The saying goes that all roads lead to Rome. This popular saying dates back to the Middle Ages and is attributed to the French theologian and poet Alain de Lille, who back in the 12th century wrote: Mille viae ducunt hominem per saecula Romam, a spiritual metaphor to reflect that there are many paths to reach God. Its meaning has evolved and today we use it to indicate that there are many ways to reach the same result. Other authors have linked the famous proverb with the monument Milliarium aureum, erected by the emperor Octavius Augustus: it was considered to mark the beginning of all roads and distances in the Roman Empire were measured in relation to it.
The extraordinary road network that the ancient Romans built throughout the territory that covered their empire continues to be a source of admiration and study for archaeologists. But the latest analysis of its layout, published this Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications and based on the most precise estimate made to date of the Roman roads, dismantles some widespread ideas about what this network was like. Among others, Rome was the best connected city in the empire.
This team led by Pau de Soto, Tom Brughmans and Adam Pazout has digitized all the roads and paths built throughout the empire. Its digital tool, called Itiner-e, compiles a total of 299,171 kilometers of roads, compared to 188,555 km. which included a previous estimate, as detailed in a study published last fall. "To get an idea of its extension, 300,000 kilometers is equivalent to circling the Earth seven and a half around the Equator," Pau de Soto, researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and associate professor Serra Húnter, compares in a telephone interview.
His new research includes a structural analysis of the terrestrial network - average and maximum slope, altitude, orientation and straightness of the roads - during the moment of maximum extension of the empire, in the year 117 AD. C, when it covered approximately 5.5 million square kilometers in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, connected by a land, river and sea transport network.
"Other analyzes have been done in the past, but not as complete as ours, on an imperial scale and with so much detail. Although there is still room for improvement, we have a super-complete network that covers the entire Roman Empire, where there are main roads, secondary roads, and detail in the layouts. So it is now when we can try to clarify ideas that people have or statements that have been made about the Roman world. We have data to quantify exactly what we are saying," says De Soto.
Thus, it has long been assumed that Rome was located in a central position within this network, that the Romans tended to build straight, paved roads, and that today's roads follow routes similar to those of Roman roads.
"Our analysis somewhat dismantles this myth that all the roads went to Rome. I would say that they were building their network little by little and favoring the communications of each territory they reached. Obviously, the connection with Rome was of interest but not only or at any price. Wherever they went, the network had to be adapted to favor the development of their territories," explains the archaeologist.
Thus, his study reveals that "a completely radial network was not built around Rome, but rather, as Rome conquered each of the different territories, it built the roads that were most suitable for that area. There are some networks that follow the main river corridors, for example, the Danube River, or even in Spain, the Ebro River or the Guadalquivir. When they encounter natural areas or corridors, they take advantage of them," explains De Soto.
"We see that there was great political interest in connecting the provincial capitals well. That is, in each region there are one or several cities that are very well connected, normally the provincial capitals. For example, in the territory that is today Spain, Mérida and Córdoba were, as were Antioquia, Corinth or Thessaloniki," he points out.
Subsequently, he adds, there was an attempt to create a route from these provincial capitals to Rome: "However, when you analyze the entire road network that the Romans built, the most strategic point of the empire was Byzantium," he says. "It was the door to the two continents. It connected all the routes that people used to travel from Europe to the East and to North Africa, and vice versa. And it was not by chance that when the Roman Empire was divided into two parts, they chose Constantinople [present-day Istanbul] as the capital of the Eastern Empire," he points out.
According to the archaeologist, not only Byzantium was better located than Rome within the road network: "Also Antioch or Ankara were better connected."
The heritage of Roman roads
Another conclusion is that "Roman roads were not as uniformly straight as previously thought." They were predominantly straight when the landscape permitted, especially in flat regions such as Western Europe and North Africa. However, they tended to be less straight than modern roads due to the technological and topographical limitations of the time.
Their study also examined whether current roads overlap Roman roads. "Many European cities have a Roman past, and there is a very clear heritage from the Roman roads to the current one; perhaps they do not follow the exact same layout, but they do follow the same corridor: where there was a greater presence of Roman roads, today there also tend to be more important roads. This indicates that the Roman network left a lasting mark on the way we organize mobility today," says Pau de Soto. The places where they have seen the most abrupt changes between the Roman network and the current one are "northern Europe, especially in Holland and parts of Germany and France."
To provide a more complete picture of the entire transport infrastructure, scientists want to incorporate river and sea connections in the future. "What we are analyzing now are the land networks, but the truth is that for trade and the economy in general, the most important routes were the sea routes since it was the ships that allowed more merchandise to be transported and at less cost," explains the archaeologist. "Another element that is still missing in our project is chronology. From the archaeological and historical point of view, it is very difficult to determine exactly when each road was built. In the future we would like to see how this network was configured and how it changes over the centuries," he points out.
For Pau de Soto, the development of this imposing transport network had a positive and a negative side: "It boosted the economy and a uniform and united State, which favored the expansion of Christianity and ideas. But, just as it allowed Rome to expand its Empire, its large transport network made it possible for other armies to reach the heart of Rome and led to the spread of epidemics in Antiquity," he reflects.
