Via Appia Regina Viarum
Emma Wynne Takes Us Down the Via Appia With Linus, Procopius, Byron, and Jerome
One thing that attracts me about Europe, and Rome in particular, is the combination of ancient and modern that can be found everywhere, and the connection between present and past ages that this combination provides. The Via Appia is an especially moving example.
Wandering along this road, one sees incredible contrasts between old and new; cars drive on parts of the road, but wagon wheel ruts still remain cut deep into the stones. Bikes, horses, pedestrians and cars all mingle. Ancient tombs and monuments line the roads, sometimes turned into museums, sometimes falling into ruins, and sometimes marked by graffiti, all passed by tourists and Italians going about their daily business.
So many people have walked along this road for thousands of years. The Ancients, soldiers, merchants, emperors and peasants walked this road. Indeed, according to Christians, God himself walked this road; St. Peter met Jesus on this road just before his martyrdom. The stone from the road containing the imprint of Christ’s footstep is now in San Sebastiano, and a Church, Domine Quo Vadis, marks the place of the meeting. A document ascribed to Linus, successor of Peter, claims that Peter, fleeing Rome, saw Christ, adored him and asked: “Domine, quo vadis?”
Respondit ei Christus: “Romam venio iterum crucifigi.”
Et ait ad eum Petrus: “Domine, iterum crucifigeris?”
Et dixit ad eum dominus: “Etiam, iterum crucifigar.”
Petrus autem dixit: “Domine, revertar et sequar te.”
After this interaction, Christ disappeared. Peter did return to Rome, and was crucified upside-down. Since Peter, scholars, artists, and poets have trodden this same road, men following the grand tour, pilgrims hoping for redemption, Lord Byron, Shelley, Goethe, Mark Twain, Cicero, Horace, popes and emperors, Christians and pagans, sinners and saints, soldiers and traders, kings and common folk. More than two thousand years of history have passed over this road.
Appius Claudius Caecus, a Roman censor after whom the road is named, built the Via Appia in 312 B.C. making it one of Rome’s first strategic roads. It ran south from the Roman Forum to Capua. By 264 B.C., it extended all the way to Brundisium.
The first events this road witnessed were the Samnite wars. During these wars, the Romans badly needed to send troops and supplies through the Pontine Marshes. The road that bridged them had to be a remarkable feat of engineering. And the Via Appia was. It was made of leveled dirt, then a layer of small stones, followed by mortar, gravel, and finally stones fitted together so tightly that they were smooth and, as Procopius says, they looked organic (“they give the appearance, not of being fitted together, but of having grown together”(De Bello Gothico, 1.14)). It had ditches and retaining walls as well. It provided a faster, better means of transportation for soldiers and supplies. As such, the Via Appia contributed to Rome’s military success in the Samnite War and in the future.
However, this road was not simply for the military. It became an essential route for trade and more. The document nominating the Via Appia for status as a UNESCO world heritage site calls the way Romans used roads, and especially this one, “truly innovative.” Not only were the Roman roads designed to be used in all weathers, but they were also open to the public. Rather than simply being for rulers and armies, roads served the entire population. Sidewalks, milestones, and post stations lined the roads, and the roads were used by the cursus publicus, the Roman postal service, to exchange messages all over the empire.
The road was maintained until the Middle Ages, when it was abandoned. The Popes and Kings restored it in the fourteenth century, and it became a main route once again. The Via Appia is now considered one of the best preserved of the Roman public roads. It is still possible to identify both the original course of the road as outlined by Appius himself, and Trajan’s alternate road, the newer Via Appia Traiana, which provided a shorter route to Brundisium across Puglia. Moreover, monuments line the road, built over several centuries, many still standing. The Via Appia influenced the development of other roads and monuments, which in turn has “in the course of over 2300 years of history, formed a complex cultural environment, universally recognized as such by European and American writers, painters, poets and travellers who were undeniably marked by Via Appia and the adjacent territory areas” (UNESCO, “Via Appia ‘Regina Viarum’”).
So this road was built for the Samnite Wars, but what else did it witness? In 71 B.C., it saw the crucifixions of Spartacus and his followers. 6000 men were crucified along the Appian way between Rome and Capua. It must have been a horrific sight as bodies lined the road for miles. In his letter to Atticus (16.10, 44 B.C.), Cicero describes his apprehension about traveling the Via Appia and how he leaves the road to avoid Antony: Facile me ille [Antonius] esset adsecutus. Aiunt enim eum Caesariana uti celeritate (“Antony could easily have caught me; for they say he moves with Caesar-like speed”). In 43 B.C., Cicero did meet his doom on the Via Appia; he was assassinated outside of Formia. Less well known, but equally violent, is the death of Annia Regilla, a relation of the Empress Faustina. She and her husband, Herodes Atticus, lived in a villa along the Via Appia. A slave allegedly kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant, and killed both her and the baby in 160 A.D. Herodes Atticus was also accused of killing her; whether he did or not, he seemed stricken with grief and built her a tomb, which is believed to remain standing where her villa was once located along the Via Appia.
