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So I was screwing around on Google today, taking a look at maps of old empires and came across a classic depiction of the Roman Empire at its height during the reign of Trajan.
Then, I thought to myself
How is it possible that this, or any ancient imperial bureaucracy control such a vast stretch of land with not even half of the technological mechanisms that countries 1/10th of the size today, cant even control
So I looked this map depicting the Population Density of the Roman Empire circa 400AD
This lead me to my final question that I now pose to you guys/girls.
Are we way too generous in our geographical depictions of classic empires, given then armies back then at most could only control major to mid-major population centers? And should we redraw them to actually reflect the real areas of population control they had?