Construction of the Via Appia begins

Assembled from 49 blocks · 2 evidence · 46 related

1. Story
2. The censor Appius Claudius Caecus begins the road from Rome towards Capua, later extended to Brundisium. In the same censorship he begins the Aqua Appia, Rome's first aqueduct. Two of the empire's defining technologies - the engineered road and the engineered water supply - start in the same year, under a republic.
3. Knowledge
4. Rome
5. The Roman Road Network
6. The Roman Aqueduct System
7. Via Appia
8. Construction of the Via Appia begins
9. Connections
10. Via Appia
11. The Roman Road Network
12. The Roman Aqueduct System
13. Rome
14. The Roman Road Network
15. Rome
16. Construction of the Via Appia begins
17. Digital mapping shows most of the Roman road network is unlocated
18. The Mediterranean Sea (Mare Nostrum)
19. The Roman Legion
20. Via Appia
21. Londinium
22. Construction of the Via Appia begins
23. The empire reaches its greatest territorial extent
24. Digital mapping shows most of the Roman road network is unlocated
25. Roman Citizenship (civitas Romana)
26. Pont du Gard
27. Construction of the Via Appia begins
28. Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre), Rome
29. The Roman Legion
30. Roman Law
31. The Mediterranean Sea (Mare Nostrum)
32. Ostia Antica
33. Via Appia
34. Traditional foundation of the Roman Republic
35. Construction of the Via Appia begins
36. The Punic Wars
37. Caesar crosses the Rubicon
38. Assassination of Julius Caesar
39. The Augustan settlement: Octavian becomes Augustus
40. Inauguration of the Flavian Amphitheatre
41. Dedication of Constantinople
42. Administrative division of the empire on the death of Theodosius I
43. Alaric's Goths sack Rome
44. Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus - the contested 'fall' of the Western Roman Empire
45. The Pantheon, Rome
46. The Pantheon dome spans about 43 m in unreinforced concrete
47. Evidence
48. Roman roads were systematically marked with inscribed milestones recording distances and the emperor responsible for construction or repair. This epigraphic series is the primary dating and attribution evidence for the road network, and the principal proof that road-building was an imperial political act as much as an engineering one.
49. Frontinus, as curator aquarum, describes the aqueducts serving Rome, their sources, lengths, administration, maintenance staff and the fraud he found in illegal tapping. It is the empire's clearest surviving evidence that infrastructure was run by an accountable civil office with records, not merely built.