Talk:Roman roads

Missing section

Wow! This page is startlingly in-depth, especially considering the state of most of the rest of the Ancient Rome articles. Great work! -Silence 13:47, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I Agree! Great Job!

I too concur. However I did notice a mistake. The section of the article on the construction method of the roads stated that the fossa were typically 15 feet below the surface. I believe that is incorrect. The fossa were typically 2-6 feet below the surface, but as the article was correct in saying that they were often dug deeper. If I was incorrect in my belief about the depth of the fossa then I ask that you post the correction as well as the url of a credible website where the information can be found on this discussion page. Seeing as I posted this to correct wikipedia please do not post it as the credible website. My name in a simple code is olner dcamdlano

A panel in Lyon

Thought I would contribute the contents of this panel found on the side of a road in Lyon:

Place Morel: ...This square is a very ancient junction crossed in Roman times by the German Way, now Montée des Carmélites. The German Way was one of the five great highways - Aquitaine, Narbonne, Rhine, Ocean and Alps - created by Emperor Augustus' son-in-law Agrippa a little over 2000 years ago. Lugdunum - modern Lyon - was then the centre of of Gallo-Roman Civilisation

this was a fantastic, helpful article!! (and the original French)

La place, très ancien carrefour, était traversée par la voie romaine de Germanie, deveue aujourd'hui montée des Carmélites. Cette voie était l'un des cinq grands axes (Aquitaine, Narbonnaise, du Rhin, de l'Océan, des Alpes) créés par Agrippa, gendre de l'empereur romain Auguste, il y a un peu plus de 2 000 ans. Lugdunm était alors le centre de la civilisation gallo-romaine.

I'd incorporate this info but don't know enough of the background, nor the roman names of these 5 roads. Looks like Via Aquitania exists already. Stevage 16:34, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Purpose?

The article, similar to the general "road" article, does not actually say how or why a road is useful. It may be of use to the article to add detail of this.

There are just small mentions such as:

"The Roman roads were essential for the growth of their empire, by enabling them to move armies."

Are armies not able to move without roads? What makes it so difficult to simply walk on wild grassland?

The legions made good time on them

Any details on how fast, in particular by comparison to non road transportation, the legions or anything else could travel on them, would be useful.

Peoplesunionpro 02:21, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Travel times?

I'm curious about this passage: "Carts could travel about 8 miles per day, pedestrians a little more, and so each mansio was about 15 to 18 miles from the next one." First, does this mean to say that mansiones were placed two days' travel apart? This seems counterintuitive; perhaps it could be spelled out a little better? Were travelers expected to make camp in between?

Second, doesn't 8 miles/day seem awfully low? Normal walking speed is three or four miles an hour. The Encyclopedia Britannia says "Speed of travel ranged from a low of about 15 miles per day for freight vehicles to 75 miles per day by speedy post drivers." http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-71890 (That would make the positioning of the mansiones more sensical, too.)

The Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome I have here (Adkins & Adkins) puts the mansiones an average of 20 to 30 miles apart, and provides a top speed for couriers of over 120 miles per day. --Jere7my 07:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Units of measurement

I noticed that the units were converted from imperial to metric. Shouldn't the measurements include both systems? 154.20.151.165 03:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd have to say no. The Imperial system isn't used in the area where the Roman road system exists. Those places all use SI units. There's no reason here to cater to us silly Americans who can't be bothered to learn metrics.—Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 07:53, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Roman Legions planted an ash tree at every second mile?

There is a claim in article Two Mile Ash that it was a Roman custom to plant an ash tree every two miles. Does anyone have a citation to support this assertion? --Concrete Cowboy --Concrete Cowboy 16:47, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Sources

Hello. I'm one of the original main contributors to this article. I'm terribly sorry guys, but at the time I did not know enough to put refs in and subsequent contributors seem to have followed my bad example. We are getting almost medieval in that practice. For the most part this is good material and there are penty of refs out there. It needs to be Googled point by point. It is not perfect; there are some errors. Preferably but not necessarily a person with a Latin background would be very useful. Meanwhile I know there is a tag on there and there should be, but do not delete unless you have investigated, OK? And, the investigation could be just a reasonably careful Internet check. The article needs a Notes section and line-item notes. Maybe you could provide one or two without undue strain. Thanks.Dave (talk) 10:36, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Modern reconstruction and new map

I added "(Ceausescu era reconstruction, Romania)" to the picture "Potaissa Napoca Milarium". This Milarium is clearly a modern reconstruction. One cannot even judge if there is anything original in it. Knowing Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's personal obsession with things DacoRoman, for example he personally oredered the name of the ancient city of Cluj to be changed to Cluj-Napoca, Wikipedia editors must be careful when showing Ceausescu era Romanian archeological restorations. The Charter of Venice states: "The process of restoration... It must stop at the point where conjecture begins,...."

