Roads didn’t always lead to Rome, new map reveals
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An international team of archaeologists analyzed nearly 300,000 kilometers of Roman roads and discovered that cities like Antioch, Ankara, Byzantium, and Corinth functioned as important transportation hubs, sometimes even more so than Rome itself.
The study, published in Nature Communications, used a digital atlas called Itiner-e to map the Roman road network and assess the importance of different cities and routes based on travel time.
Researchers found that while Rome remained central within Italy, other cities acted as key junctions across the wider empire. The analysis revealed a network of regional centers rather than a system solely radiating from Rome. Roads facilitated the movement of armies, goods, and people between cities, frontiers, and administrative territories, but did not necessarily require passage through the capital.
The team also examined how straight the roads were, finding they generally followed the easiest terrain, and that about 90.6% maintained a slope compatible with animal-drawn vehicles. The study compared the density of Roman roads to modern roads, finding a moderate correlation suggesting some ancient routes still influence modern transportation.
However, the researchers acknowledge the map isn’t perfect, noting that only about 2.7% of the mapped routes are known with certainty and the study focused solely on land routes, ignoring important river and sea travel which would have increased Rome’s centrality.
