Naissus Road Junction
About
Naissus stood where roads met and split four ways: north to Viminacium and Singidunum, west toward the Adriatic, south to Thessalonica, and east through Remesiana to Serdica and beyond. The Via Militaris backbone linking these routes was substantially built up under Trajan, putting a functioning road station here by 117 even though the town itself had no city charter yet. Travelers relied on it as a stopover for lodging and remounts on the long haul between the Danube and the Balkan interior.
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
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →