Romans: roads and proverbs

Romans: roads and proverbs

Nulla tenaci invia est via.

(For the tenacious, no road is impassable.)

The Romans left their mark on the lands that they conquered, a cultural legacy that endures today. Most obviously, Romance languages, such as French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian, are derived from the Vulgar Latin spoken by invading Roman soldiers, the settlers that came in their wake and eventually the native inhabitants of the conquered lands themselves. Romance is derived from romanice ‘in Roman’, a distinction being drawn by those who were able to romanice loqui ‘speak in Roman’ and those primitives who could only barbarice loqui ‘speak in Barbarian’. The lands which became Roman provinces also benefited from the mass infrastructure projects that were set in motion by Roman engineers. For example, the paved roads built by the Romans for military and then commercial use (Latin via strata, from where we get English street, German Straße and Spanish estrada), survive as principal trunk roads across much of Western Europe in modern national road networks.

In the Roman province of Britannia, around 2,000 miles of paved roads were constructed, these streets being far superior even up until the 1800s to ordinary roads, trails on which people rode, or ways, routes on which people went, usually on foot. The lasting importance of these roads can be seen in placenames: England has several towns and villages named Stretton or Stratton ‘settlement on a Roman road’ < Old English stræt ‘street’ + tūn ‘enclosure, farm, settlement, village’, as well as a number named Stratford or Stretford ‘ford on a Roman road’ and Streatham ‘homestead or village on the Roman road’. There are also a few upstarts named Le Street, mixing French and English in towns like Chester-le-Street ‘fort on the Roman road’ and Adwick-le-Street, probably ‘Adda’s dairy farm by the Roman road’. These Roman roads were important for the Empire, but they were also critical as the population grew and people started living in urban settlements – you could get to and from them easily. Stratford-upon-Avon stands on a Roman road that connected Icknield Street in Alcester to the Fosse Way; Streatham is at one end of the Roman road which went from London (Londinium) to Portslade (Novus Portus) on the Sussex coast and Chester-le-Street is on a road which ran from Brough on the Humber estuary via York (Eboracum) to the Roman fort on the River Tyne in Newcastle (Pons Aelius) at the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall.

Ultimately, all roads lead to Rome – a direct translation of the Latin proverb omnes viae Romam ducunt. Roads emanating from Rome began at the Golden Milestone (Milliarium aureu), erected by Augustus in 20 BCE in the Roman Forum as a marker of kilometre zero for the Empire’s road network. This expression acquired a religious sense when used by French theologian and poet Alain de Lille in the 12th century CE, Rome being the home of the Catholic Church and the city of the Pope. Alain, a man whose breadth of knowledge was deemed so comprehensive that he was known as Doctor Universalis in his lifetime, meant that the faithful could access God in many ways. All roads lead to Rome and its Italian equivalent tutti le strada portano a Roma are now applied more generally to describe any goal or outcome that can be reached by different methods. It might take a while to get there but as we’re all aware, Rome wasn’t built in a day. However, because some tasks were seen as hopelessly difficult or simply pointless, a rueful English proverb declared that you’d be better off hopping to Rome with a mortar on your head – it didn’t matter that the roads led to Rome, it wasn’t worth the time or effort making the journey and you were likely to embarrass yourself in the attempt.

Other proverbs have come down to us from the most famous Roman general of them all, Julius Caesar, many of them relating to his travels at the head of a Roman army. In 49 BCE, Caesar wished to stand as Consul, but was unwilling to give up command of the forces that he oversaw as military governor of Cisalpine Gaul (Cisalpine means ‘our side of the Alps’, i.e. the Roman side, in Latin). This was contrary to Roman law, which stipulated that a governor was prohibited from leading an army out of his assigned province. Cisalpine Gaul, a province historically inhabited by Celts (Gauls), stretched down from the Alps across most of northern Italy, bordering Rome proper at the River Arno in the west and the River Rubicon in the east. According to Suetonius, Caesar paused at the banks of the latter, still not having made up his mind as to whether he should cross the Rubicon in what was, essentially an act of insurrection against the state. The decisive factor was apparently a beautiful young man wearing a yellow tunic who suddenly appeared in the midst of Caesar’s army playing a reed with great skill. The soldiers left their posts to hear him, whereupon he snatched a trumpet from one of them, sounded out a war-note as a rallying cry and crossed the bridge over the Rubicon to the opposite bank. Caesar took this apparition to be a sign from the gods and uttering the phrase ‘iacta alea est’ –  ‘the die is cast’, he marched across the river with his soldiers. Conflict with the Senate was now inevitable.

During Caesar’s civil war (49 – 45 BCE), which began immediately after these momentous events, a phrase he used in a letter to the Senate was immortalised. He recorded his swift victory in the Battle of Zela (modern-day Zile, Turkey) against Pharnaces II of Pontus in 47 BCE with the boast, ‘veni, vidi, vici’ – ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’. This is now used by every Tom, Dick and Harry to brag about their trifling achievements, although the grandeur of the Classical Latin words is somewhat undermined if you hear them pronounced in the way that Caesar would have spoken them – ‘wenny, weedy, wicky’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. The war dragged on for almost five years, before Caesar took undisputed control and assumed the title dictator perpetuo ‘dictator for life’, precipitating the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.

I’m sure you agree that it's high time to stop these musings and to bring this post to a close, and as the Romans would say, ‘rem acu tetigisti’ – ‘you have touched the matter with a needle’, and you have, in fact hit the nail on the head. Till next time!