Vatican Museums

Following the conquest of Britain, with this and other terminal stones (such as 41.5 and 41.9), marked with a serial number, the emperor Claudius – with the titles and political and religious offices to which he was entitled by Constitution (pontiff of State religions, defender of the plebs, supreme military commander, consul, censor, and father of the country) – claims and celebrates the expansion of the boundaries of the Roman nation (auctis populi Romani finibus), extending and defining the line of the pomerium of Rome. This is the sacred boundary, determined in relation to the city perimeter walls, intended to separate the city from the external territory (ager), establishing two distinct areas on a religious, civil and military basis. The historical and topographical implications of the gradual extension of this limit are extremely complex on account of the difficulty of reconciling data from the written sources.