CHAPTER II

THE APPIAN WAY

It was the proud boast of the ancient Romans that all roads led to their city.  Rome was the centre and mistress of the world; and as the loneliest rill that rises in the bosom of the far-off mountain leads, if followed, to the ocean, so every path in the remotest corner of the vast empire conducted to the great gilded column in the Roman Forum, upon which all distances without the walls were marked.  To the Romans the world is indebted for opening up communications with different countries.  They were the great engineers and road-makers of antiquity.  This seems to have been the work assigned to them in the household of nations.  Rome broke down the barriers that separated one nation from another, and fused all distinctions of race and language and religion into one great commonwealth.  And for the cohesion of all the elements of this huge political fabric nothing could have been more effectual than the magnificent roads, by which constant communication was kept up between all parts of the empire, and armies could be transported to quell a rising rebellion in some outlying province with the smallest expenditure of time and strength.  In this way the genius of this wonderful people was providentially made subservient to the interests of Christianity.  At the very time that our Lord commissioned, with His parting breath, the apostles to preach the gospel to every creature, the way was prepared for the fulfilment of that commission.  The crooked places had been made straight, and the rough places smooth.  Along the roads which the Romans made throughout the world for the march of their armies and the consolidation of their government, the apostles, the soldiers of the Prince of Peace, marched to grander and more enduring victories.

Of all the roads of ancient Rome the Via Appia was the oldest and most renowned.  It was called by the Romans themselves the regina viarum, the “queen of roads.”  It was constructed by Appius Claudius the Blind, during the Samnite War, when he was Censor, three hundred and thirteen years before Christ, and led from Rome to Capua, being carried over the Pontine Marshes on an embankment.  It was afterwards extended to Brindisi, the ancient seaport of Rome on the Adriatic, and became the great highway for travellers from Rome to Greece and all the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.  A curious link of connection may be traced between the modern Italian expression, when drinking to a person’s health on leaving home, “far Brindisi,” and the distant termination of the Appian Way, suggestive, as of old, of farewell wishes for a prosperous journey and a speedy return to the parting guest.  The way was paved throughout with broad hexagonal slabs of hard lava, exactly fitted to each other; and here and there along its course may still be seen important remains of it, which prove its excellent workmanship.