Building the Roads
Who built the Roman roads? Since main highways began as military roads, it would be logical to think that they were built by soldiers. Monuments such as Trajan’s column in Rome and the writings of several Roman historians such as Livy (c. 59 B.C.-c. 17 A.D.) confirm this impression. In fact, various sources indicate that each legion had its own engineer for building roads, bridges, and buildings (an architectus), also a surveyor (agrimensor) and a leveller (librator). Most of the actual labor in building the road seems to have been done by the legionary soldier. Since a spade, hatchet, and pick were part of the soldier’s normal equipment – on the march the legions constructed an entrenchment camp every night – the infantryman already had much of the basic equipment and experience that would be useful in building a road. Since the soldiers would use the roads, among other things, to reach frontier posts or crisis spots, they would probably be motivated to build carefully if war threatened. However, Livy notes that in the early Republic the Roman censor, C. Flaminius, conquered Etruria in north central Italy and “built a road from Bologna to Arezzo to keep his army from being idle.” Such motives also inspired later Roman emperors to use the legions to build roads in peaceful periods as well as when war threatened.