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 The Roman Empire at Us Height 161 and humane and did much to unify the peoples of the Mediter- ranean world into a single nation ; for they were now regarded by the law not as different nations but as subjects of the same great State, which extended to them all the same protection of justice, law, and order. III. CIVILIZATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 255. The Peoples of the Roman Empire. The number of inhabitants of the vast Roman Empire is supposed to have been somewhere between sixty-five and a hundred million. We have no exact statistics. It included the most varied peoples, Italians, Greeks, Gauls, Iberians (Spaniards), some Britons and Germans, Moors, North Africans, Egyptians, Arabs, Jews, Phoenicians, Syr- ians, Armenians, and Hittites, to mention only the more impor- tant. All these peoples differed from one another in their native manners, customs, and dress, but they could all rejoice in the far-reaching Roman peace and protection. For the most part they lived in cities ; like our own day, it was an age of city life. 256. Excellent Roman Roads. Everywhere the magnificent Roman roads, smoothly paved with massive stone like a town street, led straight over the hills and across the rivers by impos- ing bridges. Some of these bridges still stand and are in use today. The speed of travel and communication was fully as high as that maintained in Europe and America a century ago, before the introduction of the steam railway, and the roads were much better. By sea a Roman merchant could send a letter to his agent in Alexandria in ten days. The huge government grain ships that plied regularly between the Roman harbors and Alexandria were stately vessels carrying several thousand tons. 257. Wide Extent of Commerce. With these improved condi- tions business flourished as never before. There was a fleet of a hundred and twenty ships plying regularly across the Indian Ocean between the Red Sea and the harbors of India. The wares that they brought were shipped west from the docks of Alexan- dria, which still remained the greatest commercial city on the