Rome: The Use Of Road Construction In Ancient Rome

The major materials used were plain dirt, gravel, and pavement each used based on the type of road the Romans were building. For example, a private road where people often rarely travelled would be primarily made up of dirt while military roads got the best materials since they would be used most often. Most of the constructional knowledge the Romans had achieved during their time was expanded from the Etruscans. The road construction in Rome can almost be viewed as an art where each piece was laid with a significant purpose and amount of detail to the overall project itself. Remarkably many of the ancient structures along the Roman roads such as bridges and archways are still in use today symbolizing one of Rome’s greatest accomplishment in building these roads to truly last (Andrews, 2014).
Spread of Information
While the primary function of the Roman roads were to transport military troops and connect Rome to is conquered villages it also served as a mass route of information flow.
Amongst this information flow, Rome incorporated its first use of a postal system along the different roads allowing for faster travel news across the great empire. Rome started by adding a network of postal stations along the road along with the utilization of carts and horses to allow for a speedy deliverance of correspondence to longer distant locations spanning across the empire. For the first time in history there was an actual way to receive mail in Rome which was one of the great developments started in Rome that we still use today. Military couriers transported letters between senators, commanders, and the emperor while civilian mail service was beginning to become a big business opportunity through the empire as well (Roman Roads: UNRV,
2015). In the time of Rome, there were two official postal services founded and used over the span of the great empire. The first was the Curus publicus founded under Augustus and was used exclusively to transport mail to officials around the road system. The postal services often utilized cisium, which was a carriage with a box on it pulled with horses to carry the mail over the roads. If the mail was vastly important a horse and rider would be sent due to the speedier service offered by horseback allowing the mail to cover more ground in a shorter period. On average, a single horseback rider could travel up to fifty miles in a single day and typically the postal carrier would wear a leather hat that signified them as a postal carrier. The second type of mail service offered was known as tabellarii, which was private mail that was carried by slaves who were paid for by the sender of the letter. Ironically, enough being a mail carrier in Rome was somewhat hazardous as raiders and adversaries of Rome typically saw the mail carriers as a target (Roman Roads: Wikipedia, 2015).