Not All Roads Lead to Rome

In 20 BC the Emperor Augustus set up the Golden Milestone in the Roman Forum, from which distances along all the roads of the empire were symbolically measured. A team of researchers led by Tom Brughmans has analysed this network, which covers some 300,000 kilometres of roads in Europe, the Near East and North Africa.

And their conclusion concerns the proverb about roads leading to Rome. It is well known that Rome is conveniently placed for Mediterranean shipping, but as it turns out, it does not enjoy any particular centrality in the road system.

Far better placed on the roads of their own provinces were the provincial capitals, which made administration and tax collection easier. Among them the researchers name Ankara in Turkey, London in Britain and Corinth in Greece. Rome itself occupied a central position on the roads of the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy, yet once all the traffic of the peninsula is taken into account, the most central road proves to be the one running along the opposite, Adriatic coast, which bypasses Rome altogether.

In the end one may say that the proverb fits best the second Rome, Constantinople, the late capital of the empire