Appian Way

The Appian Way (Latin: Via Appia) was the most important ancient Roman road. Its importance is indicated by its common name, recorded by Statius (Sylvae, 2.2):

”Appia longarum teritur regina viarum”

”the Appian way is commonly said to be the queen of the long roads”

The Romans sensed the inherent nobility of the road imbued by the circumstances and method of its construction, and its utility to the Roman Republic. The via Appia was the paradigm of all subsequent Roman roads. It was the very symbol of the republic, which brought order to the terrain and peace and freedom to the peoples of Italy, at least in their ideals. Their greatest historian, Livy, took that point of view. He was not a Roman by birth.

The need for the road

The Roman army depended for its success on the use of bases in which to prepare itself for battle and to refresh and reequip itself after. Only bases allowed the Romans to keep large numbers in the field waiting for the opportunity to strike. In the late Roman republic they were masters of the art of supply. In the days of Appius Claudius, the censor, this art was not yet in their repertory.

The Samnites

Rome always had an affinity for the people of Campania, who, like themselves, traced their backgrounds to the Etruscans. The Samnite Wars were instigated by the Samnites when Rome attempted to ally itself with Capua. The Italic speakers in Latium had long ago been subdued and incorporated into the Roman state. They were responsible for changing Rome from a primarily Etruscan to a primarily Italic state.

Dense populations of sovereign Samnites remained in the mountains north of Capua, which is just north of the Greek city of Neapolis. Around 343 BC Rome and Capua attempted to form an alliance, a first step toward a closer unity. The Samnites reacted with military force.

The Pontine marshes

Between Capua and Rome lay the Pontine Marshes (Pomptinae paludes), a malarial swamp. A coastal road wound its tortuous way between Ostium at the mouth of the Tiber and Neapolis. The via Latina followed its ancient and scarcely less accessible path along the foothills of Mount Laziali and Mount Lepini, which are visible towering over the former marsh.

In the First Samnite War (343-341 BC) the Romans found they could not support or resupply troops in the field against the Samnites across the marsh. We don’t know what the battles were, but they cannot have been victorious for the Romans. A revolt of the Latin League drained their resources even further. They gave up the attempted alliance. This was a resounding defeat for Rome. The rich lands and connections with Campania were being snatched away from them. If they had won, there would have been no need for a second Samnite war.

Colonization to the southeast

The Romans were only biding their time while they looked for a solution. The first answer was the colonia, a “cultivation” of settlers from Rome, who would maintain a permanent base of operations. The Second Samnite War (327-304 BC) erupted when Rome attempted to place a colony at Cales in 334 and again at Fregellae in 328 on the other side of the marshes. The Samnites, now a major power after defeating the Greeks of Tarentum, occupied Neapolis to try and insure its loyalty. The Neapolitans appealed to Rome, which sent an army and succeeded in expelling the Samnites from Neapolis. The fight for Campania was on once more.

Colonies alone apparently were not the answer. In 321 BC a Roman army was trapped in the mountain passes north of Capua, at Caudium. At the Battle of the Caudine Forks they were kept penned in without supplies, especially water, until the Senate bought their release in exchange for a treaty the Romans considered humiliating, by which they provided hostages and gave up the colonies.

The treaty was a 5-year one. Rome used the time to defeat the Italic tribes around Samnium. In 316, at the end of the treaty, Samnium joined the universal war of Italics against Rome, which was badly beaten again at the Battle of Lautulae in 315. The situation was bleak by 312 and was to become bleaker when, in 311, the Etruscans in Etruria and Campania decided to go over to the Samnites.

Appius Claudius Caecus

In the year 312 BC, Appius Claudius Caecus became censor at Rome. He was of the gens Claudia (later in some branches called Clodia), patricians descended from the Sabines taken into the early Roman state. He had been given the name of the founding ancestor of the gens. He was a populist, an advocate of the common people, who did not stand by and wait for others when the work of the state needed to be done. A man of inner perspicacity, in the years of success he was said to have lost his outer vision and thus acquired the name caecus, “blind.”

Without waiting to be told what to do, Appius Claudius began bold public works to address the supply problem. An aqueduct secured the water supply of the city of Rome. By far the best known project was the road, which was to run straight as an arrow across the Pontine Marshes to the coast northwest of Naples, there to turn northward to Capua. On it any number of fresh troops could be sped to the theatre of operations, and supplies could be moved en masse to Roman bases without hindrance by either enemy or terrain. It is no surprise that, after his term as censor, Appius Claudius became consul twice, subsequently held other offices, and was a respected consultant to the state even during his later years.

