High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Metals and metal working had been known to the people of modern Italy since the Bronze Age. By 86 BC, Rome had already expanded to control an immense expanse of the Mediterranean. This included nine provinces radiating from Italy to its islands, Spain, Macedonia (Roman province), Africa, Asia Minor, Syria and Greece, and by the end of the Emperor Constantine’s reign, the Roman Empire had grown further to encompass parts of Britain, Egypt, all Germany west of the Rhine, Dacia, Noricum, Judea, Armenia, Illyria and Thrace (Shepard 1993). As the empire grew, so did its need for metals.