEMajor conflict
- Second Dacian War105–106 CEMajor conflict
- Trajan's Parthian War114–117 CEMajor conflict
- First Marcomannic War166–180 CEMajor conflict
- Bar Kokhba Revolt132–135 CESignificant · 300K dead
- Kitos War115–117 CESignificant
- Quadi War (Marcus Aurelius)178–180 CESignificant
- Battle of Sarmizegethusa102 CERegional
- Battle of Sarmizegethusa105 CERegional
- Battle of Aelia133 CERegional
- Battle of Aquileia166 CERegional
- Boukoloi Revolt172–173 CERegional
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 98 CE and fits the map to these borders.
Cite as: Roman Empire (Trajan) (98 CE – 180 CE). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/e/roman-empire-trajan · Sources & methodology