IMPERIUM ROMANUM

Provinces · The later western provinces

LW-44 Sicilia

The empire around 400 CE. The broad colours represent prefectural groupings, while…
The empire around 400 CE. The broad colours represent prefectural groupings, while regional names, major cities, and symbols for selected state industries show the larger administrative and logistical setting. These groupings contained many individual provinces; a region labelled on this map is not necessarily one province.

The island retained its provincial identity and importance to grain supply, maritime movement, and aristocratic landholding. Cities, estates, villages, ports, Christian communities, and rural religious institutions formed a complex late society. Large residences reveal concentrated wealth alongside the labour and production that sustained it.

Vandal pressure and Gothic rule placed Sicily within the struggles over the central Mediterranean. Justinianic conquest in 535 made it a base for operations in Italy and restored direct eastern imperial government. Its later administrative position changed again, but the island’s strategic coherence survived the end of the western provincial hierarchy.