Emperor Hadrian, the ruler who declared that Rome’s expansion had limits, ordered a colossal scar of stone to be carved across the northern edge of the Empire. In 122 AD, arriving in the province of Britannia, he sought to impose order upon a restless frontier not by conquering more land, but by physically defining where Rome ended. Under the command of the governor Aulus Platorius Nepos, the Roman army began construction across the narrow isthmus between the River Tyne in the east and the Solwa