All Roads Lead To Rome
A trip from Phaselis to Hadrian’s Wall
The theatre at Phaselis, Turkey
Hadrian’s Wall, England (photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash)
So the background to this starts with a recent trip to Turkey. And just along the coast from the pretty big city of Antalya there is the small ancient ruin of Phaselis. It’s a beautiful place, certainly not huge and apart from an aqueduct, the main street and a theatre there’s not a lot to see (yes I know, apart from the roads, the aqueducts and the sanitation…what have the Romans ever done for us?)
For such a small place it has a lot of harbours, 3 to be precise. And it was at one of these harbours that the Emperor Hadrian is said to have visited Phaselis back in AD 131. It was a big event and they built a gate to celebrate. I’m not sure if the gate was built to impress him on his arrival, or after he’d been. Anyway, the point being that Hadrian to us meant a stone wall in a bleak, rain-swept northern English landscape. So the same Emperor was hanging around in the Scottish borders and southern Turkey. Impressive given this was nearly 2,000 years ago. The wall was finished in AD 128, so maybe he was thoroughly bored of cold rain by then and he decided to hang out in warmer climates. Fair enough, if your job allows you to. Opportunities and all that.
The map bit
So, we wondered, how did someone get from Phaselis to the north of England in AD 128? We even asked ChatGPT which very kindly created a fictional story of the journey. However since then I have discovered this website, that allows you to plot a Google Map style route from one ancient Roman place to another. So I went from Phaselis to Luguvalium, a Roman city in modern day Carlisle, which is just a few miles from Hadrian’s Wall.
Interesting fact - did you know that Hadrian’s Wall was not called Hadrian’s Wall back in Hadrian’s time? It was actually called vallum Aelii, vallum being wall and Aelii was Hadrian’s family name.
So what amazes me is how similar the suggested land route is when compared to what Google Maps suggested. I have never heard of Sirmium before but it turns out to be just outside of Belgrade which is where Google Maps takes us. Then, give or take a bit, both maps route you through the western edges of Germany and across Belgium to the English Channel. From there it is pretty obviously going to follow the same route, via London and the Watford Gap services.
So I realise that this isn’t actually surprising, since so much of our modern-day road network can be traced back to those pesky Romans and their efficient and minimalist means of getting from A to B. But it still impressed me how these networks exist today and how little thought we give to such historical links as we move around Europe.
Oh, and for the record I am reliably told that it would have taken 201 days (4,824 hours) to cover the 5,123 kilometres from Phaselis to Luguvalium circa AD128. Google says today you can shave a bit off that time, down to 44 hours and just 4,248 kilometres. Now that would have impressed the Romans.
Note: This is an Amazon affiliate link, which means I get a tiny thank-you if you buy through it.
As fate would have it, I came across this book just hours after writing this blog. To be clear at the time of writing I have not read (or even bought) the book, but I intend to. It is all about Roman roads, their history and how they have influenced history ever since.
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