VIA APPIA IN THE DAYS WHEN ALL ROADS 

 LED TO ROME 



By Albert C. Rose 



Senior Eighicay Engineer, Bureau of Public Roads, United States Department 



of Agriculture 



[With 4 plates] 



" Trans gentile jretum placidi facundta Polli 

 detulit et nitidae juvenilis gratia Pollae, 

 flectere iam cupidum gressus, qua limite nolo 

 Appia longarum teritur regina viarum." 



Such was the tribute paid by Publius Papinius Statius (A. D. 

 40-96?), the preeminent poet of the silver age, to the most famous 

 highwa}' since the dawn of historic time. From this poetic passage 

 of Statius, whose style is sometimes artificial and his meaning hard 

 to grasp, Slater {!)'■ has rendered the following translation which 

 seems faithful to the original as well as pleasing in its idiom: "The 

 honey-sweet tongue of gentle PoUius and the girlish grace of winsome 

 PoUa lured me to cross the bay of my native Parthenope, though 

 fain ere then to be bending my steps where the beaten highway, 

 Appia, queen of far-stretching roads, sweeps along its well-known 

 track." 



If the great poet, whose writings were revered by Dante, Chaucer, 

 and Pope, had any other reason than custom for personifying the 

 Appian Way as a queen, rather than a king of roads, it is not difficult 

 to supply an explanation. A logical answer is that this great mother 

 highway nurtured the commerce that sustained the power of the 

 mighty Roman Empire, while at the same time the graceful sweep 

 of this road over hill and valley made it a ruler, without a peer, 

 among all the highways of the ancient world. 



Roads built in other ages and in different climes will never be 

 rivals for first honors with the Appian Way, if they lack the back- 

 ground essential for making their names echo down through the 

 centuries. In North America, the Columbia River Highway (2) 

 has become famous because it represents an example of superb engi- 

 neering through a gigantic natural gorge which a mighty river has 

 worn through the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest. Fur- 



1 Numbers in parentheses refer to the list of literature cited at the end of this 

 paper. 



347 



