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In the first passage Herodotus (Histories 5.52–53) gives the technical details of the world’s first state-organized highway and postal system; then

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Xenophon (Cyropaedia 8.6.17–18) describes its operation; and we end with a quotation from Herodotus again (Histories 8.98), adapted as the motto of the U.S. Postal Service.

The nature of the road is as follows. All along it are royal rest stops and excellent lodgings, and the entire road runs through inhabited and safe country. . . . In all there are 111 stages, with as many rest stops, on the road going up from Sardis to Susa. . . . For people traveling at a rate of 150 stadia [¼ 20 miles] each day, just 90 days will be consumed.

In regard to the magnitude of his empire, we have also discovered another device of Cyrus, by which he learned more quickly the state of affairs at any distance. For after examining how long a journey could be finished in a day by a horse that was ridden hard, he established posting stations at just such distances and equipped them with horses and men to look after them. And at each of the places he stationed the proper men to receive and pass on the dispatches, and to take charge of the exhausted horses and men, and to furnish fresh ones. [Sometimes riders traveled by day and night.] This is undeniably the fastest travel by land possible for humans.

There is no mortal man who can accomplish a journey faster than these Persian messengers. . . . Not snow, not rain, not heat, not night hinders these men from covering the stage assigned to them as quickly as possible. The first rider passes the dispatch to the second, the second to the third, and so on along the line.

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An Example of Roman Road Building

Though the Romans were as renowned for their highways as for their aqueducts, we unfortunately lack a comprehensive ancient account of how they built them. This passage from the biographer Plutarch (Gaius Gracchus 7.1–2) gives a general sense of the technique, though it of course varied according to the terrain.

Gaius Gracchus was especially anxious about road building, paying attention to utility as well as to what benefited grace and beauty. For the roads were carried straight through the country without wavering, were paved with quarried stone, and were made solid with masses of tightly packed sand. Hollows were filled up and bridges were thrown across

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whatever wintry streams or ravines cut the roads. And both sides were an equal and parallel height, with the result that the road for its entire course had a level and beautiful appearance. Besides these things, he measured the whole road mile by mile—the mile is a bit less than eight stadia—and set up stone columns as distance indicators. He also placed other stones on either side of the road at lesser intervals, so that it would be easier for those people who had to mount horses to get on them from the stones without requiring a groom for help.

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A Law of Caesar Restricting Wheeled Traffic in Rome

Because Rome had developed haphazardly, by the first centuryB.C.E.

its urban road system was incapable of handling the traffic—both ve-hicular and pedestrian—of a city of perhaps 900,000 inhabitants. As we see from this inscription (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 1.593.56–

66¼ Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 6085), the Dictator Caesar tried to resolve the problem by restricting access for wheeled vehicles to the hours of darkness, to protect pedestrians during the day.

On those roads that are or shall be within the city of Rome among those places where habitation shall be continuous, no one, after the first day of next January, shall be permitted in the daytime—after sunrise or before the tenth hour of the day—to lead or drive any freight wagon except when it is necessary to bring in or transport material for the sake of building the sacred temples of the immortal gods, or for the sake of building public works, or where, in carrying out a public contract for de-molition, it shall be necessary for the good of the public to carry ma-terial out of the city and out of those places, and in situations for which specified persons shall be allowed for specified causes to drive or lead freight wagons by this law.

On those days when the Vestal Virgins, the Rex sacrorum, and the flamens shall be required to ride in wagons in the city for the sake of the public sacrifices on behalf of the Roman people, and when wagons shall be necessary for the sake of a triumph on the day someone will have the triumph, or when wagons shall be required for games publicly celebrated at Rome or within one mile of the city of Rome, or for the procession at the Circus Games, . . . for the sake of those causes and on those days nothing in this law is intended to prevent wagons from being led or driven in the daytime in the city.

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DOCUMENT 35

Caesar’s Bridge over the Rhine River

The Romans in particular were adept at throwing bridges across streams and rivers that previously had to be forded. Exceptional examples of their multi-arched stone structures can still be seen crossing the Tiber River in Rome; and this example of a complex wooden bridge built and described by Caesar (Gallic War 4.17–18) is a testament to Roman engineering.

Caesar had decided to cross the Rhine for the reasons given earlier;

but to cross by boats he deemed not safe enough and ruled it worthy for neither himself nor the Roman people. And so, even though he was confronted by the greatest difficulty for making a bridge because of the river’s width, swiftness, and depth, he nevertheless decided that he had to make the effort or else not lead his army across.

He used the following method for the bridge. At intervals of 2 feet, he joined pairs of timbers that were 1.5 feet thick, sharpened a bit at their bases, and measured for the depth of the river. Having lowered these into the river with machines, he fixed them and rammed them down using pile drivers, . . . leaning forward and sloping so that they inclined with the natural flow of the river. In addition, he planted two piles opposite these at in interval of 40 feet downstream, fastened together in the same manner but turned into the force and flow of the river. These two rows were kept firmly apart by inserting into their tops 2-foot-thick beams of the same length as the distance between the piles and supported with pairs of braces at the outer side of each pile. As a result of this combi-nation of holding apart and clamping together, so great was the stability of the work and its character that the greater the force of the water rushing against it, the more tightly its parts held fast together.

These beams were interconnected by timbers laid at right angles, and then these were floored over with long poles and wickerwork. In addition, piles were driven at an angle into the water on the downstream side, which were thrust out underneath like a buttress and joined with the entire structure, to take the force of the river. Others were similarly placed a little bit above the bridge so that if tree trunks or vessels were sent by the barbarians to knock down the structure, the force of those objects might be diminished by these defenses and the bridge protected from harm.

Ten days after the timber began to be collected, the bridge was completed and the army led across.

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