Construction of the road

Between Rome and Lake Albano

The road began in the Forum Romanum, passed through the Servian Wall at the porta Capena, went through a cutting in the clivus Martis, and left the city. For this stretch of the road, the builders used the via Latina. The building of the Aurelian Wall centuries later required the placing of another gate, the Porta Appia.

Outside of Rome the new via Appia went through well-to-do suburbs along the via Norba, the ancient track to the Alban hills, where Norba was situated. The road at the time was a via glarea, a gravel road. The Romans built a high-quality road, with layers of cemented stone over a layer of small stones, crowned, drainage ditches on either side, low retaining walls on sunken portions, and dirt pathways for sidewalks. The via Appia is believed to have been the first Roman road to feature the use of lime cement. The materials were volcanic rock. The surface was said to have been so smooth that you could not distinguish the joints. The Roman section still exists and is lined with monuments of all periods, although the cement has eroded out of the joints, leaving a very rough surface.

Across the marsh

The road concedes nothing to the Alban hills, but goes straight through them over cuts and fills. The gradients are steep. Then it enters the former Pontine Marshes. A stone causeway of about 19 miles led across stagnant and odoriferous pools blocked from the sea by sand dunes. Appius Claudius planned to drain the marsh, taking up earlier attempts, but he failed. The causeway and its bridges subsequently needed constant repair. No one enjoyed crossing the marsh. In 162 BC Marcus Cornelius Cathegus had a canal constructed along the road to relieve the traffic and provide an alternative when the road was being repaired. Romans preferred using the canal.

Along the coast

The via Appia picked up the coastal road at Tarracina. However, the Romans straightened it somewhat with huge cuttings, which form cliffs today. From there the road swerved north to Capua, where, for the time being, it ended. Caudine Forks was not far to the north. The itinerary was Aricia, Tres Tabernae, Appii Forum, Tarracina, Fundi, Formiae, Minturnae (Minturno), Sinuessa (Mondragone), Casilinum and Capua, but some of these were colonies added after the Samnite Wars. The distance was 132 miles. The original road had no milestones, as they were not yet in use. A few survive from later times, including a first milestone near the porta Appia.

Victorious outcome

The road achieved its purpose. The outcome of the Third Samnite War was at last favorable to Rome. In a series of stunning blows the Romans reversed their fortunes, bringing Etruria to the table in 311, the very year of their revolt, and Samnium in 304. The road was just the factor that allowed them to concentrate their forces sufficiently rapidly and keep them adequately supplied to become a formidable opponent.

Extension to Beneventum

The Third Samnite War, 298-290 BC, is perhaps misnamed. It was an all-out attempt by all the neighbors of Rome: Italics, Etruscans and Gauls, to check the power of Rome. The Samnites were the leading people of the conspiracy. Rome dealt the northerners a crushing blow at the Battle of Sentinum in Umbria in 295 BC. The Samnites fought on alone.

Rome now placed 13 colonies in Campania and Samnium. It must have been during this time that they extended the via Appia 35 miles beyond Capua past the Caudine forks to a place the Samnites called Maloenton, “passage of the flocks.” The itinerary added Calatia, Caudium and Beneventum (not yet called that). Here also ended the via Latina.

Extension to Apulia and Calabria

By 290 BC all was over for the sovereignty of the Samnites. The heel of Italy lay open to the Romans. The dates are somewhat uncertain and there is considerable variation in the sources, but during the Third Samnite War the Romans seem to have extended the road to Venusia, where they placed a colony of 20,000 men. After that they were at Tarentum.

Possession of the region and control of southern Italy was contested by King Pyrrhus of Epirus in neighboring Greece on behalf of the Greek presence in Italy. In 280 BC the Romans suffered another defeat at the hands of Pyrrhus at the Battle of Heraclea on the coast west of Tarentum. Making the best of it, the Roman army turned on Greek Rhegium and effected a massacre of Pyrrhian partisans there.

