ABSTRACT
Roman achievement in engineering, governance, military tactics, town planning, agriculture and the like was in large part the consequence of a happy rather than perfect marriage between theory and practice. Theory and practice did not meet in a happy and creative union in Roman geography. The theory of zones allowed the Romans to live in a northern temperate rectangle, balanced by a southern, but unreachable, southern temperate rectangle. Towards the end of the first century BC, the Romans gained control of Egypt and therefore the lower Nile valley. Pieces of a porphyry statue of the emperor Galerius were found, at the site of his intended retirement villa at Gamzigrad, which included a hand clutching an orb. It would be salutary to say that the insight fundamentally altered the Roman world view, and that the realization that the south was attainable after all resulted in its more sustained and directed exploration and exploitation.
