Do All Roads Really Lead to Rome? A New Analysis Reveals

- A new analysis of the road network in the Roman Empire has revealed the myth that "all roads lead to Rome" to be false, showing that other important cities, such as Constantinople (now Istanbul), were more central in the road network. Tom Brugmans, an assistant professor at the School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University in Denmark and one of the contributors to the new analysis published in the scientific journal "Nature Communications" on Tuesday, explained: "When we look at all land transport routes across the entire Roman Empire, we find one route that is the most central across the empire itself, and this route does not pass through Rome.",

At its peak in 117 AD, the Roman Empire extended from Britain to the edges of the Sahara Desert, encompassing parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, over an area of approximately 5.5 million square kilometers. Rome was politically and economically at the heart of the empire, but its geographical location made it more central for navigation in the Mediterranean than for the land road network.

Brugmans stated: "The Italian peninsula is merely a prominent land extension into the Mediterranean, so the most central route passed along the North African coast, then headed east through present-day Turkey and cities like Antioch and Ankara, before passing through Constantinople, and then heading towards Rome via Milan." In 324, the Roman Emperor Constantine I moved the capital of the empire, for strategic and economic reasons, from Rome to Constantinople, which was known until then as Byzantium, so it is not surprising that the city is prominent in the road network.

Brugmans and his colleagues' analysis is based on a digital atlas of the Roman road network, "Itiner-e," which was published last year and is available online. The atlas was compiled using historical sources, excavation reports, satellite images, and previous datasets, and includes about 300,000 kilometers of roads.

However, the location of only 2.7% of these roads is known with certainty, while about 90% of the map is known with less accuracy, and about 7% is purely hypothetical. In the new analysis, which took into account factors such as road elevation, directions, and gradients, the researchers also examined other common assumptions about Roman roads.

They showed that these roads were not as straight as is commonly believed, and that some important modern roads actually follow the paths of ancient Roman roads, while many other roads, even if described as "Roman," do not. The origin of the myth is the saying: "All roads lead to Rome," which dates back to the Middle Ages.

It first appeared in writing in 1175, by the French poet Alain de Lille, who wrote in Latin the phrase "Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam," meaning: "A thousand roads lead people to Rome through the ages." The importance of the road network was clear to the Romans.

In 20 BC, Emperor Augustus erected the "Golden Milestone" in the Roman Forum as a symbolic point from which the main roads of the empire originated. This landmark is believed to have contributed to the emergence of the myth, although the modern meaning of the phrase "All roads lead to Rome" is not literal, but rather refers to the existence of different ways to reach the same goal or outcome.

Brogmans said: "It is a saying from the Middle Ages, not from ancient times, and it expresses the symbolic centrality of this massive capital for an empire that spans a continental range." He added: "Rome was located at the crossroads of major maritime routes, and it was the seat of government, so it was certainly a central city.

But the inaccurate part is the talk about land roads." He continued: "Perhaps what reinforced this myth was the existence of a system of main roads that emperors used to manage regions and exchange information, similar to a communication network, and Rome was depicted as the center of that main network of roads.

It is striking how this saying continues to persist despite being demonstrably incorrect. Researchers also verified the belief that Roman roads were uniformly straight, noting that this assumption holds some truth, and there are indeed remaining examples of straight Roman roads such as the Appian Way in Rome, but the Romans had to deal with varying terrains and technical constraints.

Wherever the nature of the land allowed, the Romans built straight roads, especially in low-lying areas such as Western Europe and North Africa. However, even these roads were not as straight as modern roads, largely due to engineering limitations.

Brogmans added: "We have also demonstrated a surprising degree of continuity between Roman roads and modern major roads. It is quite exceptional that this ancient infrastructure remains visible today, shaping the way people interact in the modern age."

An example of this is the "Via Augusta," which stretches about 1,600 kilometers from present-day Cádiz in southern Spain to the Pyrenees in France. In the Spanish city of Tarragona, the ancient road passes through a triumphal arch called the "Arch of Berà," while a modern road runs alongside it.

Brogmans stated that this arrangement illustrates one of the ways in which ancient Roman pathways have persisted, as modern larger paved roads almost run along the old route. In other cases, people can still walk on ancient Roman roads, such as the Appian Way, which retains some of the original volcanic stones skillfully paved by the Romans.

However, most of the old road network has disappeared or been buried over the centuries. Also, the roads referred to as Roman are not all Roman, according to Brugmans.

He said, "Everywhere in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, there are roads that bear names suggesting they are Roman... but a large number of them are not Roman roads."

He added, "This illustrates how entrenched the idea is that the Romans left a huge mark on infrastructure, as people assume that if we see a straight, impressive, and relatively old road, it must be Roman, even though that is not true everywhere." Francesca Fulminante, a prominent researcher in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Bristol in England, who did not participate in the new analysis, stated that the study's findings are striking, but instead of overturning previous assumptions, they mathematically confirm and substantiate things that have been generally described before.

She added that the data on the road network is not entirely accurate in all areas, but this issue does not detract from the results, as it is also common in large-scale projects of this kind. Mathematical proof Brugmans also pointed out that although the Romans built many roads, they inherited some from the regions they occupied, meaning their control over the network's structure was somewhat limited.

The researchers conducting the analysis stated that their work is not yet finished, and they plan to add river and sea routes to the network in the future. Bond, an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Iowa, who also did not participate in the study, said that the research findings are important because they provide a deeper understanding of the Roman road system, along with reusable data to improve future models.

Bond added that the analysis also allows for the correction of some myths. Bond pointed out that these results became possible thanks to the work of previous valuable projects that created maps of the ancient world before "Itiner-e", and contributed to "paving the way in this field".