A Roman province was a region outside Italy that Rome controlled and ruled through a governor. Provinces paid taxes, hosted Roman officials and, in many cases, soldiers. The Roman Empire grew by turning conquered lands into provinces one at a time.
Key takeaways
- A province was an administrative region outside Italy, run by a Roman governor sent from the capital [1].
- Our province layer draws 43 provinces, using Ancient World Mapping Center outlines of the empire around AD 200.
- Britannia, for example, was annexed in AD 43, had its capital at Londinium and covers 170,292 km² on the map.
- Province outlines are not modern countries: one province can cover several countries today.
How a Roman province worked
A Roman province was a region outside Italy that Rome controlled, with a governor appointed from Rome [1]. The word comes from the Latin provincia. In the middle Republic it did not mean a territory at all. It meant a task handed to a magistrate, rather like a minister's portfolio [1]. Over time the word came to mean the place where that job was done, and then the region itself.
Each province had a capital, where the governor lived and held court. His main jobs were to keep order, command any soldiers stationed there, hear serious legal cases and see that taxes reached Rome. Local cities usually kept their own councils and handled everyday matters, so the governor and his small staff did not run every town. Roman rule worked mostly by leaving local elites in charge and holding the army in reserve.
New provinces were made as Rome conquered or inherited land. The empire did not arrive all at once: it was assembled province by province over several centuries, which is why the slider on the map shows such different shapes at different dates. Provinces could also be split, merged, renamed or lost.
Not every province was run the same way. Augustus split them into two groups, with different governors and different armies (the difference is explained under imperial and senatorial provinces). Egypt was a special case, ruled by a knight rather than a senator, because Augustus treated it almost as his own property [1].
Later, under the emperor Diocletian (who reigned from AD 284 to 305 [2]), the provinces were cut into smaller pieces, so there were almost a hundred by the 290s [1]. Those later provinces, and the dioceses above them, are not drawn on our map.
An example from our data
The map's province layer draws 43 provinces, using Ancient World Mapping Center outlines of the empire around AD 200 [3]. Tap a province to see when it was added and lost, and which modern countries it covers today.
Take Britannia. Our data gives its annexation as AD 43 and the loss as AD 410. Its capital was Londinium, and its outline covers 170,292 km², across United Kingdom and Isle of Man. Compare Dacia, annexed in AD 106 and lost in AD 271, or Macedonia, annexed in 146 BC. Its outline stretches over Greece, North Macedonia, Albania and Bulgaria.
The number of provinces Rome held changed as the empire grew. In 44 BC the map counts 28 provinces held, in AD 14 it counts 36, and in AD 117, at the empire's greatest extent, 41. The full list is on the provinces page, and the expansion section of the homepage tells the story of how it grew.
One caution. The outlines are those of about AD 200 [3], so for earlier dates the map shows which provinces Rome held, not what their borders looked like at the time. For other dates the shapes are rebuilt, as the borders section explains.
The thing people get wrong
People often assume a province was like a modern country with fixed borders, a flag and a single people. It was not. A province was an administrative region, drawn for Roman convenience. Its edges moved, and it rarely matched a nation. The Macedonia outline above sits across several modern countries, and Britannia's outline covers more than one today. Equally, the people inside a province kept many languages and customs. Historians use the word Romanisation for the slow, uneven spread of Roman habits, and it varied hugely from province to province.
A second mistake is to think a province was always a conquered enemy land, treated as a colony. Some became provinces by inheritance or treaty, and many of their inhabitants later became Roman citizens, though that happened slowly.
Frequently asked questions
Was Italy a Roman province?
Not in the usual sense. Provinces were the regions outside Italy, which Rome treated as its own heartland. Our map still shows the Italian peninsula as one outline, labelled Italia (peninsula), so you can see where it sat.
How many provinces did the Roman Empire have?
It depends on the date. Our province layer draws 43 provinces in total, and the empire held 41 of them at its greatest extent in AD 117.
Who ruled a Roman province?
A governor, usually a senator, who commanded any troops there, judged important cases and made sure taxes were collected.
Sources
- Roman province, Wikipedia.
- Roman Empire, Wikipedia.
- Ancient World Mapping Center, University of North Carolina.
- Every figure from our own map is worked out from the datasets on the data sources page (checked against Ancient World Mapping Center outlines and Pleiades).