Every time I am amazed for how long Rome ruled large parts of the world. Fascinating
And it has never been under a unified rule again since the Romans.
If you consider how many different countries and cultures occupy that space today, it really puts the magnitude of their empire into perspective.
To be fair, you can say that about almost every empire - mongol, greek, british, ottoman, persian, babylonian, etc. I doubt the mongol empire stretching from vietnam to korea and moscow to baghdad will ever be unified under a single empire.
> If you consider how many different countries and cultures occupy that space today
To be fair, most of the countries and cultures that occupy that space today weren't ruled by the romans. Rome never ruled england as england came into existence after the anglo-saxons conquered roman britannia. As for syria and egypt, the romans never ruled the arabs who dominate the region.
> it really puts the magnitude of their empire into perspective.
Rather than the magnitude, I think the legacy of the roman empire is what separates it from others.
The roman empire wasn't particularly that large.
If we used this calendar then the current year would be 12020. Cleopatra died in 9971. The Great Pyramid at Giza was finished around the year 7441. Alaric's sack of Rome would've been in the year 10410.
Note that the reason events from the BCE time have a 1 at the end is because our current calendar does not have the year 0. It goes from 1 BC to 1 AD.
And the discovery of quantum mechanics was closer to the war of 1812 than to now.
That's why lay people wonder about not seeing scientific progress since the 70s or 80s - it seems like decades since giant steps were made.
But incremental progress adds up, too.
One day we'll merge all those low-temperature superconductor or graphene experiments into something bigger.
And there's been a bunch of nice proofs coming from random places annually.
(Calling them the "Byzantines" is a modern invention)