Via Egnatia through Thessalonica
About
Gnaeus Egnatius drove this great highway through Macedonia in the 140s BCE, linking Dyrrhachium on the Adriatic to Byzantium 700 Roman miles away, and Thessalonica was its single most important station. The road ran along the city's north edge as the main east-west artery, carrying legions, governors and traders for centuries. By 117 CE it had already carried imperial traffic for over 250 years.
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 →