As mentioned before, the road is a sacred place for Christians. Not only did Christ and Peter meet on this road, but also many saints were martyred and/or buried along the Via Appia. St. Jerome came to visit the catacombs here, and writes about his experience:
Dum essem Romae puer, et liberalibus studiis erudirer, solebam cum caeteris ejusdem aetatis et propositi, diebus dominicis sepulchra apostolorum et martyrum circuire, crebroque cryptas ingredi, quae in terrarum profunda defossa, ex utraque parte ingredientium per parietes habent corpora sepultorum, et ita obscura sunt omnia, ut propemodum illud propheticum compleatur: Descendant ad infernum viventes [Ps. 54:16], et raro desuper lumen admissum, horrorem temperet tenebrarum, ut non tam fenestram quam foramen demissi luminis putes. Rursumque pedetentim acceditur, et caeca nocte circumdatis illud Vergilianum proponitur: Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent (Aen. 2.755).
Translated, this is:
While I was a boy at Rome, and was being educated in the liberal arts, I was accustomed on Sundays, along with others of the same age and in the same position, to go around to the tombs of the apostles and martyrs. Often I entered the crypts, which had been dug into the depths of the earth, and [which], on both sides of those entering, hold in their walls the bodies of the buried. Everything is so dark that the prophecy is nearly fulfilled: “Let the living descend into hell” [Psalm 54:16]. Here and there light has been let in from above, to temper the horror of the darkness, but more in the manner of a hole of descending light than a window. Then once more one proceeds, testing the ground with each step, and when you are surrounded by blind night, that passage of Vergil comes to mind: “Everywhere horror, and at the same time, the very silences terrify the spirits” [Aen. 2.755].
Anyone who has wandered off the Via Appia and into the catacombs understands his sentiments about the darkness and horror. Looking at all the funerary monuments along the road, one can imagine the families who buried members there in ancient times and came to pay respects, not the least of whom is the Scipio family, whose tombs are some of the oldest along this road. Other tombs loom huge over the road, such as the tomb of Caecilia, daughter-in-law of Marcus Crassus.
Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, men and women were attracted to this road for its tombs, its sacred locations, and its ancient ruins. Men on the Grand Tour wandered the Via Appia, dreaming of its past glories. Indeed, Goethe had his portrait painted with the ruins of ancient Rome in the background. The background is indeed similar to the landscape seen from the Circus Maximus along the Via Appia. Later on, Napoleon used the Via Appia for his conquest of Italy. In 1943, the Nazis used the Via Appia just as the Romans had, to send supplies to the war-front. The Battle of Anzio, along the Via Appia, lasted for four months before the allies finally took Rome and forced the German forces north. The Via Appia also served for part of the course of the men’s marathon for the 1960 summer Olympics.
This only sums up a tiny bit of the road’s history. So many interesting things could have been seen along the Appian Way, and many still can be. Temples, tombs, and more lined the road, including the temples of Honos and Virtus, the Tempestates, and Mars, the catacombs, the Circus of Maxentius, an altar to Fortuna Redux, triumphal arches, the villa of Maxentius and the villa of the Quintilii, and so much more.
If only these ancient monuments could tell their stories! Unfortunately, stone cannot speak with words. And yet, if one listens carefully, one can hear whispers of the past. Indeed, Byron heard them quite clearly when he stood before the tomb of Caecilia:
THERE is a stern round tower of other days,
Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
Such as an army’s baffled strength delays,
Standing with half its battlements alone,
And with two thousand years of ivy grown,
The garland of eternity, where wave
The green leaves over all by time o’erthrown; —
What was this tower of strength? within its cave
What treasure lay so locked, so hid? — A woman’s grave.But who was she, the lady of the dead,
Tombed in a palace? Was she chaste and fair?
Worthy a king’s, — or more, — a Roman’s bed?
What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear?
What daughter of her beauties was the heir?How lived, how loved, how died she? Was she not
So honored, and conspicuously there,
Where meaner relics must not dare to rot,
Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot?
Was she as those who love their lords, or they
Who love the lords of others? Such have been
Even in the olden time, Rome’s annals say.
Was she a matron of Cornelia’s mien,
Or the light air of Egypt’s graceful queen,
Profuse of joy, — or ’gainst it did she war,
Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean
To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar
Love from amongst her griefs? for such the affections are.
Perchance she died in youth: it may be, bowed
With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb
That weighed upon her gentle dust, a cloudMight gather o’er her beauty, and a gloom
In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom
Heaven gives its favorites, — early death; yet shed
A sunset charm around her, and illume
With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead,
Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red.
Perchance she died in age, surviving all, —
Charms, kindred, children, — with the silver-gray
On her long tresses, which might yet recall,
It may be, still a something of the day
When they were braided, and her proud array
And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed
By Rome, — but whither would conjecture stray?
Thus much alone we know, — Metella died,
The wealthiest Roman’s wife: behold his love or pride!~Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Cantos 99–103
This road provides a connection between the past and the present, a connection that has lasted for thousands of years. So listen closely, and perhaps it will tell you a story.
Emma Wynne is a 2018–19 Paideia Rome Fellow. A graduate of Christendom College, she wrote her thesis on compassion and justice in Vergil’s Aeneid.
