when was the roman empire at its peak
Roman Empire The Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (reigned 98–117),[43] encompassing an area of 5 million square kilometres. The traditional population estimate of 55–60 million inhabitants[47] accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population[48] and made it the largest population of any unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century.[49] Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak ranging from 70 million to more than 100 million.[50] Each of the three largest cities in the Empire—Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch— was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.[51]
Byzantine Empire In 1054, relations between the Eastern and Western traditions within the Christian Church reached a terminal crisis, known as the East–West Schism. Although there was a formal declaration of institutional separation, on July 16, when three papal legates entered the Hagia Sophia during Divine Liturgy on a Saturday afternoon and placed a bull of excommunication on the altar,[106] the so-called Great Schism was actually the culmination of centuries of gradual separation.[107] Unfortunately the legates did not know that the Pope had died, an event that made the excommunication void and the excommunication only applied to the Patriarch who responded by excommunicating the legates.
Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire There is no consensus on a date for the start of the Decline. Gibbon started his account in 98.[citation needed] The year 376 is taken as pivotal by many modern historians.[citation needed] In that year there was an unmanageable influx of Goths and other Barbarians into the Balkan provinces, and the situation of the Western Empire generally worsened thereafter, with recoveries being incomplete and temporary. Significant events include the Battle of Adrianople in 378, the death of Theodosius I in 395 (the last time the Roman Empire was politically unified), the crossing of the Rhine in 406 by Germanic tribes, the execution of Stilicho in 408, the sack of Rome in 410, the death of Constantius III in 421, the death of Aetius in 454, and the second sack of Rome in 455, with the death of Majorian in 461 marking the end of the last opportunity for recovery.
Military of ancient Rome During the time of expansion in the Republic and early Empire, Roman armies had acted as a source of revenue for the Roman state, plundering conquered territories, displaying the massive wealth in triumphs upon their return and fueling the economy[11] to the extent that historians such as Toynbee and Burke believe that the Roman economy was essentially a plunder economy. However, after the Empire had stopped expanding in the 2nd century CE, this source of revenue dried up; by the end of the 3rd century CE, Rome had "ceased to vanquish."[12] As tax revenue was plagued by corruption and hyperinflation during the Crisis of the Third Century, military expenditures began to become a "crushing burden"[13] on the finances of the Roman state.[14] It now highlighted weaknesses that earlier expansion had disguised. By 440 CE, an imperial law frankly states that the Roman state has insufficient tax revenue to fund an army of a size required by the demands placed upon it.[15]