Yet overwhelming military power and reach alone did not distinguish Rome from other broadly contemporaneous superpowers of the classical world. In the fourth century b.c. Alexander the Great’s Macedonian empire had extended from the Ionian Islands of the central Mediterranean to the Himalayas. The various Persian empires of antiquity covered similar territory. Around a.d. 100 the Chinese Eastern Han ruled over 2.5 million square miles and 60 million people. What made Rome so dominant in the Mediterranean world and beyond was the fact that overwhelming armed force developed in tune with a
...more
