The Roman world was immensely rich in resources. Tin from Britain, silver from Spain, wheat from North Africa, and fruit from the Middle East, all found their way into Roman homes. Craftsmen who made clothes out of silk imported from China or glass objects created from the high-quality sand of the eastern Mediterranean could find markets for their goods in places far away from where they worked. Trade moved easily between one place and the next – and sometimes the merchants went with it, moving their places of business from one city, or one region, to another. A Roman altar discovered in Bordeaux in 1921 was found to contain an inscription from a wealthy merchant with positions in the cities of both York and Lincoln who thanked the ‘protecting goddess of Bordeaux’ for allowing him to complete his journey to her city. He might have been a trader selling French wine to the Roman legions stationed in Britain: the Romans were as familiar as we are with the free movement of goods across provincial boundaries. Today in Britain, we have grown used to enjoying the fruits of the world, but the generation that lived during and immediately after the Second World War did not drink much wine and rarely ate exotic fruits or other food from Europe and beyond. Now these things are part of the nation’s everyday diet: we have become used to peace and plenty. In this we are not unlike the people who lived in the Roman Empire as it reached the height of its power. Its extraordinary cohesion was reinforced by language and law and oiled by the benefits of trade. The Roman road – straight, ruthless and capable of cutting through any obstacle in its path – was the physical embodiment of the empire’s wealth and success.
The Via Egnatia survived the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West to remain an important highway for centuries afterwards. Inevitably it fell into disrepair. It is remarkable how the great buildings of Rome were allowed to decay: succeeding generations preferred to destroy or ignore what had been built, rather than make use of their remarkable architectural inheritance. The Romans were enthusiastic builders. Great cities as far apart as York, Lyon or Carthage (today part of Tunis), became the provincial capitals of the empire, each demonstrating the Roman taste for fortification and domestic architecture. The same types of buildings were reproduced everywhere, a coherent manifestation of the imperial presence. We can still see ruined examples of them all over Europe, beautifully constructed aqueducts, gates, theatres and villas that remind us of the extent of Roman power. The modern world has been brought up to believe in the concept of the nation state. We tend to talk about architectural style in terms of its country of origin – French, German, English and so on. When the Romans were the rulers of Europe it was not like that at all. Whoever you were, Berber, Celt or Slav, you were the citizen of a Roman province and subject to the tastes and disciplines of your Roman masters. Perhaps it was this that ensured their eventual destruction. Their beauty and usefulness was not enough to assuage the brutal forces of revenge. The historian Procopius, writing during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the sixth century AD, reported that: ‘The barbarians … destroyed all the cities which they captured so completely that nothing has been left to my time to know them by – unless it might be one tower or one gate or some such thing that chanced to remain.’ The glories of Rome were extinguished with remarkable speed.
The Via Egnatia was the physical embodiment of the empire’s wealth and success.
It was Justinian who undertook repairs to the Via Egnatia. He had ambitions to restore the power of the old empire and, with his general Belisarius, succeeded in briefly recapturing Rome itself. His was a remarkable period of power. He was from peasant stock and his wife, Theodora, one of history’s more colourful consorts, was described famously in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon as: ‘The prostitute who, in the presence of innumerable spectators, had polluted the theatre of Constantinople was adored as a Queen in the same city, by grave magistrates, orthodox bishops, victorious generals, and captive monarchs.’ In the end, Justinian’s legacy was not a new Roman empire, but a codification of Roman law that set out the basis for civil law still in use in many places today. He also rebuilt Constantinople, which he hoped to restore to the glory it had enjoyed under its founder, the Emperor Constantine, 200 years earlier. Beyond this, however, the architecture of ancient Rome continued to decay.
Despite the collapse of its infrastructure, the route of the Via Egnatia maintained its importance. At the end of the eleventh century, in 1081, the Byzantine Empire nearly collapsed after Norman invaders, having conquered southern Italy and Sicily, landed at Durres intent on breaking into Byzantium through its western gateway. The Emperor gathered an army and came down the Via Egnatia to confront the Normans who appeared to be isolated and disheartened after their invasion fleet had been defeated by the Empire’s allies, the Venetians. But the Norman commander, Robert Guiscard, was a resourceful and brilliant soldier. Displaying the same sort military bravado that had seen the island of Britain fall to Norman control at Hastings less than twenty years earlier, he routed the imperial army. Its defeat did not bring about the fall of the Byzantine Empire, but the Via Egnatia had now become a much more open road than before. Overland trade between Constantinople and the rest of the Byzantine Empire had always travelled along it. Following the battle of Durres, or Durrazzo to give it its Italian name, it also became the chosen route for the armies of the Crusades as they made their way out of Europe into Asia Minor. The first Crusade was launched fifteen years after the battle, in 1095.
Timeline of Roman History
| c.753 BC | Foundation of Rome according to the legend of Romulus and Remus: a series of hill-top settlements established near the Tiber become the city of Rome. |
| 616–510 BC | REGAL PERIOD: Rome ruled by the Etruscans, who dominated northern city-states. Tarquinius Priscinus was the first King of Rome. |
| 510 BC | Expulsion of the last Etruscan King, ‘Tarquin the Proud’, from Rome. |
| 510–31 BC | REPUBLICAN PERIOD. |
| 451 BC | Rome ruled by a council of ten citizens chosen from the Senate. Duodecim Tabulae, the Twelve Tables, is the earliest code of Roman law outlining patrician and plebeian rights. |
| 340–338 BC | Final Latin War, fought by Latin league. Rome emerged victorious with control of the Latium region. |
| 264–241 BC | First Punic War against the Carthaginians. Sicily became Rome’s first overseas province. |
| 218–202 BC | Second Punic War; Scipio Africanus ‘the Roman Hannibal’ defeated Hannibal who had invaded Italy. He reintroduced ‘decimation’ – the killing of every tenth soldier – to enforce discipline. |
| 214–148 BC | First, Second, Third and Fourth Macedonian Wars. |
| 174 BC | Building of the Circus Maximus, the venue for lavish games. |
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