Appian Way

“ But it was not thus in the brilliant days of the Empire. For fifteen miles beyond the walls the Appian Way stretched to the beautiful blue Alban hills, through a continuous suburb of the city, adorned with all the charms of nature and art, palatial villas and pleasure-gardens, groves and vineyards, temples and far-extending aqueducts. These homes and fashionable haunts of the living were interspersed in strange association with the tombs of the dead. Through the gate a constant stream of human life passed in and out ”

“ The Appian Way is still there, loose ended fragments joined up here and there with a modern roadway which has become its successor, and there is a very appreciable traffic, such as it is, on the main lines of roadway north and south; but east and west and round about, save for a few squalid huts and droves of cattle, sheep and goats, a wayside inn, a fountain beneath a cypress and a few sleepy, dusty hamlets and villages, there is nothing to indicate a progressive modern existence. All is as dead and dull as it was when Rome first decayed. ”

“ The Appian Way, leading to the favourite seaport of Brundusium, a distance of rather less than a hundred and fifty miles, was the true road to Africa, to Palestine, and to all the eastern and southerly provinces of the huge straggling Empire. It was easier to sail the sea than to climb and descend the Alps; there are various records in history of a race, from some spot in the eastern portion of the Empire, run by accuser and accused, the one by sea and the other by land, each striving to reach the seat of power in Rome the first ”

“ The same thing no doubt occurred in the Appian Way, the fashionable street of Imperial Rome, when Catullus talked gay nonsense to Lesbia, and Horace received the congratulations of his friends over his new volume of society verses. History repeats itself, and every city is bound by all the laws of civilisation to have one special street, wherein the votaries of fashion can congregate. ”

“ So Belisarius led his army from Naples by the Latin Way, leaving on the left the Appian Way, which Appius, the consul of the Romans, had made nine hundred years before [66] and to which he had given his name.
Now the Appian Way is in length a journey of five days for an unencumbered traveller; for it extends from Rome to Capua. And the breadth of this road is such that two waggons going in opposite directions [145] can pass one another, and it is one of the noteworthy sights of the world. ”

“ The road was a magnificent one, having been built on the foundations of the ancient Appian Way. It was lined on each side with trees, and was broad and well paved. It is considered one of the finest in Europe. Along this they rolled, the blue sky above them, on the right hand the mountains, on the left the sea. The air was damp and chill; but at first they did not feel it particularly, though Uncle Moses complained of "rheumatics," and took precautionary measures against his insidious enemy by wrapping himself up warmly. As they went on they saw crowds of peasants coming to work in the fields. ”

“ The first and greatest of the Italian roads was the famous Appian Way (Via Appia, called Regina Viarum, “Queen of Roads”) , which was begun by Appius Claudius, Censor in 312 B. C. The struggle with the Samnites was at its height when this great causeway, built with large, square stones on a raised platform, was made direct from the gates of Rome to Capua, in Campania. The Via Appia was afterwards extended, through Samnium and Apulia, to Brundusium (on the lower Adriatic) , the port of embarkment for Greece. ”

“ The sculptor came out of the city by the gate of San Sebastiano, and walked briskly along the Appian Way.
For the space of a mile or two beyond the gate, this ancient and famous road is as desolate and disagreeable as most of the other Roman avenues. It extends over small, uncomfortable paving-stones, between brick and plastered walls, which are very solidly constructed, and so high as almost to exclude a view of the surrounding country. The houses are of most uninviting aspect, neither picturesque, nor homelike and social ”

“ The Appian Way is an ordinary good country road lined with old houses, wine gardens, ruins and high fences. There are still a number of villas and palaces, but the owners are poor and the basements are usually rented out for stables and the upper apartments for tenements. Italian noblemen are generally poor, and if they have palaces are obliged to rent rooms and keep boarders. ”