The map "The Roman Empire in the time of Hadrian (ruled 117-38AD)...etc." appears to be a fine work. The problem I am seeing from a Wikipedia NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH policy point of view is that it was apparently recently created by two Wikipedia contributors: Andrea Nacu who appears to be a student and a very erudite, albeit, unknown editor EraNavigator. I believe for the sake of the state of the art that Wikipedia should not have been used as a place for the first publication of this map. Apparently it has not been published in scientific journals, has not been peer reviewed, criticized, evaluated. This greatly reduces its credibility. It would have been more fortuitous to make an effort at having it published by proper forums, especially if the authors are affiliated with some University as they appear to be.

Eravian (talk) 21:41, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

in the quote..

in a quote of the Antonine Itinenary

"There is hardly a district which we might expect a Roman official to be sent to, on service either civil or military, where we do not înd them."

What does this sentence mean? Plinio1 (talk) 10:13, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

'find' a road ... need to ind -> find ... J. D. Redding 13:43, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Style Correction Needed

Quote: "The official bodies which first succeeded the censors in the care of the streets and roads were two in number." How else could they be two? In color? In flavor? "Two in number" is a needless redundancy. 71.236.100.183 (talk) 17:37, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

New lead

WP:LEAD says the title of the article should normally appear in the first sentence, see also where [1] in that sentence. The new version removes the title entirely from the lead. It also changes cited text to an extent that the sources may no longer back up the statements they are citing. This isn't that terrible since the sources are pretty dreadful, and definitely need replacing. Dougweller (talk) 16:42, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi, given that I went to some trouble to try to incorporate parts and refs of the present version in my re-write of this opening section, in order to respect the author's (childish) efforts, I feel disgusted that he/she has summarily expunged it and replaced it with their original. The opening is well below the erudite standard of the main text. So we now again have sentences like, "The Roman roads were roads built by the Roman empire". If you all prefer this sort of infantile nonsense, fine. Clearly I stepped on a child's toes and rather than use even part of what I produced, the child reverted the work in entirety. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mygodfrey (talk • contribs) 12:49, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

If you aren't going to sign with tildes, please don't revert sinebot. You need to read WP:NPA. When I saw you edit I posted both here and on your talk page. After a while, with no response, I reverted it because it is against our MOS. I didn't write any of it. By all means do improve it, but follow WP:LEAD. And I think the way you did it caused problems with the referencing, as I've said above. I'll see what I can do. Dougweller (talk) 13:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Rewrite

The page is a bit of a mess. The structure is poor, and the sourcing is worse. Far too much reliance on an 1890 dictionary (cited 50 times) a Cyclopedia of American Horticulture dating 1900, etc - about references dating no later than 1902, about 8 modern ones. And the lead is a mess, I agree. It probably goes into too much detail and it really should not need citations, as it should be based on cited material in the main article. Anyone want to have a go at structure? Eg: Lead

History/Development of Roman roads

Use

Construction methods

Road system

I don't know where to put etymology

This is just a very rough stab and I'm not particularly happy with it, but I'm hesitant to improve it without a better structure. Dougweller (talk) 16:55, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Outdated

Given the very heavy reliance on sources written over a century ago, I've tagged this as outdated. See my comments above. Dougweller (talk) 15:46, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

The Romans "exclusively rediscovered" concrete?

See under Via munita: "The final steps utilized concrete, which the Romans had exclusively rediscovered". From the history section of the concrete article, plus my prior knowledge, the Romans discovered concrete - not rediscovered it. And what's this "exclusively" part? Allens (talk) 12:33, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea what "exclusively" is supposed to mean here. It makes no sense with "rediscovered," and only slightly more sense with "discovered." If you have RS on Roman concrete, you should go ahead and fix this. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:11, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmm... I have a copy of L. Sprague de Camp's Ancient Engineers that IIRC talks about this, but more recent archeological backing would be nice. Will try to see about this (after creating an exam... sigh.) Allens (talk) 13:25, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

OK, fixed with citation. Allens (talk) 14:41, 6 November 2011 (UTC)