The Via Appia Antica, near Albano Laziale, south of Rome: the first of the great highways by which the Romans secured their military and administrative
grip on Italy, and the precursor of the network which was later built throughout the Empire. Initiated by Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 B.C., it linked
Rome with the port of Brundisium (Brindisi) in southeastern Italy.
Without direct rule, how did Rome maintain order? The answers are social and cultural rather than administrative. It was, for example, by her open
policies of corporate status and individual citizenship that she succeeded where imperial Athens had failed. The Romans remembered without shame how
the nucleus of Romulus' city had been collected from nationless vagabonds and runaways who had seized their womenfolk by main force. Historically, the
Romans' power in Italy had been consolidated through the slow evolution of a sophisticated hierarchy of partly citizen status which they had been
prepared to extend to whole communities. From the last century of the Republic this policy was followed elsewhere too, and with the enfranchisement of
non-Roman troops, the personal gift of Roman citizenship to Rome's supporters in foreign cities, the founding of Roman towns in the provinces, and the
grant of privileges or citizenship to foreign communities, a highly successful means of incorporating the most influential members of the subject peoples
in the Roman system was evolved. The citizenship carried various privileges, often, as St Paul found, of considerable personal use; but most importantly it
gave provincials access to public appointments. The subject was involved in government, and stability resulted. The wooing of the provincial elites was