“ Because of invaders, and the elements, and time—the old conqueror who tears up a road as he goes over it—there is nothing left of that structure excepting a ruin. But I have this morning to tell you of a road built before the Appian Way, and yet it is as good as when first constructed. Millions of souls have gone over it. Millions more will come. ”

“ Land was no longer the sole basis of property; it became possible for a man to become rich by trade, and accordingly landless citizens were now drafted into the ancient tribes for the first time. To this great censor also belongs the first of the famous Roman military roads, the Appian Way, which led southwards to the Greek cities of Campania. Even to-day the Via Appia, flanked with its ruined tombs—for the Romans often buried their dead along the highways—running like a dart across the barren Campagna, is one of the most striking spectacles which modern Rome has to offer. ”

“ That highway down from Homer and Hesiod to Horace and Juvenal is more attractive than the Appian. Reading the classics, or conversing with those old Greeks and Latins in their surviving works, is like walking amid the stars and constellations, a high and by-way serene to travel. ”

“ A road constructed for the convenience of some primitive community or to gratify the caprice of some rich man or lordly ruler becomes often in after years an Appian Way for public travel and commercial intercourse.
A road may be located in one of three ways. It may be laid out in a straight line by crossing lowlands in the mud and going over hills at steep grades. The ancient Britons, like the early settlers in this country, established their homesteads and villages on commanding situations, and ran their roads and bridle-paths in direct courses by their habitations. ”

“ It is evening, and as we climb the long slope of the Appian Way up to the Alban Hills, we look back and see the sky aflame with sunset, its golden glory resting like the aureole of a dying saint over Rome and touching with a crest of fire the dome of St. ”

“ With the last nation, the Samnites, who dwelt on the Adriatic, the Romans struggled eighty years under the greatest difficulties, but finally they subjugated them and the neighbors who were allied with them, and also the Greeks who had settled in Italy. This, by way of distinction from the former, will be called the Samnite Roman history. ”

“ Along the Euxine are other nations called by the common name Pontic, subject to the Roman rule. The Syrians and Cilicians border on the Mediterranean, the Armenians and Cappadocians extend to the Pontic nations and to the interior as far as Greater Armenia, which is not subject to the Romans in the way of tribute, but its people appoint their own kings. Descending from Cilicia and Cappadocia to Ionia we find the great peninsula bounded on the right by the Euxine, the Propontis, the Hellespont, and the Aegean, and on the left by the Pamphylian or Egyptian sea, for it is called by both names. ”

“ The intake of Appia is on the Lucullan estate, between the seventh and eighth milestones, on the Praenestine Way, on a cross-road, 780 paces [1] to the left. [2] From its intake to the Salinae at the Porta Trigemina, [3] its channel has a length of 11,190 paces, of which 11,130 paces run underground, while above ground sixty paces are carried on substructures and, near the Porta Capena, on arches. Near Spes Vetus, [4] on the edge of the Torquatian and Epaphroditian Gardens, there joins it a branch of Augusta, added by Augustus as a supplementary supply... ”

“ Appian was neither better nor worse in this respect than the average historian of his time. Professor Schwartz says truly that Appian's account of the struggle between Antony and the Senate in book iii. of the Civil Wars is not history but "historical novel writing," but he adds that "with all its disfigurations and inventions the great lines are worked out correctly and keenly, the inventions contributing in part to that very end." This criticism may be safely applied to a large part of Appian's writings. ”

“ The old Romans, like the ancient Egyptians, seem to have had no shrinking from keeping death well in view, as this Via Appia, which was the patrician cemetery of Rome, was also a military highway and a pleasure-drive, and from it still branches a road leading to the race-course. ”

“ The Via Appia was constructed of large blocks placed very closely together; and though modern Paving Boards have done their best by laying their heads together to imitate the plan, success has never rewarded their labours.
Not less wonderful than the road of Appius, was the aqueduct that bore his name, and which had solved the question so apparently incapable of solution in our own times, of the means of securing a supply of water to a great Metropolis. ”

