All Roads Lead To Rome

The Romans built roads wherever they went. Rome, the empire, spread along the roads. Using the roads implied a dependence on Rome; but avoiding them was inefficient and unmarketable.

In fact, they built the roads in such a topology that there was a road from any city to Rome, but no road connecting more than two neighboring cities directly. That way cities could not band together to resist Rome, since to go from city A to B you had to pass through the long way: through Rome!

This pattern persists in many European cities. In Zurich, going radially out from town is easy, but going from one village to another that might be only 2km away is a pain. Often, it is best to go into town and back out.

Solution - construct a spiral approach route.

"Actually, all roads lead away from Rome, it's just that some people are going the wrong way." (Terry Pratchett)

Watling Street crosses the Fosse Way. Yes, this pattern clearly wasn't universal, since there are several counter-examples in Britain. That's because the Channel broke the pattern. No point in directing your streets towards Rome when you must take a ship anyway.

Some of the I18N'ed version of this:

French: Tous les chemins m�nent � Rome!
German: Alle Wege fuehren nach Rom!
Italian: Tutte le strade portano a Roma!
Spanish: Todos los caminos conducen a Roma
Finnish: Kaikki tiet viev�t Roomaan.
Portuguese: Todos os caminhos levam � Roma.

Is there a point in this? The saying is common. The one that matters: :)

Latin: Omnes viae Romam ducunt

All roads lead to Rome.

Makes it easier for the barbarians to get there. ;->

Reminds me of an anecdote I heard recently. Dwight Eisenhower got the idea for the US Interstate Highway system from the German autobahns. He admired them greatly as they sped his troops toward Berlin.

They weren't exactly an impediment for the Germans themselves. One of the specific goals in building them was get around one problems the German Army had in WWI, namely the heavy dependence on rail transit for troop movement. Having an extensive, well-paved road system allowed them to deploy troops rapidly to any point on the frontier. Without the autobahns, 'lightning warfare' would probably have been impractical. - JayOsako

I'm curious: Rome is pretty much in the middle (N/S) of the Italian peninsula, right? So how did the Romans manage to have _all_ the roads of the empire converge on the capital city? You'd expect many of the roads to intersect at some point north of Rome, say, have most of the roads from Gaul (ancient France) converge near Genoa into a single road leading down the coast to Roma - thus embodying OnceAndOnlyOnce in road construction. Until someone can explain this to me, I'll interpret the famous saying as an exaggeration only...

We're looking at 2 different scales. Up close, on the Italian Peninsula, Rome put itself in the middle a cluster of spokes, with no arcs linking the spokes until you are well on the other side of certain mountain ranges. You can find a good time-lapse overview of the "spoke" system on the peninsula at http://www.uoregon.edu/~atlas/europe/interactive/map27.html .

Then, on the European scale, Italy is at the center of the spokes. So, for a distant merchant, taking wares from Greece to Gaul forces one to enter a closer sphere of roman influence. (The local roads in provinces outside of Italy tend to form more of a grid, so you don't have to go all the way to Rome to get from, say, Paris to Bordeaux... ) There's a good overview map of the entire road system at the height of the Empire at http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/techno/roads/map_color.htm .

An old Civil War saying: "It doesn't matter if you're going to heaven or hell, you're going to change trains in Atlanta [Georgia]."

(Now it's planes; Atlanta is still the transportation hub of the South-Eastern United States.)

Legacy of Pope John PaulII gives new meaning to AllRoadsLeadToRome

John Paul, whose death was announced in early Apr 05, departed radically from the practices of many of his predecessors. His long reign resulted in the conversion of many in continents and countries where christianity was weak (e.g. communist countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, etc).

He has appointed a lot of Cardinals from various continents, shrinking the GlobalVillage in which we all inhabit.

The media savvy Pope also travelled extensively world wide to bring new converts to Rome.

See WikiPedia collaboration in progress at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II