The Roads to Rome — in search of routes from past to present

In the famous “What have the Romans ever done for us?” scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, one character concedes that the usefulness of their roads “goes without saying”. He is correct. The Romans’ road-building prowess is central to subsequent generations’ conception of their civilisation’s organised, efficient genius. In recent years, their travel and communication network has been modelled by Stanford University’s Orbis project. But, beyond that, the roads are seldom the subject of much rigorous discussion.

The historian Catherine Fletcher aims to rectify that with The Roads to Rome, her very readable book about the role of Roman roads in 2,000 years of history. Her account underlines how the roads facilitated generations of human interchange. These range from the missionary journeys of the early Christian Apostle Paul to the advances of Garibaldi’s red shirts during the wars of Italian unification in the 19th century.

The most striking impression is how enduring these routes have remained. Fletcher charts how they fell into disrepair after the fall of the Roman empire but were then restored. The Habsburg empire patched up, improved and extended sections of Roman road in Italy, joining them with other, entirely new sections. The unified Italy of the modern era continued the process. “The story of the Roman roads is the story of Europe and its neighbours, told from beneath our feet,” she writes.

Large slices of the transport network in many countries continue to follow lines originally drawn by Roman hands. Some motorways and railway lines hug the routes of the Romans’ roads closely. Italy’s E24 motorway follows a similar line to the Romans’ Via Casilina, while large parts of England’s A5 trunk road follow the Romans’ Watling Street. Many others are still in use along the exact same route — I cycle to work along roads in south London originally laid out by the Romans.

Reverence for the roads as a symbol of civilisation is also long-standing. Pope Pius II in the 15th century saw them as a symbol of European identity. Lord Burlington, an 18th-century English aristocrat, excavated a Roman road across his land at Londesborough in Yorkshire as interest in Roman antiquities grew. Participants in the Grand Tour of the 17th to 19th centuries marvelled at treading the same stones as figures from their classical education. Most chillingly, Mussolini as Italian dictator took the Roman roads as a model for his own, brutal remodelling of key parts of the centre of Rome.

Even if the roads facilitated travel, meanwhile, it is striking how much determination it must have required to undertake some of the journeys that Fletcher recounts. Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish rabbi, travelled from Zaragoza, in Spain, to Constantinople, via Rome, in the middle of the 12th century. The trip, of more than 3,000km, by sea as well as land and braving multiple dangers, sounds utterly exhausting. But Fletcher says it is unclear why he even undertook it. Pius II travelled to Scotland before his election as pope, on a mission to the Scottish king. He travelled back through England in disguise, because he lacked permission to be there.

It can be frustrating, however, trying to find a theme holding everything together. Fletcher seems to share this frustration. She travels by train or car in an attempt to bring alive the links between past and present. But she finds herself travelling at night, in the dark, in rail tunnels or visiting an ancient tunnel just as it is shutting. The essence of what she is seeking often seems to slip through her fingers.

The roads are all the more elusive because the book, which will be released in the US in December, says relatively little about how they were built, planned or even the reason why Rome’s rulers hit upon this means of controlling their empire. There are, for example, stories about Roman roads through the Alps. Given that the standard idea of a Roman road is that it is straight, the reader might wish to learn more about how they were taken through such a forbidding landscape. Too little research has been done into many of the issues, according to Fletcher. The Romans left no “how to” guide on building their roads.

The overall impression is that these routes are almost a natural part of the landscape. The reader departs the book with a feeling that they have been there for an unimaginable time, travelled on by a cast of vivid characters. It is a compelling image, in an enjoyable book.

The Roads to Rome: A History by Catherine Fletcher Bodley Head £25, 400 pages

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Letter in response to this review:

Roman roads recce from top of a double decker bus / From Jane Swan, Delabole, Cornwall, UK