All Roads Really Did Lead to Rome

The expression, “All roads lead to Rome” apparently was true as 29 military highways radiated out from Rome. The empire’s 113 provinces were connected by 372 roads which covered over 250,000 miles (400,000 km), and 50,000 miles (80,500 km) of them were paved with stones.

Roman roads survived for thousands of years, and many of them have been paved over and become the major highways of today. The most famous, and one of the earliest Roman roads, was the Appian Way which connected Rome to the city of Brindisi in southeast Italy. The Appian Way was built in 312 BCE and it was named for a Roman official named Appius Claudius Caecus.

The Itinerary of Antonius stated, “There is hardly a district to which we might expect a Roman official to be sent, on service either civil or military, where we do not find roads. They reach the Wall in Britain [Hadrian’s wall]; run along the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates; and cover, as with a network, the interior provinces of the Empire.”

Roman road construction

Roman road construction began with a civil engineer who proposed where the road should be placed. Then, the agrimensores went to work surveying the roadbed. They used two devices, the rod and the groma, which allowed them to measure precise right angles.

Next, the gromatici placed rods and laid out a grid pattern on the plan of the road. Following them were the libratores who began digging the road using ploughs. They excavated the roadbed down to the firmest ground they could find.

Next, rubble, gravel, and stone were laid down and tamped down in a process called pavire, or pavimentare. Finally, polygonal-shaped or square-shaped paving stones were set in a lime-based concrete, which the Romans invented. Finally, the entire roadway was angled for drainage.

Some Roman roadways were cut through hills while others spanned rivers or ravines. The Romans built bridges using the arch as their basic structure, and they were so well constructed that many are still in use today. Roman road construction was commemorated in a frieze on Trajan’s Column in Rome.

The Law of Twelve Tables which was written in around 450 BCE required that any public straight Roman road be 8 Roman feet wide, or 7.78 feet (2.37 m) wide, and that it be twice that width if curved. In rural areas, Roman roads had to be 12 Roman feet wide in order to allow two carts to pass one another.

Roman law established road access across private land, and within Rome itself. It restricted commercial carts to night-time use only within the walls of a city and within a mile (1.6 km) outside of the city’s walls.

Roman milestones

Dotted along Roman roadways were Miliarium, or milestones. They appeared along the Appian Way before 250 BCE, and by 124 BCE, milestones appeared along most Roman roads.

The modern word “mile” comes from the Latin milia passuum, or “one thousand paces”. This equaled 4,841 feet (1,476 m). Roman milestones were cylindrical columns 20 inches (51 cm) in diameter, standing 5 feet (1.5 m) tall, and weighing over 2 tons.

At their base was inscribed the number of the mile relative to the road it was placed on, and in a panel at eye-height was the distance to the Roman Forum and information about who had commisioned, constructed, or repaired the road.

Mutationes were located every 12 to 19 miles (20 to 30 km) along Roman roads, and they provided wheelwrights, cartwrights and veterinarians to travelers.

A mail service, the Cursus publicus, which was created by Emperor Augustus carried the regular mail of the empire, but for those who could afford it, there was a separate mail service called the tabellarii that employed slaves.

The infrastructure, including its roads, that ancient Rome created was not duplicated until the modern era, a truly amazing feat.