at the height of her power in the year 117 AD.

History was cruel to the Empire, however, and over the centuries

she gradually lost power and eventually disappeared

altogether.

But what would a country with the same borders

as the old Empire look like today in the 21st century?

What if all of the territory of the Roman Empire

suddenly united tomorrow and recreated

the country in a modern form?

Let me start by saying that this is outrageously impossible.

There is no way that you could possibly

convince Spain, England, Turkey, and Syria

into the same country.

Crimea would get a little more awkward than it already is,

too.

But let us suspend our disbelief for a moment

and just imagine what it would actually look like

and what living in it would be like.

So first off, this is a modern map

and these are what the borders of the Roman Empire

would look like were it to come back into existence.

In total, 53 different countries would

lose all or some of their territory

to the Empire, which would span over

six million square kilometers in size.

This sounds very impressive, but the Empire would actually only

be the seventh largest country in the world by size.

It would be just bigger than India,

but it would be smaller than Australia and Brazil.

And Russia, meanwhile, would be nearly three times the size

of the Empire.

But size isn't necessarily everything.

If we examine the population of this hypothetical empire,

it would be roughly 711 million people, or about 10700:01:22,700 --> 00:01:24,850 of the total global population.

The original Roman Empire in antiquity

had 10 times fewer citizens at about 70 million people.

But back then, that was 21% of the entire global population.

The modern Empire's population would

be enough to place it in third place in terms of population

size, but both India and China would

retain higher populations.

The Empire would, however, have more than double the population

of the United States and would boast

some very impressive cities.

If we were to speculate on a hypothetical capital

for this Empire, we would probably

come across Istanbul, which was a historic capital

of the Empire back when it was known as Constantinople.

Today, the population of Istanbul

is sitting around 14.6 million people,

making it by far the largest city in this Empire.

At the height of the city during the actual empire in 580,

the population was 450,000.

But even earlier in 180 AD, however, the city of Rome

was the very first city in the world

to reach a population of one million people.

Even though today Rome has a population of well over two

million, there would still be much bigger

cities within the borders of the Empire today,

like Cairo, London, Baghdad, and Alexandria.

At first thought, it might seem like such a huge country would

be an economic powerhouse.

And while that would be true, it wouldn't

be exactly what you think.

All of this territory combined would give the modern Roman

Empire a GDP of $15.99 trillion US, which

would mean that the empire would only be the world's

second largest economy.

Despite having a population that would be less than half

of the modern Empire's, the United States

would actually still have a larger GDP,

at around $18 trillion.

The differences in per capita income,

however, would be even more shocking.

The modern Roman Empire would have

territory in wealthier areas, like England, France,

and Germany, but also in more impoverished areas

like Iraq, Armenia, and Libya.

For this reason, the average income

of citizens within the empire would be at around $24,623.

And this is a pretty low value.

The Empire would be placed 52nd in the world in terms

of how much money the average citizen was earning, just

ahead of Kazakhstan but behind Latvia.

With a large GDP and population, however, the Empire

would have a very large standing army.

Averaging all of the active military personnel

in the territories within the empire, that

would mean the Empire's standing military

would be at around 2,771,000, which

would make the Roman military the largest standing

force in the world currently.

The final two big questions we have

left to examine with this country

are, one, what would be the dominant languages and, two,

what would be the dominant religions.

To begin, the most widely spoken language within the country

would certainly be Arabic, which 32% of the population

would be speaking.

French would be the second most spoken language, with about 14400:04:07,040 --> 00:04:08,640 of the population understanding it,

while Turkish would be third at about 9.5%,

followed by Italian and English to collectively form

the top five most spoken languages

within the modern Empire.

And finally, we need to explore what

the religious make-up of such a vast country would look like.

Basically, Muslims would be the largest religious group

inside the modern Empire, making up 44.6300:04:28,270 --> 00:04:29,650 of the total population.

42.2% of that value would be Sunni Muslims, while just 2.4500:04:34,290 --> 00:04:35,571 would be Shia Muslims.

Interestingly, this would make the modern Roman Empire

the largest Muslim country in the world.

Christians would be the second largest group collectively,

forming 39.3% of the population.

Of that, Catholics would comprise

25.2% of the total population, while Orthodox Christians would

be 8.2% and Protestants would be 5.6%.

Also interestingly, these numbers

would mean that the modern Roman Empire would also

be the world's largest Christian nation.

Jews would form only about 1% of the total population,

while atheists, agnostics, or non-religious would

form 10.5% of the country.

It's really fascinating to think what a country like this

would look like in the modern world

and with modern technology and with modern ideas.

Could it possibly ever survive and

what would daily life be like living within it?

These are questions for another time.

But please leave your comments.

If you have your own answers or questions,

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And as always, everybody, thank you for watching.

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