Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome, episode 89, Provincial Matters.

During the reign of Antoninus Pius, Rome was at the height of its power, the empire was

large, stable, and at relative peace both internally and externally.

The age of military expansion had given way to an age of bureaucratic management, and

with the exception of Trajan's last hurrah, the Romans had more or less come to terms

with the fact that their domains were what they were.

So, what were their domains?

Today, I want to go on what will have to be a high speed tour of the empire, so we can,

at a minimum, touch base with each of the 42 odd provinces that now make up the Roman

empire.

I'm pretty sure that number is 42, but it's hard to get an exact count as the emperors

or forever fidgeting with the borders and divisions of their administrative districts

and adding and subtracting from the list of what technically counted as a province, so

maybe I should just say that now more than 40 provinces that make up the Roman Empire.

I think the best thing for us to do, so this doesn't become too complicated, is to roughly

follow Hadrian's first tour of the empire, starting Italy, travel north into Galen

Britain, then south through Spain, then go east across North Africa, north through

the Middle East, and then back west across Anatolia, into Greece and the Balkans, and then

back to Italy by way of the Alps.

This full circuit will take us through the backyards of the roughly 65 million people living

within the Roman Empire, and into the camps of the 30 legions stationed along the borders,

protecting the Pax Romana.

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