Roman Roads and British Railways
We have no means of estimating the cost of a mile of Roman road by any audited account of expenses, and it is not easy to make a comparison of labour. Its cost is vaguely calculated as insignificant by the side of that of our leviathan railways. The following is stated to be the average cost of a mile of railway:
| Land | 6000l. |
| Earthwork | 5000l. |
| Tunnelling | 3000l. |
| Masonry | 3000l. |
| Viaduct and large Bridges | 3000l. |
| Permanent Iron Road | 5000l. |
| Stations | 4000l. |
| Law expenses, Engineering, Surveying, &c. | 3000l. |
| ———— | |
| 32,000l. |
If this be multiplied by 5000, which was the aggregate length of British railways in 1851 (now it is nearly 12,000), and we have the almost fabulous amount of 160 millions, a sum fully equal to ten times the revenue of all the Roman provinces in the time of Augustus.
In estimating the value of a Roman road, we have to deduct 7800l. a mile for land and law: every mile of railway cost 6000l. for land, whereas the Roman road-makers cut through the country without asking the price, and dispensed with all juries for assessing damages. Next, we must deduct 4000l. for stations; the Roman mutationes were but hovels where horses were changed; and lastly, is to be deducted 5000l. for iron, before we come to the materials the Romans were enabled to use; in other words, the materials of the Roman road and labour would not be more than half the cost of our railways, from the mere fact of certain expenses being absent, which they could not understand; but, although inferior to the Britons of the nineteenth century in the art of spending money, if judged by the present state of the science, they could not be despicable engineers—their levels were chosen on different principles, but their lines of roads passed through the same countries, and generally in the same direction, as our railways. A diagram taken from an article of the Quarterly Review, exhibiting a general view of the direction of the principal Roman roads in England, shows that on comparing one or two of our principal lines, we shall find that the Great Western, e.g., supplies the place, with a little deviation near Reading, of the Roman iter from London to Bath and Bristol; the Liverpool and Manchester, and on to Leeds and York, replace the northern Watling-street; the Eastern Counties follows a Roman way, and so of the rest.
In boasting of the gigantic steps which the art of road-making has taken in our time, we cannot afford to depreciate either the genius or the magnificence of the ancient Romans in this matter. If we have our railway under the cliffs of Dover, Trajan had his road under 2000 feet of perpendicular cliff along the Ister; if we have our 12,000 miles of rails, the Romans had their 4000 miles of chosen road, reaching from one extremity of the empire to the other; if we have our leviathan bridges and viaducts, the Romans had theirs over greater rivers and wider vales than we have to deal with; and, finally, if we had our glass bazaar, one-third of a mile long, in Hyde Park, they had a golden palace, which reached a whole mile on the Esquiline Hill. If we rise superior and look down upon the works of the Romans, it is not so much that we have gained in unskilful labour, as in science. Without the iron and the science, their works would be as great as ours; it is in mental rather than in any physical energies, that we have the pre-eminence.
We may acquire some idea of this branch of Roman economy from the following details:—From the wall of Antonius to Rome, and from thence to Jerusalem, that is, from the north-west to the south-east point of the empire, was measured a distance of 3740 English miles; of this distance 85 miles only were sea-passages, the rest was the road of polished silex. Posts were established along these lines of High road, so that a hundred miles a day might be with ease accomplished. A fact related by Pliny affords an example of the quickest travelling in a carriage in ancient times. Tiberius Nero, with three carriages, accomplished a journey of 200 miles in twenty-four hours, when he went to see his brother Drusus, who was sick in Germany.—Rev. R. Burgess, B.D.