As the military conquered new territory, they laid down roads and built bridges (Hunt 1982: 52-8; Coulston 2001: 127). For the protection of travelers, the roadbeds were laid slightly below the crest of hills and away from densely wooded areas (Chevallier 1976: 114). Roads were one of the most visible signs of Roman occupation.
Provincial roads were built to improve trade as well as security. Services sprang up along the major routes to provide infrastructural support. The movement of goods and people, in turn, fostered urbanization (Isaac and Roll 1982: 90-2), with the result that vanished roadways can often be reconstructed from patterns of human settlement (Chevallier 1976: 43, 117). According to Tacitus, roads and the Roman style of urban living were key elements in the subjugation of Britain (Agr. 31; Laurence 2001: 74-88).
On the perimeter of the empire, gravel roads were typical. These marked a contrast with the stretches of premier roadway that characterized the Mediterranean core (Laurence 1999: 58-77; 2001: 82). Technically, these latter were overengineered, their excessive durability proven by their existence nearly two millennia later. This monumentality was intentional; it asserted the irresistible power of Rome. Bridges were even more impressive. Caesar’s successful bridging of the Rhine on two occasions was an engineering triumph. According to Pliny, the building of bridges was one of the suitable topics in a literary celebration of war (Pliny, Ep. 8. 4. 2). Although Apollodorus of Damascus’ bridge over the Danube was dismantled by Hadrian in the second century, it was still worthy of praise four centuries later (Dio Chrys. Or. 68. 13. 1-6; Procop. Aed. 4. 6. 11-16; Coulston 2001: 124).
The construction of transportation routes was inseparable from imperial propaganda. Scenes on Trajan’s column depicting the clearing of forests and the graveling of roads trumpet the Roman virtues of discipline and control over natural resources, in contrast to barbarian disorganization and panic (Coulston 2001: 123, 126-9; see Salway 2001: 56). By slicing across ‘‘established field networks for mile after mile, slighting pre-existing boundaries, political groupings and patterns of kinship,’’ Roman roads proclaimed ‘‘the domination of Rome and the inadequacy of indigenous arrangements’’ (Muir 2000: 100); they expressed in material form the relationship between the colonizing and the colonized societies (Howe 2005: 29). Perhaps especially in those places where the military was absent, the road averred the proximity of Roman power, the real possibility that the army could arrive at any time, at a moment’s notice.
The contribution of roads to imperial propaganda is particularly visible in the milestones that punctuated the routes. These were not simply markers of distance. If they had been, they would have been stationed at roughly equal intervals along all major thoroughfares. But in Palestine, as Isaac and Roll have shown, milestones were clustered in inhabited areas and almost entirely absent in deserted regions, where, one might have thought, they would have been especially needed (Isaac and Roll 1982: 91-8). Their inscriptions explain this puzzle. In the early empire, in addition to providing the distance to or from the closest major city, they typically recorded the name of the ruling emperor as well as some action he had effected to improve the road: that he had, for example, paved or restored it. In the later empire, milestones are still inscribed to the emperor. But they credit him with restoring not the road, but peace to the empire. Milestones, like coins, played an ideological role. In times of political unrest, they were used by the military to express their allegiance; in times of political calm, they were employed by the central authorities to assert stability (Laurence 2004: 45-53).
Roads, like maps, mark boundaries and articulate degrees of belonging. By allowing for the measurement of distance between places, they gave geographical unity to the province and, eventually, to the empire as a whole. On that great schematic diagram of routes known as the Peutinger Table, the centrality of Rome is intentionally marked horizontally as well as vertically (Salway 2001: 22-6). The long reach of the empire is registered in the image of a small temple at the western edge of India identified as a templum Augusti. The public recording of intercity distances invited a sense of regional interconnection. It was no longer sufficient to think of oneself only in terms of one’s immediate locale: identity came to be articulated more broadly, even as wider notional entities like Roman Italy or Britannia were formed (Laurence 2001: 90-1). What we customarily term ‘‘romanization,’’ might then, as Laurence suggests, be better understood as a change in the nature of mobility (Laurence 1999; 2001: 67). In a very real sense, the movement not only of diplomats, troops, and officials but also of ordinary people like artisans, agriculturalists, merchants, and ascetics ‘‘performed’’ the empire.
The performance ofempire is given unlikely expression in the work known to us as the Bordeaux Itinerary. Many scholars believe that the anonymous pilgrim author wrote down his itinerary simply to facilitate the future travel of others (Hunt 1982: 55; Dietz 2005: 18-19). Given what we know of the itinerary form, such later use is probable. But it is also quite possible that ideology - both Christian and imperial - prompted his hand. As a record of travel over thousands of miles, the Bordeaux pilgrim’s narrative iterates the empire; it affirms the interconnection of parts, that no region is isolated or inaccessible to the traveler (Laurence 1999; 2001: 80-1; Elsner 2000). Yet despite the extraordinary distance traveled, the itinerary remains strikingly static. Instead of verbs, noun follows noun; and nomination, as David Spurr has suggested in a different colonial context, is a strategy of appropriation (Spurr 2001: 31-2). By listing the cities passed and stops made, the pilgrim possesses them. Even the exotic locales and events mentioned in the biblical record are claimed as part of his quotidian world ‘‘back home’’ (Leyerle 1996). The primacy of connection champions the historicity of the biblical record: the place where Elisha miraculously purified a fountain is as evidently ‘‘genuine’’ as an area known for the breeding of curule horses; similarly, the place where Jesus taught his disciples and the region where the Jura mountains rise. As Jas Elsner has noted, the grand summaries of his travel (which occur four times in the text) re-form the empire in Christian terms. To the expected metropoleis of Rome and Milan are added the recently dedicated city of Constantinople and the noncity of Jerusalem, important for no other reason than as the site of Jesus’ Passion. In a remarkably economic fashion, the Bordeaux Itinerary maps the ideology of a Christian empire (Elsner 2000: 188-9; Jacobs 2004: 104-5).
World History
