It all started with one city during the eighth century B.C. that would go on to be an empire. Ancient people living in villages near Rome drained the marshes, constructed stone buildings and established marketplaces. For about the next 1,200 years, the city government expanded control to the nearby areas, then the Italian peninsula and the rest of the Mediterranean.
At its peak, the Roman Empire spread through more than 50 modern-day countries ranging from England in the northwest to Iraq in the far east. An estimated 100 million people lived in these countries, spoke different languages and had distinct cultures.
