The Wall at the End of the Empire
By JARRETT A. LOBELL
Monday, April 10, 2017
Running for more than 70 miles across the island of Great Britain, Hadrian’s Wall formed the northern border of the Roman Empire for nearly 300 years beginning in the early second century A.D.
When the emperor Hadrian visited the province of Britannia in A.D. 122, he was in full command of the entire Roman Empire, which stretched some 2,500 miles east from northern Great Britain to modern-day Iraq, and 1,500 miles south to the Sahara Desert. He had become emperor five years earlier, after a controversial postmortem adoption by his predecessor and guardian Trajan, and he ruled until his death in 138, at the age of 62, likely of a heart attack. In just over 20 years, he became, according to an anonymous ancient source, the “most versatile” of the Roman emperors. He was a battle-tested solider who fought with Trajan in Dacia, a skilled politician who masterminded the consolidation of the empire’s territory, a faithful patron and lover of the arts, and a tireless traveler who visited nearly half the empire during his reign.
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/255-1705/features/5469-empire
