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Do you have a true friend?

The kiss
Every time I kiss you
After a long separation
I feel
I am putting a hurried love letter
In a red mailbox.

Poem by Nizar Qabbani
Photo by me

All roads lead to Rome. So goes the saying. By which is meant, usually, that there are many different ways of reaching a certain goal. In that spirit, the saying itself has various applications. First and foremost, as a reminder of the value of lateral thinking. But also as the repository of an historical truth. Roads were indeed an essential instrument in the expansion and maintenance of the Roman Empire.

At its height, the empire controlled nearly 2 million sq. mi (about 5 million sq. km) of territory, stretching from Hadrian's Wall in northern Britain to the estuary of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf. Tying it all together was an extensive network of Roman roads, the nexus of which were the 29 major military highways that radiated from Rome to the far ends of the empire. Add another 350 great highways and many more smaller byways, and the network comprised 250,000 miles (400,000 km) of roads, 50,000 miles (80,000 km) of which were paved.

Many Roman roads survived the empire. Some even live on today, disguised as modern thoroughfares yet still recognisable by their straight course. London's Oxford Street once was part of the Via Trinobantina. In Belgium and northern France, a number of straight roads of ancient lineage are nicknamed chaussées Brunehaut, after Brunhilda of Austrasia, the sixth-century Visigothic queen-regent who had several Roman roads repaired. In southern France, part of the Route nationale 7 follows the Via Agrippa.

Even after the fall of the empire, Rome remained a world capital, albeit of a more spiritual nature, drawing in pilgrims from all corners of Christendom. That attraction, combined with what remained of the imperial roads, must have given rise to the saying, first recorded by Alain de Lille in his Liber Parabolarum (1175): in Latin "Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam" ("A thousand roads lead men forever to Rome”). Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to use an English version in his Treatise on the Astrolabe (1391): "Right as diverse pathes leden the folk the righte wey to Rome".