"All roads lead to Rome" is a common saying that there is more than one road to the destination, you can't hang yourself from a tree, and there is always another way to solve anything.
This sentence comes from the "Roman Allusion", which is also an English proverb, the original sentence is "All Roads Lead to Rome", which translates to a bit of the Chinese meaning of "different paths to the same destination". So is Rome so well trafficked? Which god did this sentence come from?
Rome is not the Rome of Italy today, but the ancient city of Rome of the ancient Roman Empire.
The ancient city of Rome has a history of almost three thousand years, starting as a small city-state, by the third century BC, Rome was strong enough to unify the entire Italian peninsula.
Around the 2nd century AD, the Roman Empire was at its most glorious period, encompassing almost the entire Mediterranean coast, turning the Mediterranean Sea into an inland sea, and the Roman Empire became a powerful slave empire spanning Asia, Europe and Africa.
As the political, economic and cultural center of the Roman Empire, the ancient city of Rome had a population of more than one million at its peak, and was the largest city on the Mediterranean coast during the Roman Empire.
Therefore, in order to strengthen their rule, the rulers of the empire built roads with Rome as the center to promote cultural and trade exchanges within and outside the country.
According to historical records, the Roman Empire at its peak had a total of 29 large military highways radiating from the city of Rome to the surrounding areas, connecting a total of 372 avenues in the country, with a total length of about 120,000 kilometers, equivalent to three circles around the earth's equator, of which about 80,000 kilometers were hard-faced roads paved with stones.
It doesn't seem like a good idea, but as of 2022, the length of highways in the mainland is 177,000 kilometers, which means that the ancient Romans built about two-thirds of the highway mileage in the mainland two thousand years ago.
At that time, street trees had begun to be planted on both sides of the avenue of the city of Rome to shield pedestrians and marching soldiers from the sun.
At that time, there was an interesting saying that if you started your journey from the Italian peninsula or any of the main roads in Europe, as long as you kept walking, you could eventually reach Rome, which shows that Rome was the center of the whole of Europe at that time.
The phrase "all roads lead to Rome" is said to have been born in the late Roman Empire.
Around the 5th century AD, the Western Roman Empire began to decline, and the Germanic groups began to grow stronger. One of the most powerful Visigothic kings, Alarric, always wanted to capture the Roman Empire, and the two sides fought for more than ten years, but each time they were defeated by the Western Roman general Stiricus, but Alaric never gave up.
In 407 A.D., Stilico was executed for treason by the Western Roman Emperor Honorius, and Alarric, who knew the news, was very happy, and said to the people around him with a smile: "Finally, no one stopped me from going to Rome", and his subordinates heard it and asked: "I wonder which way the king is going to attack Rome?" Ararique laughed and uttered the famous saying, "All Roads Lead to Rome"!
Source: WeChat public account "Interesting cold knowledge"
Author: Jiayu Qiuyang
Editor: Jing Chen
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