Roman road

“ CHAPTER II THE APPIAN WAY
It was the proud boast of the ancient Romans that all roads led to their city. Rome was the centre and mistress of the world; and as the loneliest rill that rises in the bosom of the far-off mountain leads, if followed, to the ocean, so every path in the remotest corner of the vast empire conducted to the great gilded column in the Roman Forum, upon which all distances without the walls were marked. To the Romans the world is indebted for opening up communications with different countries. They were the great engineers and road-makers of antiquity. ”

“ You can never argue from the absence of traces to-day that a Roman road did not exist, for it is astonishing how thoroughly time eliminates such things. There are whole great towns like Aquilea and Hippo of which not even the foundations remain to-day. Even in England, where Roman survival is most marked, two towns, Silchester and Uriconium, have gone save for a few ruins; and there are great stretches of Roman road in every country of Western Europe which have mysteriously and wholly disappeared without leaving a trace of the tremendous work undertaken to build them ”

“ The Roman roads of Britain were principally military. The whole scheme of Roman government was military, and the life of all that civilization was founded on the army. With the marching of men rapidly and easily from place to place as the main motive of the builders, the roads follow those great straight lines which, while duly seeking a formula of minimum effort, never sacrificed to it directness of plan. As we have seen, even at the great [102] estuaries Roman engineers preferred a supplementary ferry to continue the road rather than deflecting it round by the first bridge. ”

“ Roads were pushed in every direction,—broad, level ways, over which armies might be marched or intelligence quickly carried. They were chains which bound her possessions indissolubly together. Some of them remain today a monument of Roman thoroughness, enterprise, and sagacity,—the wonder and admiration of modern road-builders. By these means did Rome fasten together the constantly increasing fabric of her empire, so that not even the successes of Hannibal caused more than a momentary shaking of fidelity, for which ample punishment was both speedy and certain. ”

“ In almost every broad river valley in England, where an old Roman road crosses the stream and its low-lying banks, you may see something which the Dark Ages left to us in our road system: you may see the modern road leaving the old Roman line and picking its way across the wet lands from one drier point to another, and rejoining the Roman line beyond. It is a thing you will see in almost anyone of our Strettons, Stanfords, Stamfords, Staffords, etc., which everywhere mark the crossing of a Roman road over a water course. ”

“ We cannot say whether the Romans appreciated scenery. If a love of the wildly beautiful in nature is dependent upon the safety of those who behold it, and upon the ease with which those scenes are visited, perhaps only the later generations of Roman colonists could have possessed this sense. The earlier Romans who made their splendid system of roads were, doubtless, only military men, and, well aware of their dangers, found nothing beautiful in mountain ranges. ”

“ We have also the fact that much the most of the great battles took place on or near the Roman roads until the twelfth century, that most of the new great monastic and other houses were built near them, or on them, and that the ports most commonly used in the Dark Ages were nearly always ports with a Roman road serving them. ”

“ To trace out the network of Roman roads is a study in itself, and much has been learned therefrom. Some roads are still quite easy to trace, as far as their course is concerned, for many of our great main roads to-day run upon the top of them; and from time to time, when excavations are being made for sewers, or for laying 16 water-pipes, or tubes for trunk lines of telephones, the actual metal and foundations of the Roman tracks are found, many feet below the present level of the road. ”

“ The Romans soon found it necessary to utilise their central position by rendering themselves accessible to the rest of Italy, and they commenced building those marvellous roads, which in most cases have remained, owing to their solid construction. "Building" is the proper word to use, for a Roman road is really a broad wall built in a deep ditch so as to come up above the level of the surface. Scarcely any amount of traffic could wear this solid substructure away, and to this day throughout Europe traces can be found of the Roman roads built nearly two thousand years ago. ”

“ THE Romans were noted for many things, but for nothing do they better deserve fame than for the system of roads which connected every part, even the remotest province of the empire, with Italy and the capital During the golden days every road literally led to Rome, for outside the limits of the Roman world there were no roads worthy of the name, and within its limits every highway was but a part of the system which had its center in the Appian Forum. ”

“ For this road startles and controls a true man, presenting an eternal example of what Rome could do. The peasants around have always called it the "Street." It leads from what was certainly one Roman town to what was certainly another. That sign of Roman occupation, the modern word "Cold Harbour," is scattered up and down it. There are Roman pavements on it. It goes plumb straight for miles, and at times, wherever it crosses undisturbed land, it is three or four feet above the level of the down. ”

“ By the middle of the twelfth century the Roman roads that had been made and kept in repair for hundreds of years fell into ruin, and the detritus and miscellaneous accumulations of twenty-five generations now cover the greater portion of them. At a depth varying from five to fourteen, and even eighteen, feet, excavators have come upon the hard surface of the original Roman road, and mosaic pavements of villas found at that extreme depth attest how the surface of a country may be altered only by the gradual deposit of vegetable matter. ”

“ Their dogs, who do the work of men, in searching stragglers, and in driving and tending the sheep, are interesting objects. Of course the story of Hannah More came often to mind as we encountered these sights. But other interesting associations were excited by the evident remains of old Roman roads, which traversed these pasturages in ancient times. There were, besides, some strange circular hollows, in form like saucers, of undoubted Roman origin, which lay on either side of our way as we drove over a sort of ridge-road. ”

“ Where he swam, we go dry-shod, when we saunter through the Cluny; and we may sit, a little farther south, in Rue de Navarre just off Rue Monge, in the stone seats of the Roman arena, a perfect bit of loyal preservation of Lutetia.
The Romans meant to make their new town an important centre, and those impassioned road-builders began to bring to it the highways, in the making of which, and by means of which, they were easily masters of their world. ”