Rather than pursue them, Pyrrhus went straight for Rome along the via Appia and then the via Latina. He knew that if he continued on the via Appia he could be trapped in the marsh. Wary of such entrapment on the via Latina also, he withdrew without fighting after encountering opposition at Anagni. Wintering in Campania, he withdrew to Apulia in 279, where, pursued by the Romans, he defeated them again at the Battle of Asculum. Withdrawing from Apulia for a Sicilian interlude, he returned to Apulia in 275 and started for Campania up the nice Roman road.

Supplied by that same road, the Romans successfully defended the region against Pyrrhus, who won his “Pyrrhic victory” at the Battle of Beneventum (not yet named that) in 275 BC, suffering such losses that he had to withdraw. The Romans lost twice as many, but they could replace those men, while Pyrrhus could not. As it is the habit of soldiers everywhere to twist place names, the Roman soldiers called it Maleventum, “the place of the bad winds.” Consequently, Roman magistrates placing a colony there in 268 BC renamed it Beneventum, “the place of the good winds.”

Exiting by the back door at Brundisium, the ancient port of embarkation for Greece, Pyrrhus left for easier fields of battle. The Romans pushed the via Appia to there in 264. The itinerary from Benvenutum was now Venusia, Tarentum, Uria and Brundisium. The Roman Republic was the government of Italy, for the time being. Appius Claudius had died in 273, but in extending the road a number of times, no one had tried to displace his name upon it.

Later times

Spartacus

A road of such a high-spirited beginning can hardly have escaped a sanguinary history. Though professing freedom for themselves, the Romans took away freedom from their enemies foreign and domestic, enslaving them. Their sentiment was that slaves deserved to die, but were being allowed to live on condition of their cooperation in servitude. If the cooperation should be removed, the slave(s) would be executed.

This was the case of the slave revolt (known as the Third Servile War) under the ex-gladiator of Capua, Spartacus. The latter defeated many Roman armies, but unwittingly moved his forces into the historic trap in Apulia/Calabria, where he hoped to escape from Brindusium. The Romans were well acquainted with the region. Legions were brought home from abroad and Spartacus fell into the very sort of trap the Romans had had to buy their way out of at Caudium and that Pyrrhus had tried so hard to evade: he was penned between armies. On his defeat the Romans judged that the slaves had broken their contract and had forfeited the right to live. In 71 BC they were executed by crucifixion, a standard method. Some 6000 crosses lined the via Appia all the way to Capua.

Trajan

The emperor Trajan built the Via Traiana, an extension of the Via Appia from Beneventum, reaching Brundisium via Canusium and Barium rather than via Tarentum. This was commemorated by an arch at Beneventum

Anzio

In 1943 the allies similarly fell into the very trap Pyrrhus had retreated to avoid, in the Pontine fields, the successor to the Pontine marshes. The marsh remained despite numerous efforts to drain it until engineers working for Mussolini finally succeeded. Even so, the fields were infested with malarial mosquitos until the advent of DDT in 1950.

Hoping to break a stalemate at Monte Cassino, the allies landed on the coast of Italy at Anzio, ancient Antium, which was midway between Ostium and Tarracina. When they landed the place was undefended. They hoped to move along the line of the via Appia to take Rome, outflanking Monte Cassino, but they did not do so quickly enough. The Germans swiftly occupied Mounts Lazziali and Lepini along the track of the old via Latina, from which they rained down a hail of shells on Anzio. Even though the allies expanded into all the Pontine region, they could avail nothing. The Germans counterattacked down the via Appia from the Alban hills in a front four miles wide, but could not retake Anzio. The battle lasted for four months, one side being supplied by sea, the other by land through Rome. Then Anzio became irrelevant as the allies broke through to the south. The Germans fled away through the mountains as best they could.

The road as an antique

After the fall of the Roman empire, the road fell out of use; Pope Pius VI ordered its restoration. A new Appian Way was built in parallel with the old one in 1784 as far as the Alban Hills region. The new is the via Appia nuova as opposed to the old section, now a tourist attraction, the via Appia antica.

Wide parts of the original road have been preserved, and some are now used by cars (for example, in the area of Velletri). Along the part of the road closest to Rome, one can see many tombs and catacombs of Roman and early Christian origin. Also the Church of Domine Quo Vadis is in the first mile of the road.

The road is one of Respighi's Pini di Roma.

See also : Three Taverns

External links

Roman roads to or from Rome itself | Cemeteries and tombs in Rome

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