Decumanus Maximus

About

Ostia's main east-west street, running from the Porta Romana through the Forum to the Porta Marina near the ancient shoreline, and continuing beyond the walls toward Rome as the Via Ostiensis. Its line goes back to the original castrum (fortified settlement, traditionally 4th century BCE, precise founding date disputed) and it remained the town's principal commercial and processional axis throughout antiquity, lined by shops, baths, and civic buildings by 117 CE. Point marks a representative location on the street near its crossing with the Cardo Maximus at the Forum, not the whole route (a single Point cannot represent a linear street; treat this as an anchor/label point only).

What happened here

The surface is cambered, drained on both sides, and built to be repaired rather than to last forever. Milestones give the distance to the nearest town and the name of the emperor who last paid for resurfacing. Traffic is mostly feet and hooves; wheeled freight is slow and heavy and, in some towns, banned during daylight. Official messengers use the state relay and change horses at posting stations set roughly a day apart, which is what makes the empire governable. Everyone else walks about twenty miles a day and stops at an inn of doubtful quality. Tombs, shrines and roadside bars line the approaches to any town. Bandits are a real risk on quiet stretches and the army patrols the worst of them.

Sources

• https://www.ostia-antica.org/dict/topics/walls/walls.htm
• https://www.romeartlover.it/Ostia1.html
• Russell Meiggs, Roman Ostia (Oxford, 2nd ed. 1973), ch. 2