“ Not only in great works such as the Mont Cenis tunnel or the coast railway 11 from Nice to Spezzia, but also in the country roads of remote valleys the traveller finds frequent evidences of the survival of the Roman tradition and genius for road-making. ”

“ The famous Roman roads are to be found not only throughout Italy, where they were constructed in various directions from the capital, but in every land once conquered by Rome and stamped by her, as she stamped all her conquests, with ineffaceable marks of her possession and her power. These great roads were first made with the military purpose of providing a way that should be solid at all seasons of the year, for the march of legions and their heavy baggage through districts subdued by Roman arms. ”

“ As in some of the already-mentioned inscriptions of public works the measurements of the work to which they refer (especially, as may be supposed, in the case of works of great extent, such as walls of towns or lines of fortification, like the walls of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius in Britain) are indicated, so it early became a custom in the Roman republic to note on milestones the name of the founder of the road and, especially at the extremities of it and near large towns, the distances. ”

“ My dear Love,—I am not in what might be called an interesting country—low hills, rocky, stony, heathery, and peaty—but a new country has always something of interest to pass the time with. I saw a valuable archæological phenomenon to-day. The Roman roads were all paved, and went straight over hill and across valley—never troubled about levels. In the parts of Britain where the Romans are historically known to have been, such roads have been fully identified. ”

“ Rome occupies a unique position in the history of the world. The whole Mediterranean basin was at one time merely a Roman lake, and the adjacent countries were Roman in letters, law, religion and the practice of war. Roman roads crossed the continents east and west and penetrated to the depths of Asia and Africa. ”

“ On your exit from most of the gates of Rome you have generally half-an-hour's progress through winding lanes, many of which are hardly less charming than the open meadows. On foot the walls and high hedges would vex you and spoil your walk; but in the saddle you generally overtop them, to an endless peopling of the minor vision. Yet a Roman wall in the springtime is for that matter almost as interesting as anything it conceals. ”

“ This is the veritable beating, pulsing heart of Rome, and Rome is the world. Here is reality. Here are solidity, strength, planning made real, dreams hewn in enduring stone. Here are wealth, accomplishment, power, might. Not twenty paces across there is the Millenarium Aureum, the resplendent bronze column set up to mark the center of the Roman world, the point from which miles are counted along the highways and their joining sea lanes stretching to the ends of the known earth to bind Rome into one colossal, unconquerable, enduring Empire!... ”

“ It is hard indeed for any one at any time to judge of Rome fairly. Whatever may be the object of our pilgrimage, we Roman travellers are all under some guise or other pilgrims to the Eternal City, and gaze around us with something of a pilgrim’s reverence for the shrine of his worship. The ground we tread on is enchanted ground, we breathe a charmed air, and are spellbound with a strange witchery. A kind of glamour steals over us, a thousand memories rise up and chase each other. ”

“ At that distance human beings look no bigger than flies, and the canopy of the high altar might be an ordinary table.
And thence, climbing up between the double domes, one may emerge from the almost terrible perspective to the open air, and suddenly see all Rome at one's feet, and all the Roman mountains stretched out to south and east, in perfect grace of restful outline, shoulder to shoulder, like shadowy women lying side by side and holding hands. ”

“ Nothing can give an idea of the picture in times when Rome was still Roman; no power of description can call up the crowd that thronged and jammed the long, narrow street, till the slowly moving carriages and cars seemed to force their way through the stiffly packed mass of humanity as a strong vessel ploughs her course up-stream through packed ice in winter. ”

“ The whole broad avenue is full of life, while by its side stalks the majestic aqueduct, a Roman legion slow marching into Rome. It is as artistic a line of beauty as ever strode along a busy city pathway. ”

“ To the amateur, like the present writer, who goes a little way on it, the thought of this majestic Way gives dignity to the ill-defined sandy track in which he may be floundering, and makes each northern horizon seem like the hill-tops of the Apennines, somewhere behind which, as the pilgrim is confident, lie the towers and pinnacles of Rome. I would recommend as a panacea for cold and comfortless nights on the road that the mind of the traveller should occupy itself with a projected itinerary. ”

“ Passing beneath that not very impressive specimen of Michael Angelo's architecture, a minute's walk will transport the visitor from the small uneasy lava stones of the Roman pavement, into broad, gravelled carriage drives, whence a little further stroll brings him to the soft turf of a beautiful seclusion. A seclusion, but seldom a solitude; for priest, noble, and populace, stranger and native, all who breathe the Roman air, find free admission, and come hither to taste the languid enjoyment of the day-dream which they call life. ”

“ Le lieu est fait pour une aquarelle, et quand un beau soleil éclaire les débris antiques, les vieux murs sombres de la rue étroite où la poisson se vend sur des tables de marbre blanc, et à travers laquelle des nattes sont tendues, on a, à côté du monument romain, le spectacle d'un marché du moyen âge, et un peu le souvenir d'un bazar d'Orient."—Ampère, Emp. i. 179.
"Who that has ever been to Rome does not remember Roman streets of an evening, when the day's work is done? They are all alive in a serene and homelike fashion. ”

“ Calpurnius: Only Rome can destroy it. (A pause.) Gleva, let what I say sink deep into your heart. A minute ago I sneered at the road. I blasphemed. The roads are my people's work. While it builds roads, it's Rome, it's the Unconquerable. But when there are no new roads in the making and the weeds sprout between the pavements of the old ones, then your moment's coming. When the slabs are broken and no company marches down from the hill to mend them, it has come. Launch your chariots then, Gleva! Rome's day is over, her hand tired. She has grown easy and forgotten. ”