page_title: Geopolitics of the Roman Empire
section_title: Natural borders of the Roman Empire
hierarchical_section_title: Geopolitics of the Roman Empire / Natural borders of the Roman Empire
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Roman Empire in 125 during the reign of emperor Hadrian. Projection Lambert azimuthal-equal area. Central latitude: 45° N, central longitude: 20° E. X, Y origin offset - 0 Datum: ETRS89 Sources The physical map was made using the following public domain sources: Topography: NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM30) data Shoreline, lakes and rivers: derived from Natural Earth data Additional references for the map content: Tacitus, Germania (ca. 100) Ptolemy, Geographia (ca. 140) Atlante storico DeAgostini, Instituto Geografico DeAgostini, 1998. pg. 35-41. Historischer Weltatlas, Dr. Walter Leisering, Marix Verlag, 2011. pg. 26-27 Történelmi világatlasz, Cartographia Kiadó, 2005. pg. 20-21. The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome by Christopher Scarre, Penguin Historical Atlases, 1995. pg. 81. Software used GIS: Open JUMP GIS (open source): http://www.openjump.org/ GRASS GIS (open source): http://grass.osgeo.org/ Graphics editors: Inkscape (open source): http://inkscape.org/ GIMP (open source): http://www.gimp.org/
context_page_description: The Geopolitics of the Roman Empire deals with the "inalienable relationship between geography and politics of the Roman Empire". Once the Roman Empire had reached its natural borders, the location of potential threats to the empire and Roman troop locations played a major role in the elevation of Roman Emperors. Access to the troops, their location were crucial to the empire's internal politics, civil wars, and the eventual Fall of the Western Roman Empire.
context_section_description: The Empire established by Octavian stayed consistent in territory for most of its history, though grew to permanently add Britannia through the campaign of Claudius and Dacia through Trajan's campaigns. Octavian had previously wanted the empire to incorporate territory until the Elbe river but changed his plans after the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Trajan also conquered Mesopotamia in addition to Dacia but the territory was abandoned by the next emperor, Hadrian who felt the territory would be too difficult and expensive to maintain against the Parthian Empire.
  The Empire's boundaries, therefore, were Hadrian's Wall (sometimes the Antonine wall), the Rhine and Main rivers in the Western Empire. The Danube River in the middle empire. The mountains of Armenia and deserts of Syria to the East and the Sahara Desert and Atlas Mountains in Africa.
  However, after the Battle of Adrianople and Theodosius's subsequent peace deal with the Goths the Rhine and Danube frontiers became incredibly porous. As per the peace deal, the victorious Goths retained their rights to pledge allegiance to their own King and retain their weapons, becoming in effect a separate state within the borders of the Roman Empire. Finding it harder to penetrate into the Eastern Roman Empire past the Bosporus, the Goths turned west. The Vandals, Franks and Alans would soon join the Goths in settling in Western Roman lands, while retaining their tribal allegiances and heritage.
caption: Roman Empire during Hadrian's reign
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