Sicily was Rome’s first province, and remained under Roman control for more than 800 years. Britain, one of the last acquisitions, was Roman for three and half centuries. An eastern empire that considered itself Roman survived even longer, and some regions there were ‘Roman’ for one and a half millennia. Other leaders and powers, most notably Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, have expanded faster than the Romans, and a handful have controlled more territory – roughly a quarter of the globe in the case of Britain’s own empire.
