[[Image:Mapa del Confín del Imperio Romano.gif|thumb|300px|Map of
all the territories once occupied by the Roman Empire.The lands in
cyan and magenta represent those whose conquest is doubtful.
Archeological evidence shows however that the Dortmund area in
Germany was part of the Empire in the beginning of the first
century AD.Yellow lines are
Limes]]The borders of the
Roman Empire, which fluctuated throughout the
empire's history, were a combination of natural frontiers (most
notably the Rhine and Danube rivers) and man-made fortifications
(
limes), which separated the lands of
the empire from the "barbarian" countries beyond.
The limes
A
limes was a border fortification system of
the Roman Empire.The Latin noun limes had a number of different
meanings: a path or balk delimiting fields, a boundary line or
marker, any road or path, any channel, such as a stream channel, or
any distinction or difference. Hence it was utilized by Latin
writers to denote marked or fortified frontiers. The name given to
proper Walls was
vallum, which might have represented a
border. In
Brittania the Empire built two walls one behind
the other, for
Mauretania there was a single wall with
forts on both sides of it. In other places, such as
Syria and
Arabia Petraea, there wasn't a
continuous wall; instead there was a net of border settlements and
forts occupied by the Roman army. In
Dacia, the limes between the Black Sea and the
Danube were a mix of the latter and the wall defenses: the
Limes Moesiae was the
conjunction of two, and sometimes three, lines of
vallum,
with a Great Camp and many minor camps spread through the
fortifications.
Location of Hadrian's Wall and the
Antonine Wall in Scotland and Northern England.
The northern borders
In
continental Europe, the borders were generally well defined,
usually following the courses of major rivers such as the Rhine
and the
Danube. Nevertheless those
were not always the final border lines; the province of Dacia, modern Romania
, was
completely on the far side of the Danube, and the province of
Germania Magna, which must
not be confused with Germania
Inferior and Germania
Superior, was the land between the Rhine, the Danube and
the Elbe (Although this province was lost three
years after its creation as a result of the Battle of
Teutoburg Forest
).
In Great
Britain both Hadrian and Antonius Pius built defences to protect the
province of Britannia from
the Caledonians, given that, from their
point of view, it was a waste of resources to conquer Caledonia (broadly corresponding to
modern Scotland
).
Hadrian's Wall
, constructed in 122 held a garrison of 10,000
soldiers, while the Antonine
Wall
, constructed between 142 and 144, was abandoned by
164 and briefly reoccupied in 208.
The eastern borders
The
eastern borders changed many times, of which the longest lasting
was the Euphrates river, eventual to be
left behind as the Romans defeated their rivals, the Parthians, with the march on their capital, Susa
. The
Parthians were a people that lived in modern day Iran and western
Iraq. However they didn't attempt to romanize the whole Parthian
Empire, they left a puppet king for the remainder of the empire and
took only the lands that comprise modern Iraq, which became
Assyria and
Mesopotamia.
The southern borders
At its greatest extent, the southern border was the deserts of
Arabia and Sahara, that represented a natural barrier to prevent
expansion. The Empire controlled the Mediterranean shores and the
mountains opposing it.
However the Romans attempted twice to occupy
effectively the Siwa
Oasis
(and failed) and controlled the Nile many miles into Africa up to the modern border
between Egypt and Sudan.
See also
References
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