The Roman empire was in many senses the first rue empire in the modern sense, and the most lasting, combining brilliant organization with historical 'accidents' turned to the best. The reign of Spain-born emperor Hadrian, from an Italian veteran immigrants family, serves as exemplary height of an unprecedented well-woven imperial texture. Road maps and mile posts along a previously unthinkable network of standardized roads fit for military maneuvers and permanent commerce increasingly unified a huge market, transcending natural and cultural borders and differences. Profits were generated and shared for emperors, administration, army, Roman and local -thus Romanized- elites, workers and slaves. Production was organized for a vast market, silver mined -mainly in Iberia- to mint coins 'industrially', produces shipped and transported further by road, thus spreading material and general culture naturally, encouraged by the traditional Roman tolerance, even in religious matters, until Christianity would become the great unifier in a world that already shared many production and artistic techniques, measures and so on.
—KGF Vissers