Roman imperial period (chronology)

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The Roman imperial period is the expansion of political and cultural influence of the Roman Empire. The period begins with the reign of Augustus (r. 27 BC – AD 14), and it is taken to end variously between the late 3rd and the late 4th century, with the beginning of late antiquity. Despite the end of the "Roman imperial period", the Roman Empire continued to exist under the rule of the Roman emperors into Late Antiquity and beyond, except in the Western Empire, over which the Romans' political and military control was lost in the course of the 5th-century fall of the Western Roman Empire.