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Spanning one-ninth of the earth's circumference across three continents, the Roman Empire ruled a quarter of humanity through complex networks of political power, military domination and economic exchange. These extensive connections were sustained by premodern transportation and communication technologies that relied on energy generated by human and animal bodies, winds, and currents. Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity. For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity. Taking account of seasonal variation and accommodating a wide range of modes and means of transport, ORBIS reveals the true shape of the Roman world and provides a unique resource for our understanding of premodern history.

This dissertation applies the principles of fiscal dissertation to the study of the Roman Republic. I argue that the creation of a profitable empire allowed the ruling elite to end their reliance on domestic taxation to fund state activity, and that Rome's untaxed citizens were effectively disenfranchised as a result. They therefore lacked the bargaining power to prevent aristocrats from enriching themselves at the expense of the state. The result was a set of leading individuals whose resources could overwhelm those of communal, public institutions. This wealth allowed them to control the distribution of economic resources within Roman society, reinforcing hierarchies and forcing less fortunate citizens to tie themselves to patronage networks instead of state institutions. This state, unable to command the respect of its constituents, was eventually picked off in the competition between great individuals.