Peace, Paved in Stone

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Portrait of the emperor Augustus · Roman, Early Imperial, ca. 14–37 CE
Augustus called himself 'first citizen,' but his portraits filled the empire, reminding everyone who held power.

Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE did not restore the Republic his killers hoped to save. Instead, it triggered another round of civil war, which ended when Caesar's adopted heir, Octavian, defeated his remaining rivals and became Rome's unquestioned leader. In 27 BCE, the Senate granted Octavian the title Augustus, meaning roughly "the revered one," and while he carefully avoided calling himself king or emperor outright, he held more personal power than any Roman before him. His rise marked the beginning of the Roman Empire and the start of the Pax Romana, a period of roughly two hundred years of relative peace and stability across Roman territory.

That stability allowed Rome to invest heavily in infrastructure and law on a massive scale. Roman engineers built a network of roads stretching tens of thousands of miles, connecting the empire's farthest provinces to Rome itself and allowing armies, officials, and trade goods to move with unprecedented speed. Aqueducts carried fresh water across valleys and into cities using nothing but carefully calculated gradients and gravity, some still partially standing and functional today. Roman concrete, resistant to seawater in some formulas, allowed construction of structures like the Colosseum and Pantheon that have survived nearly two thousand years.

Alongside physical infrastructure, Rome developed an extensive body of law addressing property, contracts, family relationships, and criminal justice, gradually codified and refined over centuries. Roman legal principles, including ideas like written, publicly known laws and the notion that an accused person deserved a defense, heavily influenced the legal systems of many countries that followed, including much of Europe and, indirectly, the United States. Few classical civilizations left behind institutions as directly traceable in the modern world as Rome's roads, engineering, and law.

Roman roads deserve a closer look. At its height, the network included about 50,000 miles of hard-surfaced highway, built in layers of stone, gravel, and paving so carefully that sections still exist today. The roads let the army march quickly to the frontiers to stop invasions and rebellions. They let officials carry messages, collect taxes, and govern distant provinces from Rome. Merchants used them to move goods, and travelers carried the Latin language, Roman law, and later Christianity along them. By connecting every part of the empire, the roads helped hold a huge and diverse territory together, which is why people still say that all roads lead to Rome.

The Pax Romana reached its peak under a series of rulers later known as the Five Good Emperors, beginning with Nerva in 96 CE and ending with Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE. These emperors were skilled administrators who chose capable successors instead of simply passing power to a son. Under Trajan, the empire reached its greatest size in 117 CE. Hadrian strengthened its borders, building Hadrian's Wall across northern Britain, and trade, building, and prosperity spread across the provinces.

Roads, aqueducts, and amphitheaters such as the Colosseum, which could hold about 50,000 spectators, are the signature technological achievements of ancient Rome. Aqueducts in particular changed daily life. By carrying fresh water from distant hills into cities, they supplied public fountains, baths, and toilets, improved sanitation and health, and allowed the city of Rome to grow to perhaps a million people.

Rome's ability to conquer and govern so much of western Europe rested above all on its army. Roman legions were professional, well-trained, and highly disciplined soldiers who built fortified camps every night and roads behind them as they advanced. Once an area was conquered, Rome tied it to the empire with roads, Roman law, local governors, and in time Roman citizenship for loyal provincial peoples.

At its greatest size, the Roman Empire completely surrounded the Mediterranean Sea, which Romans proudly called mare nostrum, our sea. Rome also borrowed heavily from Greece, its neighbor across the Mediterranean, whose ideas shaped Roman architecture, mythology, and government. Romans worshipped Greek gods under new names, copied Greek columns and temple designs, and studied Greek thinking about government. But the Romans perfected an architectural element of their own, the rounded arch, which let them build bridges, aqueducts, and domes larger and stronger than ever before. Roman writers such as Cicero, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil made major contributions to literature, and Rome's language, Latin, grew into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian.

Adapted from Studio Aletheia's World Builders Academy curriculum library, drawing on classical world history resources on the Roman Empire and the Pax Romana.