Roman Road

A Roman road in Pompeii

The Roman roads were essential for the growth of their empire, by enabling them to move armies. A proverb says that “all roads lead to Rome”. Roman roads were designed that way to hinder provinces organizing resistance against the Empire. At its peak, the Roman road system spanned 53,000 miles (85,300 km) and contained about 372 links.

The Romans, for military, commercial and political reasons, became adept at constructing roads, which they called viae (plural of singular via). The word is related to the English “way”.

These long highways were very important in maintaining both the stability and expansion of the empire. The legions made good time on them, and some are still used millennia later. In late Antiquity these roads played an important part in Roman military reverses by offering avenues of invasion to the barbarians.

Types of Roads

Roman roads vary from simple corduroy roads to paved roads using deep roadbeds of tamped rubble as an underlying layer to ensure that they kept dry, as the water would flow out from between the stones and fragments of rubble, instead of becoming mud in clay soils.

Prepared viae began in history as the streets of Rome. The laws of the Twelve Tables, dated to approximately 450 BC, specify that a road should be 8 feet wide where straight and 16 where curved. The Tables commanded the Romans to build roads and give wayfarers the right to pass over private land where the road is in disrepair. Building roads that would not need frequent repair therefore became an ideological objective. Roman law defined the right to use a road. The “right of going” established a right to use a footpath, across private land; the “right of driving” – a carriage track. A via combined both types of rights, provided it was of the proper width, which was determined as 8 feet. In these rather dry laws we can see the prevalence of the public domain over the private, which characterized the republic.

A via connected two cities. Some links in the network were as long as 55 miles. The builders aimed at directional straightness. Many long sections are ruler-straight, but it should not be thought that all of them were. The Roman emphasis on constructing straight roads often resulted in steep grades relatively impractical for most economic traffic: over the years the Romans themselves realized it and built longer, but more manageable, alternatives to existing roads. Viae were generally centrally placed in the countryside. Either main or secondary roads might be paved, or they might be left unpaved, with a gravel surface, as they were in North Africa. These prepared but unpaved roads were viae sternendae (“to be strewn”). Beyond the secondary roads were the viae terrenae, “dirt roads”. A road map of the empire reveals that it was laced fairly completely with a network of prepared viae. Beyond the borders are no roads; however, one might presume that footpaths and dirt roads allowed some transport.