Out of the military necessity, Romans developed their roads systems. To defend the frontiers, the army of the Romans march from the city, this happened in the early years of the expansion of Rome. It became very dangerous to move supplies and troop's very long ways as the empire grew. A road that took over a hundred years to build and stretched south from Rome to Capua, was the Romans first ever road it was called “Via Appia.” The Romans started building the Via Appia in 312BC. After nine hundred years when the road was still there a historian called Procopius said the road was a great sight to the world. A strange thing was that the road was in perfect condition even after nine hundred years; none of the stones were worn out and damaged. The Via Appia stretched about eighty five thousand kilometres and was the first link in a big network, the road reached every corner of the whole empire. These routes formed a basis railway line of modern Europe. The roads helped troops, merchants and trading get to all parts of the empire easily. Roads helped provinces unite and keep them under control. To build a road Romans looked for the straightest, flattest and shortest route. To search for a right place to build a road the Romans used lighting fires, beacons or flares, using a groma or observing carrier pigeons. All the trees were cleared and a trench was buried about one metre deep filled with layers of stone. Ditches and camber (raised curved surfaces) were building to drain away water so it won't crack or damage the road with water.
There is a saying that all roads lead to Rome, however this saying was true once. The Roman engineering of the roads network was the greatest of the time. Starting from the centre of Rome which was called miliarius aurem, fifty thousand miles of road were radiating to the centre. Romans were first to have started the Road network, the Romans needed roads just like Egypt needed the Nile River. Roads made a lot of things easier to do; however travelling on roads at night was not a good idea. At road side inns there would be fights and murders, so a person would travel with someone at night. The Romans road system also helped other civilisations in later years as well. Imagine what life would have been now if the Romans hadn't invented roads, we probably would have had a harder life without the use of roads. So Romans helped us a lot in the great invention of the roads network.
Ancient Roman Religion
The Roman religion was called Pagan, this religion supported gods of various elements of nature such as earth, sky, sea, sun. The Romans spent most of their lives to please their gods; they did this because they believe that the gods had a good influence over their fates and lives. To please their gods well, they believed that rituals and rites should be done. These rituals and rites aren't performed just to please their gods; they also performed them to appreciate the gods work. The more the religion progressed the rituals progressed too. This progress in the religion formed priesthood with specific traditions and rituals. To keep the Pagan traditions, Roman people would respect the Earth more. The Romans did not build mythologies like Greek did, because the Romans believed that everything had a spirit. The spirits would help good or evil for daily Roman life, so to keep the spirits happy the Romans made sacrifices and did rituals. Gods had a specific field of expertise. The god of the sun was Apollo, and there were many other gods. The most important goddess was Veata which was the goddess of the hearth and home and also the centre of family life of Romans. Farmers would usually pray to the goddess of agriculture, Ceres. It was believed that that the ancient Romans were very good copiers, this was because most of there gods came from the Greeks religion. The only difference was that all though the gods were the same as Greeks, the Rome gods had different personalities; they were more cold and formal. During rituals and sacred rites there would be two different types of priest; there would be the Priest of particular deltles and the priest for the general supervisions of religion.
After awhile the Romans expanded contact with other religions. The policy of religious tolerance was among the emperors. There were new policies introduced like syncretism which was introduced to merging of Pagan to bring together people and political stability. The Pagan religion was not only supported by Romans, but other communities that were absorbed with the Roman Empire. The ancient Roman religion was the world's famous pagan religions and the first.
