Les frontières de l’Empire romain

Abstract

The frontier is not a self-evident notion. This is all the more true when it is envisaged in an imperial framework affirmed as such in terms of political ambition. To ask the question of the borders of the Roman Empire, from its maximum extension with Trajan to the shock wave produced by the year 410, is not, however, anecdotal in order to understand the issues of government that arose during this period, and the very nature of the Roman Empire. To take the measure of it, it is also necessary, in a preliminary way, to wonder about the way in which the historians understood and interpreted its borders. These were the subject of important debates, giving rise to new approaches developed over the last thirty years. These are the aspects that this paper proposes to address, considering the issue that frontiers have represented in terms of government.

Keywords

• Late Antiquity
• Empire
• Government
• Historiography
• Frontiers
• Limes