Rome began as a small collection of farming villages on seven hills overlooking the TIber river, a few miles inland from its estuary and salt flats. In Rome's mythology, the Romans are descended from Trojans who fled the destruction of their city under the leadership of Aeneas. True Romans pride themselves on being tough, practical people, descended from farmers, reluctant to fight but able to take on any enemy, more civilized than Gauls and Germans but superior to the "soft" people of the Greek East.

"Italy" extends from the Arno and Rubicon rivers south to the "toe" and "heel." North of that line, in the great Po river valley, the people are of mixed Italic and Gallic stock, and the land is known as Gallia Cisalpina (Gaul on this side of the Alps), further divided into Gallia Cispadana (Gaul on this side of the Po) and Gallia Transpadana (Gaul on the far side of the Po). The central part of Italy has been unified and at peace for several hundred years, although non-Romans still take pride in their heritage as Etruscans, Sabines, Latins, and so on. Latium, just south of Rome, was the first area to be conquered by nascent Rome, followed by the Etruscans to the north. South of Latium, southern Italy and Sicily were colonized in early times by Greeks, particularly Naples (Neapolis), and this area shows more influence of Greek culture, even though it's been part of Rome for over 400 years.

At the present time, "Italian" and "Roman" culture are pretty much the same, with only small local differences. The emperor Augustus extended Roman citizenship to all Italians. Most of the land in Italy, however, is owned by wealthy elites and run as slave-plantation farms called latifundia. Vespasian was the first Italian (i.e. non-Roman) emperor.

The Mediterranean coast of France around Marseilles was colonized by Greeks, who conducted trade with the interior, over 600 years ago. Around 500 years ago, Celts crossed the Alps into the Po valley, eventually overrunning northern Italy and sacking Rome before being driven back into the Po Valley, where they settled and became more civilized. Beginning around 200BC, Rome began ruling Celtic people in Spain (which they took from the Carthiginians), and then around 100BC Rome repulsed another invasion of barbarian Celts across the Alps. Finally, in 58-51BC, Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, moving the Roman border to the Rhine and effectively ending any threat of invasion across the Alps for several hundred years.

At the present time, all of Gaul and Spain have been under Roman control for over 100 years, and are mostly civilized. Roman policy is to co-opt local elites into the Roman aristocracy and government, and to bring Rome's network of trade, roads, and civil engineering out to the provinces. These provinces are peaceful, civilized, and productive parts of the Empire; most Celts now even cut their hair and moustaches in the Roman fashion, although many still wear trousers... 

The Celtic culture of Britain was the close sibling of that in Gaul, although perhaps even wilder and more primitive. Julius Caesar made a brief foray there during his Gallic campaigns, but it was the emperor Claudius who made the first real attempt to bring the island under Roman rule in 43AD, to secure Gaul's flank. Rome conquered the southern, eastern, and central portions of the island quickly, but made slow progress once it reached the Welsh hills and hugged north. The revolt of Boadicea in 61AD during Nero's reign severely challenged Roman rule, but was eventually supressed, and Roman continued its inexorable conquest of the island.

Today, most of Britain has been pacified, except for the wild Welsh tribes and the north. The southern parts of the island enjoy the peace and prosperity of their Gallic cousins, but are still a little more backward in their manners. 

The Empire's northern frontier in comprises the Rhine and Danube rivers. Across the Rhine and upper Danube live various barbaric German tribes, who once raided Gaul but are now held in check by Rome. The juncture of these two rivers forms a sharp angle that sticks into the empire, and Domitian has expressed interest in capturing territory across the rivers to cut this corner and speed movement and communication among the frontier legions.

Although some Germanic tribes near the frontier have Celtic blood (and vice-versa), the Romanization of the Celts has made the differences much starker. Germans tend to be wild and uncivilized, pastoral or nomadic people. Occasionally, captured Germans will show up in Rome as slaves, although they tend to end up on plantation farms or in the arena.

Across the lower Danube are various wild Balkan tribes, many of them Thracians akin to Greeks, most notably the kingdom of Dacia. As the barbarians of the interior threaten the thinly civilized coastlines of the Adriatic and northern Greece, Domitian has also expressed an interest in conquering these tribes. Thracians tend to take to Greek civilization more easily than Roman, and there are cultural ties between the two peoples that go back a thousand years.

The lands of the Greeks comprise the Greek mainland, as well as most of the islands in the middle and eastern Mediterranean, the western and southern coasts of Anatolia, much of the coast of the Black Sea, and the coast of southern Gaul and north-eastern Spain. Beginning around 200BC, Rome began to absorb the Hellenistic kingdoms and eventually the Greek homelands, and by 100BC Rome controlled all of the Greek homelands, and directly or indirectly controlled the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Mediterranean.

