A sweeping new study of the Roman Empire’s extensive road system is putting a modern twist on the familiar maxim, “All roads lead to Rome.”
Published Sept. 15 in Nature Communications, the research examined approximately 190,000 miles of Roman roads across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Researchers combined existing records to produce a new map of the empire’s road network, allowing them to study its structure on an empire-wide scale.
The team, led by Tom Brughmans, a classical archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, found that Rome was not the network’s only major center. Provincial capitals also served as crucial hubs for overland travel.
Constantinople, now Istanbul, Turkey, became an especially important transportation hub after Emperor Constantine established it as the imperial capital in the fourth century AD.
Its strategic position between Europe and Asia made Constantinople exceptionally central to travel throughout the empire, the researchers found.
That finding suggests the phrase “all roads lead to Rome” — coined centuries after the Roman Empire collapsed — does not tell the entire story.
Brughmans told Fox News Digital that the proverb, which he described as medieval in origin, should not be interpreted literally. He pointed out that none of the roads in Roman Britain actually led to Rome.
“It is quite surprising how persistently this maxim has shaped popular understanding of Roman roads,” he said.
“It’s fair to say our study complicates the proverb,” Brughmans added. “I prefer to say, ‘All roads lead to Rome and everywhere else.’”
Taco Terpstra, a professor of history and classics at Northwestern University in Illinois, told Fox News Digital that the findings do not lessen Rome’s importance as the empire’s center — and that the study’s authors are not suggesting otherwise.
Terpstra, who was not involved in the research, emphasized that Constantinople “was only created as such in the fourth century.”
“Before that, it was a sleepy fishing town called Byzantium,” he said. “So, we have to be careful a little bit about what time period we’re looking at.”
He added, “But once Constantinople becomes de facto the capital of the empire, it is clear that it attracts a lot of overland connectivity.”
Rome nevertheless remained the center of the empire’s political, military and ideological power for centuries, Terpstra said.
“Rome is the center of the empire. This is where power lies,” he said, noting that Alexandria, the empire’s second-largest city, had roughly half Rome’s population.
“This is where the emperor is. This is where the Senate is. … [It was the] largest city in the empire, a million inhabitants.”
The researchers also investigated another defining feature of Roman engineering: the impressive straightness of the empire’s roads. Still, mountains and other difficult terrain often forced builders to abandon the most direct route.
The roads were “about as straight as the Romans could make them” with the technology available at the time, Terpstra said.
The road system was initially built for military purposes, allowing Roman troops to move rapidly through conquered territory. Over time, the roads also became vital to the empire’s economy, Terpstra added.
“The roads in the first instance, and it’s often forgotten, were military infrastructure,” he said. “These were in the first place, after the conquest, intended to move troops quickly.”
And although Roman roads have stood the test of time and remain a marvel of ancient engineering, Terpstra said they were secondary to maritime transportation across the empire — which was far cheaper when it came to transporting goods.
“The main transportation network of the Roman Empire is maritime,” he said. “That is really where the major connectivity lies.”