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Long ago, in physics graduate school, I drove to the Detroit airport to pick up a new Irish postdoc (a postdoctoral scholar is someone who has his doctorate but seeks more experience before getting a permanent position) who was coming to work with my Ph.D. thesis advisor. As we drove various interstate highways from Detroit to East Lansing, Michigan, he said, “Ai, you have a graate ruud system here in the US!” We do have a great road system here in the United States and that did not happen by accident. Building good roads is a sign of a successful civilization. Roads encourage the rule of law, since law enforcement can get around easily and quickly to stop criminals. Roads encourage commerce, since goods can flow quickly from place to place, the example being food from farms to cities. The many-century success of the Roman Empire was based on its excellent road system, which was built skillfully to last. One of the parts of the “fullness of the times” (Ephesians 1:10) for the spread of the gospel was this road system. If you look at the book of Acts, you will see how the early church spread the gospel throughout the Roman Empire.
Roman Roads, by Victor W. von Hagen, traces the more than one-thousand-year history of the Roman Empire road system. Their major roads were all called Via Something, where Via in Latin means road or highway. The Via Appia, over 100 miles long, is probably the first and therefore the most famous of these roads, built in 312 BC to connect Rome to Capua, an important city for trade that had been recently conquered from the Samnites. This road would cement this conquest and bind the Samnites into the Roman Republic. The Romans built many, many miles of road in the following centuries, finally connecting the whole Roman Empire in a dense ring of roads all the way around the Mediterranean Ocean. Even the island of Britannia had an extensive internal road system. There is a nice map on the endpapers that show the extent of these incredible highways. These roads were built for many reasons, including commerce, law enforcement, and military operations. The Roman road system united the Empire. The author, Victor W. von Hagen, is an expert on the Roman road system. He has travelled extensively all over the ancient Roman Empire, tracing, mapping, and photographing the Roman road system. His detailed black and white photographs illustrate the book and he gives the historical story behind each road that he presents. This is a fascinating high school level book, and would be a good source from which to spin off further research for a term paper on this aspect of the Roman Empire.
Above, I briefly mentioned the island of Britannia. This was of course the Roman name for the island of Britain, today divided into England, Wales, and Scotland. I first learned that Britain was part of the Roman Empire by reading the YA historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliff when I was a schoolboy. It was much later that I learned exactly how the island of Britain became part of the Empire. Everyday Life in Roman Britain by Marjorie and C.H.B. Quennell, a husband-and-wife team, tell what life was like at that time in that place. There are many wonderful pen and ink and color illustrations, and a very useful fold-out map. They cover a broad range of topics, from how towns were built, how people lived – their houses and commerce, and how the army lived and built. Much history can be absorbed as they go through the life of the people in Roman Britain, since the authors present as much history as is needed to give a background for what they are discussing. This book can be read straight through but might probably be better used as a reference book for preparing an essay or report. I note that I wrote a previous short review about Everyday Life in Roman and Anglo-Saxon Times, by the same authors, which overlaps some of the present book, Everyday Life in Roman Britain.