Plate II — The Roman Empire (c. 1055–1064)

In the mid eleventh century, the Roman Empire extended across Anatolia, the Aegean, and the Balkans, a civilisational inheritance shaped over centuries. This plate reconstructs the imperial frontier in the decade preceding the structural transformations of the later eleventh century.

The polity modern historiography labels “Byzantine” was, in its own time, simply the Roman Empire, the Basileia Rhōmaiōn, the Empire of the Romans. During the period c. 1055–1064, it remained administratively sophisticated, militarily organised, and culturally continuous with its Hellenic and Roman past.

This map presents a carefully composed reconstruction of the Empire’s territorial extent in the years immediately before the accelerating instability of the later eleventh century. Particular attention has been given to coastline definition, regional clarity, and typographic restraint, allowing the geography itself to communicate the scale and cohesion of the imperial realm.

Within a generation, the balance of power in Anatolia would begin to shift decisively. This plate captures the Roman world at a moment of structural continuity, before the transformations that followed.

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