WEBVTT 00:00:01.439 --> 00:00:05.359 I come from Chicago. Around here,  we like to say that there are two 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:11.839 seasons: winter, and road construction. Every spring, orange cones appear along 00:00:11.839 --> 00:00:18.640 the highways, the lanes narrow, and big yellow  machines set to work. They grind up the asphalt 00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:24.480 and batter down the curbs, and lay down endless  loads of gravel and concrete. When their work is 00:00:24.480 --> 00:00:30.960 done, the highway’s a thing of beauty – for a few  months. Then a new crop of cracks and bumps and 00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:37.679 potholes sprouts, and the cycle begins again. Although most of America’s interstate highways 00:00:37.679 --> 00:00:41.840 are only 50 or 60 years old, virtually all  of them have been rebuilt multiple times, 00:00:42.719 --> 00:00:47.600 and some – like those around Chicago – have to  be almost constantly patched and resurfaced. 00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:54.000 When you compare the Roman roads, whose huge  paving stones and elegant bridges seem untouched 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:57.840 by millennia of wear and tear, it’s hard not  to think that our modern methods are lacking. 00:00:59.359 --> 00:01:04.799 American expressways and Roman roads, of course,  were built with fundamentally different materials 00:01:05.359 --> 00:01:11.599 for fundamentally different purposes. But  if nothing else, comparison has the effect 00:01:11.599 --> 00:01:17.280 of accentuating the scale and achievements of  the Roman road network. By the second century, 00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:23.920 there were well over 50,000 miles (that is, 80,000  kilometers) of Roman roads, radiating out from the 00:01:23.920 --> 00:01:30.000 golden milestone in the Forum to every corner  of the Empire. Conduits of trade, instruments of 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:35.680 rule, monuments to the imperial order, they ran  in uncompromising lines through every terrain. 00:01:36.959 --> 00:01:42.239 Roman roads skirted the burning edge of the  Sahara, where sand drifted among the milestones. 00:01:43.280 --> 00:01:47.120 They ran through the marshes of northern  Europe, suspended on wooden pilings 00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:52.480 over seas of mud. They cut through the  heart of the Alps, grooved and banked to 00:01:52.480 --> 00:01:58.640 prevent wagons from hurling over icy cliffs. Perhaps the best sense of the network’s scale 00:01:58.640 --> 00:02:03.280 comes from the so-called Peutinger Map,  a medieval copy of a late Roman atlas. 00:02:04.239 --> 00:02:08.479 Though distorted to fit a narrow  scroll, the map is remarkably detailed, 00:02:08.479 --> 00:02:16.479 featuring regions, peoples, and some 2,700 places,  all connected by the red lines of the Roman roads. 00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:21.840 The distances between towns are carefully marked,  as are the waystations along the highways. 00:02:23.199 --> 00:02:28.319 The Roman roads were equally impressive on the  ground. Designed by legionary surveyors and 00:02:28.319 --> 00:02:32.959 engineers, and often built by detachments  of troops, they were marvels of practical 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:37.680 engineering. The most familiar method  of constructing them, used for the great 00:02:37.680 --> 00:02:42.480 highways of central Italy, began with digging  the roadbed down to a firm layer of subsoil. 00:02:43.280 --> 00:02:48.560 This trench was then filled with compacted layers  of rubble and gravel, and capped with a pavement 00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:53.439 of local stone, which was crowned to shed  water and wedged in place with curb blocks. 00:02:54.800 --> 00:02:58.160 There was always, however, a  great deal of regional variation. 00:02:59.199 --> 00:03:04.000 Outside cities, roads were often surfaced  with gravel or packed dirt instead of paving 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:09.360 stones. In deserts, they might be little  more than a simple track cleared of rocks. 00:03:10.479 --> 00:03:13.759 In swamps, on the other hand, they were  supported with an intricate underpinning 00:03:13.759 --> 00:03:20.000 of beams and pilings. On the approaches to large  cities and in the most hazardous mountain passes, 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:24.800 ruts were sometimes carved into the pavement  to control traffic and prevent accidents. 