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42 T HEMES INW ORLDH ISTORY MuchmorecharacteristicwasthegradualextensionofRomandirect The Near East. From the rule. This was accomplished by absorbing a whole series of ‘dependent’ perspective of kingdoms into Roman provincial territory. The Near East was full of someone who lived such kingdoms*, but by the early second century those which lay west in the Roman oftheEuphrates(towardsRomanterritory)haddisappeared,swallowed Mediterranean, this up by Rome. (Incidentally, some of these kingdoms were exceedingly referred to all the wealthy, for example Herod’s kingdom yielded the equivalent of 5.4 territory east of themillion denarii per year, equal to over 125,000 kg of gold! The denarius Mediterranean, chiefly the Roman was a Roman silver coin containing about 4½ gm of pure silver.) In fact, except for Italy, which was not considered a province in provinces of Syria, these centuries, all the territories of the empire were organised into Palestine and Mesopotamia, and provinces and subject to taxation. At its peak in the second century, in a looser sense the Roman Empire stretched from Scotland to the borders of the surrounding Armenia, and from the Sahara to the Euphrates and sometimes territories, for beyond. Given that there was no government in the modern sense example Arabia. to help them to run things, you may well ask, how was it possible for the emperor to cope with the control and administration of such *These were local a vast and diverse set of territories, with a population of some 60 kingdoms that were ‘clients’ of Rome. million in the mid-second century? The answer lies in the Their rulers could urbanisation of the empire. be relied on to use The great urban centres that lined the shores of the Mediterranean their forces in (Carthage, Alexandria, Antioch were the biggest among them) were support of Rome, the true bedrock of the imperial system. It was through the cities and in return Rome that ‘government’ was able to tax the provincial countrysides which allowed them to exist. generated much of the wealth of the empire. What this means is that the local upper classes actively collaborated with the Roman Pont du Gard, near state in administering their own territories and raising taxes from Nimes, France, first them. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of Roman political centuryBCE. Roman engineers built history is the dramatic shift in power between Italy and the provinces. massive aqueducts Throughout the second and third centuries, it was the provincial over three continents upper classes who supplied most of the cadre that governed the to carry water. provinces and commanded the armies. They came to form a new elite of administrators and military commanders who became much more powerful than the senatorial class because they had the backing of the emperors. As this new group emerged, the emperor Gallienus (253-68) consolidated their rise to power by excluding senators from military command. We are told that Gallienus forbade senators from serving in the army or having access to it, in order to prevent control of the empire from falling into their hands. Reprint 2026-27