While the sea-faring Greeks are the greatest trading peoples of the Mediterranean, the time of the Greeks as the Mediterranean's premier political and military power is long past. The fabled cities of Greece's heyday are little more than tourist attractions and college towns now, where wealthy young Romans go to look on ruins and study rhetoric and the arts. Romans tend to see Greeks as hairy, effeminate, effete, and licentious. Greeks take pride in their glorious past, and tend to see Romans as johnny-come-latelies and moderately well-groomed barbarians.

Alexander the Great of Macedon conquered all of the Eastern Mediterranean, then held by the mighty Persian Empire. In so doing, the many peoples of Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt passed from Persian to Greek control. With his death, Alexander's generals split up his empire, and immediately began squabbling amongst themselves as dynasties rose and fell, provinces broke away and usurpers seized thrones. For the native peoples, life went on much as before, with taxes paid to Greek overlords instead of Persians, and with a thin layer of Greek customs instead of Persian.

Beginning around 200BC, one by one, Rome conquered the Hellenistic (post-Alexandrian) kingdoms, and by 100BC controlled all those that bordered the Mediterranean. These eastern provinced were far wealthier than the western ones, and under the Republic became a vast source of wealth that prominent Romans squeezed time and again. Eventually, the Empire regularlized the administration of these provinces, but in general the Romans left their Hellenistic Greek customs in place, so that culturally, they're quite distinct from the western empire.

A whole gamut of peoples live in the eastern empire--Bithynians, Cappadocians, Cilicians, Lydians, Syrians, Armenians, Phoenicians, Nabateans--with a whole spectrum of Hellenized customs, from Greek colonists to locals who can barely speak pigin Koine. A whole series of buffer client kingdoms also separate Roman Anatolia and Syria from the Parthian Empire in the east. Many of these people find their way to Rome, as merchants or agents.

Egypt was the most powerful and wealthy of the Hellenistic kingdoms, and one of the last to come under Roman control, with the ascension of Augustus 50 years ago. Egypt is also unique in that it is the personal property of the emperor--no senator can go there without the emperor's permission, under pain of death, because of the importance of keeping Egyptian grain flowing to feed Rome. Although Egypt was already thousands of years old when Alexander conquered it, it had passed its heydey many centuries before, and the Greeks generally held the native Egyptians in contempt. Indeed, even today, tensions between Greeks, Egyptians, and Jews in the capital of Alexandria often erupts into violent riots.

The Jews have been one of the more troublesome additions to the empire. Pompey the Great made Judea a client state during his wars in the eastern Mediterranean over 100 years ago, and it was ruled by Herod the Great from 37BC to 4BC. In 5AD, it became a Roman province. The Jews had accepted much of Hellenistic civilization, if not its religion, and were already spread throughout the Mediterranean, but Judea did not accept Roman rule quietly, in particular since Romans had repeatedly violated Jewish religious taboos and demanded acceptance of the divinity of the emperor. In 66AD Judea broke into violent revolt, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70AD, and ended at Masada in 73AD, with a large portion of the Jewish people in Judea slaughtered or sold into slavery. Many of the remainder fled to cities throughout the Mediterranean, and Rome established Roman and Greek colonies in the former province.

Judea had been rife with political and religious factions before the Romans arrived, including a number of mystic and messianic religious sects. From the Roman point of view, at its origin, the followers of Yeshua bar Yosef (AKA Jesus) were merely another of these. Although Christianity has spread from Judea throughout the Mediterranean in the 50 years since Yashue's execution, Roman authorities view it with suspicion, because unlike mainstream Roman religion, it's not practiced in public. Romans currently view Christianity as merely a sect of Judaism, and so Roman prejudices against Jews also prevail against Christians. Thus, they were easy targets when Nero needed someone on whom to blame the Great Fire in 64AD. Nonetheless, there are small Christian communities throughout the empire, particularly in the east.

To the west of Egypt, a series of Roman provinces span the Mediterranean coast of northern Africa, reaching to the Sahara. Lydia, the former territory of Carthage, Numidia, and Mauretania. These rather poor provinces are home to nomadic tribesmen and Roman colonists, and are generally quiet and peaceful.

Rome's great imperial rival is Parthia, the successor to the Persian Empirem, which came into being about 200 years ago as the Seleucid Hellenistic kingdom broke apart. Since that time, it has expanded westward, defeating the armies of Crassus in 53BC (thus precipitating the Civil War between Pompey and Caesar) and depleting the armies of Mark Antony a generation later. Beginning in 60AD Rome fought a 10-year war with Parthia over Armenia, which ended in a stalemate. Relations between the empires are now cordial, and a series of buffer client state in eastern Anatolia and Syria separate them.