Roman Europe

The Roman empire for nearly five centuries governed territory which stretched from the Scottish lowlands to the deserts of North Africa.

Its political and military legacy is well documented in the historical record. Less often examined is the surviving physical infrastructure: the roads, fortifications, and civic spaces which still mark the landscape across three continents.

These structures are more than archaeological curiosities. They are primary sources, written in stone rather than ink, which reveal how Rome projected power, administered justice, and ultimately failed to hold its frontiers.

The Via Appia and the Spartacus crucifixions

Construction of the Via Appia was begun in 312 BC by the censor, Appius Claudius Caecus. It was the first and most strategically-important of Rome's long-distance roads.

Running south-east from Rome to Brindisi on the Adriatic coast, it served as the primary military and commercial artery which connected the capital to its southern territories and, by extension, to Greece and the eastern Mediterranean.

The road's engineering was remarkable for its era. Layers of gravel, crushed stone, and tightly-fitted polygonal basalt blocks created a surface which was durable enough to survive two millennia of use. Sections of the original paving are still walkable today in the Parco Regionale dell'Appia Antica to the south of Rome.

However, the Via Appia also served as a stage for one of the most brutal displays of state violence in Roman history.

Work on the Via Appia was begun in 312 BC by Appius Claudius Caecus, making it Rome's first and most strategically-important long-distance road out of the many which eventually would lead to the city

In 71 BC, following the defeat of the slave revolt which had been headed by the gladiator, Spartacus, Rome's General Marcus Licinius Crassus ordered the crucifixion of six thousand captured rebels along the road from Capua to Rome, a distance of roughly a hundred and ninety kilometres.

For months the crosses lined both sides of the road, serving as a visible warning to every traveller who entered or left the capital. It was a calculated act of terror which was designed not merely to punish the rebels but to demonstrate the absolute cost of defying Roman authority.

Largo di Torre Argentina: the site of Caesar's assassination

In central Rome, some six metres below the modern street level, lies Largo di Torre Argentina, a sunken archaeological complex which contains the remains of four republican-era temples and, critically, the rear wall of the curia of Pompey.

It was inside this temporary senate chamber, attached to the Theatre of Pompey, that Julius Caesar was stabbed twenty-three times on the Ides of March, 44 BC.

The assassination was not carried out in the grand senate house of the Roman forum as is commonly assumed, but in this secondary hall. Caesar's adopted heir, Augustus, later sealed the room, ordering it walled shut and declaring it a locus sceleratus, a cursed place.

The site of Caesar's assassination in 44 BC was not the steps of the senate building but Largo di Torre Argentina, today a sunken archaeological complex which contains the remains of four republican-era temples and the rear wall of the curia of Pompey

Archaeologists have identified a large concrete slab which was laid directly over the spot at which the base of Pompey's statue would have stood, the very pedestal against which Caesar reportedly collapsed.

The site was lost for over a thousand years as Rome's ground level rose through successive centuries of construction. It was rediscovered in 1929 during demolition work which had been ordered by Mussolini's government. The excavations revealed the temple foundations and portions of the curia, but much of the assassination site remains inaccessible beneath modern roads and buildings.

Today, the sunken square is perhaps best known for the colony of stray cats which has inhabited the ruins since the mid-twentieth century.

Hadrian's Wall: the empire's northern frontier

Begun in AD 122 under Emperor Hadrian, the wall which bears his name stretched a hundred and eighteen kilometres across the width of northern England, from Wallsend on the River Tyne in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west.

Hadrian's Wall was the most heavily fortified border in the Roman empire, and it represented a fundamental shift in imperial strategy: from expansion to containment.

Hadrian's Wall stretched the width of northern Britain, an attempt to contain attacks from the north with allied tribes on its northern flank to help enforce that protection, a policy which only really started to fail in the fourth century AD

The wall was not a simple barrier. It was a complex military system which incorporated a continuous stone wall up to four and-a-half metres high, a forward ditch, a series of milecastles at regular intervals, and sixteen major forts which were capable of housing infantry and cavalry garrisons.

A military road ran along its southern side, enabling the rapid movement of troops. To the south of that an earthwork which was known as the vallum marked the boundary of the military zone.

The wall served for nearly three centuries as Rome's northern frontier, although it was breached, abandoned, and reoccupied multiple times.

After the final Roman withdrawal of troops from Britain in the early fifth century, the wall fell into disuse. Over the following centuries local populations quarried its stone for farmhouses, churches, and field boundaries. Despite this substantial sections survive, particularly in the central upland stretches around Housesteads and Vindolanda, where the landscape itself has helped preserve the remains.

Summary

The Via Appia, Largo di Torre Argentina, and Hadrian's Wall each represent a different dimension of Roman power: infrastructure, political violence, and military defence.

What connects them is their survival. Unlike the written records, which were curated and revised by successive generations, these physical remains are difficult to edit. They persist in the landscape as stubborn, material evidence of what Rome built, what it destroyed, and where it chose to draw its limits.

For more in-depth histories of places like these - from ancient ruins and battlefields to abandoned cities and forgotten prisons - visit The Dark Atlas.

This article has been sponsored by The Dark Atlas website and contains in-body 'external links' to that site.

Images and text copyright © Antanas K of The Dark Atlas and all contributors mentioned on this page. An original feature for the History Files.