00:03:26.080 --> 00:03:30.080 The highways of Roman Italy were paved  to a width of 14 Roman feet (that is, 00:03:30.080 --> 00:03:36.320 a little more than 4 meters), and often flanked  by gravel paths for riders and pedestrians. Tall 00:03:36.319 --> 00:03:41.039 milestones stood along the shoulder, inscribed  with the name and titles of the reigning emperor 00:03:41.039 --> 00:03:47.280 and the distance to the nearest town or landmark.  Every few miles, a clump of trees might mark an 00:03:47.280 --> 00:03:53.520 inn or country shrine. And when tombs began to  appear on the roadside, a city was never far away. 00:03:54.879 --> 00:04:00.319 The Roman road network was designed,  first and foremost, for military use. 00:04:00.319 --> 00:04:05.439 Soldiers built the roads, guarded their  strategic points, and used them constantly. 00:04:06.319 --> 00:04:11.759 In fact, the whole design of the roads, with  their undeviating lines and long straight slopes, 00:04:11.759 --> 00:04:17.439 was shaped by a single aim: allowing infantry to  march as quickly as possible from point to point. 00:04:18.720 --> 00:04:24.960 The roads were used, however, by all kinds of  traffic. We might imagine a farmer and his mule 00:04:24.959 --> 00:04:29.919 bringing a load of vegetables to market, a woman  walking to visit her mother in the next village, 00:04:30.560 --> 00:04:35.759 a wealthy man in a litter being carried to a  fashionable healing sanctuary, a shepherd herding 00:04:35.759 --> 00:04:41.759 his flock along the roadside, and occasionally –  galloping along the bridle paths – a rider of the 00:04:41.759 --> 00:04:46.800 imperial post, the Roman Empire’s swiftest  and most secure way of sending messages. 00:04:48.240 --> 00:04:55.120 That brings us to this video’s sponsor, StartMail.  Most Roman messages were protected only by a wax 00:04:55.120 --> 00:05:00.319 seal. Today, with so much of our personal  and financial information online, 00:05:00.319 --> 00:05:05.680 and so many ways for that information to escape  our control, there are more sophisticated ways 00:05:05.680 --> 00:05:12.240 of securing messages. 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Many aspects of the Roman  highways seem modern. They had waysides. They 00:05:59.920 --> 00:06:04.319 had highway police. They had tolls. And  they were characterized by feats of civil 00:06:04.319 --> 00:06:09.680 engineering that would not be excelled until  the nineteenth century. Take, for example, 00:06:09.680 --> 00:06:15.040 the Roman road to the St. Bernard Passes of the  Alps, which sprang over mountain chasms, drove 00:06:15.040 --> 00:06:20.879 through boulder-strewn slopes, and culminated  in a spectacular rock cut more than 220 m long. 00:06:22.160 --> 00:06:24.960 The Roman roads were served  by thousands of bridges. 00:06:25.839 --> 00:06:29.439 Hundreds of these have survived to  the present, and a remarkable number 00:06:29.439 --> 00:06:36.240 still carry traffic. One of the most impressive,  pictured in this video kindly sent by YouTuber 00:06:36.240 --> 00:06:42.240 unOrdinaryWorld, is located in Merida,  Spain, the Roman Emerita Augusta. 00:06:43.279 --> 00:06:50.959 At 790 meters, this is the longest extant Roman  bridge. It was used by traffic until 1991. 00:06:52.319 --> 00:06:56.800 Other bridges were even more impressive.  The Bridge of Augustus at Narni, 00:06:56.800 --> 00:07:03.600 for example, was up to 33 m high, and featured  a central arch 32 m wide. It seems to have stood 00:07:03.600 --> 00:07:07.600 more or less intact until the Middle Ages,  when it was partly leveled by earthquakes. 00:07:08.879 --> 00:07:12.079 The Romans also carved road tunnels  through dangerous mountain terrain. 00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:18.639 Perhaps the most famous example is in the Furlo  Pass, where a tunnel 40 m long and wide enough 00:07:18.639 --> 00:07:22.719 for two lanes of wagon traffic carried  the Via Flaminia through a high ridge. 00:07:23.600 --> 00:07:30.160 The tunnel was used by cars until the 1980’s. Perhaps most awe-inspiring section of the entire 00:07:30.160 --> 00:07:34.800 Roman road network was located on what  is now the border of Serbia and Romania, 00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:38.560 where the Danube rushes through the  rugged gorge called the Iron Gates. 