“ The old walls built by Servius Tullius around the city still remained; through these the gate opened between the Aventine and Coelian hills, nearly a mile from the present entrance of the "Queen of Highways" into the forum through the walls built subsequently by the Emperor Aurelian. The Appian aqueduct, of which scarce a stone remains to-day, rose before them from the ground some sixty paces from the gate, and, travelling on high arches, emptied itself into the reservoir within the walls. ”

“ However, Apion deserves to be admired for his great prudence, as to what I am going to say, which is this, "That there is a plain mark among us, that we neither have just laws, nor worship God as we ought to do, because we are not governors, but are rather in subjection to Gentiles, sometimes to one nation, and sometimes to another; and that our city hath been liable to several calamities, while their city [Alexandria] hath been of old time an imperial city, and not used to be in subjection to the Romans." ”

“ Appian was a narrator of events rather than a philosophic historian. His style is destitute of ornament, but in the rhetorical passages, which are numerous, it is animated, forcible and at times eloquent. Occasionally he rises to the dignity of the best writers of the ancient world. The introduction to the history of the Civil Wars is an example of this kind. ”

“ And at this point, the Church and the commonwealth are the only rivals; the remains of earlier times do not come into view. For them we must seek, but at no great distance. Go down from the central height, and stand on the bridge which spans the Via Appia of Perugia, a strange namesake for the Via Appia of Rome. There the walls of the Etruscan city, rising on the one side above the houses, on the other above one of the deep valleys, form the main feature. ”

“ The road system of Apulia, which touched all the important towns, consisted of three main lines, the Via Appia (see Appia, Via) , the Via Traiana, and the coast road, running more or less parallel in an east-south-east direction. The first (the southernmost) , coming east from Beneventum, entered Apulia at the Pons Aufidi, and ran through Venusia to Tarentum, and thence, 236 turning north-east, to Brundusium. The second, coming north-east from Beneventum, turned east at Aecae, and ran through Herdoniae, Canusium, Butuntum, Barium and Gnathia (Gnatia) to Brundusium. ”

“ Whether, therefore, he returned it to us again, or whether Apion took it, and brought it into the temple again, that Antiochus might find it, and afford a handle for a second fable of Apion's, is uncertain.
11. Apion also tells a false story, when he mentions an oath of ours, as if we "swore by God, the Maker of the heaven, and earth, and sea, to bear no good will to any foreigner, and particularly to none of the Greeks." Now this liar ought to have said directly that, "we would bear no good-will to any foreigner, and particularly to none of the Egyptians." ”

“ Many windings are occasioned by thus adhering to arêtes, but the total result is a gradual ascent with free prospect over plain and mountain. The Apennines, built up upon a smaller scale than the Alps, perplexed in detail and entangled with cross sections and convergent systems, lend themselves to this plan of carrying highroads along their ridges instead of following the valley.
What is beautiful in the landscape of that northern watershed is the subtlety, delicacy, variety, and intricacy of the mountain outlines. There is drawing wherever the eye falls. ”

“ Aqua Appia, which took its rise between the 6th and 7th milestones of the Via Collatina, and measured from its source to the Porta Trigemina 11 Roman miles, of which all but about 300 ft. were below ground. It appears to have been the first important enterprise of the kind at Rome, and was the work of the censor Appius Claudius Caecus, from whom it derived its name. The date of its construction was 312 B.C. (2) Anio Vetus, constructed in 272–269 B.C. by the censor Manius Curius Dentatus. From its source near Tivoli, on the left side of the Anio, it flowed some 43 m., [2] of which only 1100 ft. ”

“ Could a Roman citizen, at a period when the inhabitants of Rome were not rich, bear an expence which we are surprised that even the State itself could support? Though this famous road has received its name from Appius, I can hardly imagine it was completed by him. The distance from Rome to Capua is above one hundred and thirty miles; a prodigious length for such a road as this to have been made, during the short course of one Censorship; for a man could be Censor only once in his life. ”