THE ROADS TO ROME

Wide-ranging history of ancient Rome’s globe-spanning network of roads.

“What have the Romans ever done for us?” asks John Cleese’s freedom fighter in the Monty Python film Life of Brian. “The roads,” answers another rebel. The reply: “Well, yes, obviously the roads…the roads go without saying.” Observes British historian Fletcher, the roads that Rome built extended from Scotland to Iraq, and many still exist, whether for a kilometer or so as archaeological curiosities or charting the course for modern superhighways such as Italy’s Strada Statale or state road 7, which follows the straight-line layout of its predecessor, the Via Appia, which famously extends to Rome. “Barely a week goes by without a report on a newly discovered Roman road,” Fletcher notes. By her account that would seem especially true in Britain, where every new parking lot or building foundation seems to turn up imperial paving stones. The roads were more than conveniences for trade and the movement of military forces, though they were certainly both: Fletcher reckons that a walker on a good Roman road might make 20 miles a day—a rhythm so regular that Roman court dates were set according to how far a litigant had to walk to get there—while a rider on horseback could make 50 to 80 miles a day. Beyond that, the roads were symbols and projections of imperial power, and a safeguard: any enemy attacking Rome would soon find legions arrayed against it. Later observers such as Leonardo da Vinci were fascinated by the remnants, and when Mussolini tried to launch an empire of his own, he set to work rebuilding Rome’s network of roads (though on the famed March to Rome, Fletcher chortles, “Mussolini himself…took the train to the outskirts”).

A lucid, readable work on a key aspect of ancient infrastructure and its survivals.