Via Nova Traiana
About
Trajan ordered this new imperial highway built immediately after annexing the Nabataean kingdom, running 267 miles south from Bostra through Petra to the Red Sea port of Aila. Governor Gaius Claudius Severus oversaw the work, and dated milestones show the road substantially finished by 111 CE, just three years before the 117 CE snapshot. The Via Nova Traiana replaced the old caravan King's Highway with a paved, garrisoned Roman route and fixed Bostra permanently as Arabia Petraea's northern gateway and the province's chief military and trade artery.
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 →