00:07:39.680 --> 00:07:45.120 Just below the Gates, Trajan erected the greatest  of all Roman bridges, a kilometer-long leviathan 00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:51.439 supported by 20 immense piers. Upstream,  Trajan’s engineers hacked a highway 00:07:51.439 --> 00:07:56.399 through the riverside cliffs, suspending part  of the roadbed over the water on enormous beams. 00:07:57.680 --> 00:08:03.600 Roman roads were designed to carry the traffic  of their day – riders, wagons, and (above all) 00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:09.760 marching soldiers – in any weather. They were  meant to be both convenience and symbol, and 00:08:09.759 --> 00:08:15.120 served both purposes well. The sheer durability  of the system, with its hundreds of still 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:21.840 functioning bridges, is incredible. But the Roman  roads, like any roads, were far from immortal. 00:08:23.120 --> 00:08:26.879 Milestones record numerous repairs and  reconstructions of the major roads. 00:08:27.920 --> 00:08:32.720 The inscriptions sometimes mention damage  caused by heavy rain or flash floods, 00:08:32.720 --> 00:08:37.840 but the most common causes given for  repair are age and wear. The famous 00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:40.800 Via Appia, which ran from Rome to Brundisium,  was repaired many times over the centuries, 00:08:40.799 --> 00:08:45.439 and repeatedly improved with new bridges  and viaducts. One inscription notes 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:49.840 the resurfacing of a worn-out section of  limestone paving with hard-wearing basalt. 00:08:51.200 --> 00:08:55.440 Despite the awesome longevity of their bridges,  most Roman roads vanished during the Middle 00:08:55.440 --> 00:08:56.391 Ages, their paving stones buried or were pulled  up for reuse, their grassy beds and half-filled 00:08:56.390 --> 00:08:59.199 ditches running uncannily straight to nowhere. Yet in the early modern period, when European 00:08:59.200 --> 00:09:03.600 engineers began to build new highways,  they consciously imitated the Roman roads, 00:09:03.600 --> 00:09:09.279 sometimes to the point of trying to reconstruct an  ancient road network. The pioneering road-building 00:09:09.279 --> 00:09:15.120 methods of John McAdam, likewise, were  partly inspired by Roman techniques. 00:09:16.480 --> 00:09:21.840 Modern expressways, however, are very different  beasts from Roman roads. First and foremost, 00:09:22.399 --> 00:09:27.039 they’re designed to carry motor vehicles, which  are not only heavier than horse-drawn carts, 00:09:27.039 --> 00:09:33.039 but also far faster and much more numerous.  In terms of sheer stress, a busy section of 00:09:33.039 --> 00:09:38.719 American highway probably takes more punishment in  a single day than most Roman roads did in a year. 00:09:39.919 --> 00:09:44.159 Modern roads are engineered to handle those  enormous stresses without being prohibitively 00:09:44.159 --> 00:09:51.439 expensive to build. In practice, that means a lot  of reinforced concrete and asphalt. Though highly 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:57.520 effective, and cost-effective, these materials  begin to break down fairly quickly under heavy 00:09:57.519 --> 00:10:03.679 traffic. In this sense, and in the sense that even  most expressway bridges in America are designed to 00:10:03.679 --> 00:10:08.799 last only a half-century or so, modern highways  really are less durable than the Roman roads. 00:10:10.159 --> 00:10:14.959 All this means, of course, is that modern  highways serve a different purpose from their 00:10:14.960 --> 00:10:20.080 ancient predecessors. The Roman roads weren’t  better engineered; they’re just products of 00:10:20.080 --> 00:10:25.280 construction methods perfectly tailored to the  traffic and terrain of the ancient Mediterranean. 00:10:26.240 --> 00:10:29.360 The fact that ancient and modern  highways aren’t directly comparable, 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:33.039 however, does nothing to diminish  the achievement of the roads 00:10:33.039 --> 00:10:37.519 that were one of the greatest products and  most enduring legacies of the Roman peace. 00:10:39.039 --> 00:10:44.319 If you enjoyed this video, please consider  supporting toldinstone on Patreon. You might also 00:10:44.320 --> 00:10:59.840 enjoy my book, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators,  and War Elephants. Thanks for watching.