Notwithstanding the elegance of Roman cities, the imperial economy was based primarily on agriculture. By the first and second centuries A.D the small family farms of the Roman past were passing into the hands of great aristocrats, who came to hold conglomerations of smaller farms or who, in some instances, consolidated them into large estates tilled by slaves or half-free peasants. Although the products of Roman farming varied considerably from region to region, the principal crops of the Roman Empire were grain, grapes and olives, the so-called Mediterranean triad that had dominated agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin for countless generations. Grain (chiefly wheat and barley) and grape vines were cultivated throughout most of the Empire. From this the Romans produced two of the basic staples of their diet: bread and wine. Olive trees were also grown in abundance, though their vulnerability to cold restricted their cultivation to the frost-free lowlands around the Mediterranean Sea. The inhabitants of the Mediterranean Basin used olive oil in place of butter, which was favored by the Germanic tribes to the north but turned rancid in the southern heat.

Through much of Italy grain production had been giving way to the raising of sheep and cattle, and the fertile wheat-growing provinces of Egypt and North Africa had by now become the primary suppliers of bread for the teeming populace of Rome. Such specialization in agriculture was made possible by the Roman Peace - the Pax Romana - that linked distant provinces into a single political-economic unit and safeguarded the Mediterranean sea lanes.

The culture of Rome's 'golden age' captivated the historians of past centuries. Never, they wrote, was the human race so happy as in the great days of the Empire - the first and second centuries A.D. They viewed Rome's decline and fall as the supreme historical catastrophe, the triumph of barbarism and religion. Today historians see the matter quite differently. Roman classical culture was impressive, but it was also narrowly limited, shared only by the Empire's upper-crust. And although all inhabitants benefited from the Roman Peace, the great majority of them were impoverished and undernourished, and vast numbers were enslaved.

During the first and second centuries A.D Rome was at the height of its power. Roman emperors ruled in relative peace over an immense realm that encircled the Mediterranean Sea and bulged northward across present-day France and England. Not all of them ruled wisely; several of Rome's 'golden-age' emperors were decidedly dull-witted and a couple of them were (to put it charitably) mentally ill. The first-century emperor Caligula used to have his favourite horse wined and dined at imperial banquets and made plans to have the beast raised to the office of Roman consul (the project was cut short by Caligula's assassination). And the less said about the emperor Nero, the better. But a number of the early emperors were able and far-sighted, and even under the worst of them the imperial government continued to function. Roman legions guarded the farflung frontiers, paved roads tied the provinces to Rome, and Roman ships sailed the Mediterranean and Black Seas, rarely troubled by pirates or enemy fleets. Scattered across the Empire were cities built in the classical Roman style with temples, public buildings, baths, schools, amphitheaters and triumphal arches. Their ruins are still to be seen all around the Mediterranean and beyond - in Italy, France, Spain, England, North Africa, the Balkans and the Near East - bearing witness even now to the tremendous scope of Roman political authority and the tasteful uniformity of Roman achitecture.

The Empire extended about 3000 miles from east to west, the approximate length of the United States. According to the best scholarly guesses, its inhabitants numbered something like 50 million, heavily concentrated in the eastern provinces where commerce and civilization had flourished for thousands of years. Egypt, Israel, Mesopotamia and Greece had all fallen by now under Roman authority, although Greece exerted such a dominating influence on Roman culture that Romans could express some doubt as to who had conquered whom.

To the east Rome shared a boundary with the Parthian Empire, which gave way during the third century to a new and aggressive Persian Empire. But elsewhere Rome's expansion from the Mediterranean Basin was halted only by the Arabian and Sahara Deserts, the Caucasus Mountains, the dense forests of central Europe beyond the Rhine and Danube Rivers, the barren highlands of Scotland, and the Atlantic Ocean. In short, the Roman frontiers encompassed virtually all the lands that could be reached by Roman armies and cultivated profitably by Roman landowners.