136 The British School at Rome.
a few years back existence was hardly possible. This is the direct result
of the abandonment of the salt marshes, and of the drainage of the land.
And, in time, the same may occur in the rest of the Campagna. The
rapidity of the spread of cultivation is most remarkable, even within the
few years of my own recollection. Already that radiating outwards from
Rome has almost met that descending from the Alban hills at Ciampino,
not far to the east of the Via Appia; and it is not impossible that a
hundred years of prosperity may make the Campagna once again a huge
garden, as it was in the days of the Empire.
If this hope is realized, Rome will once more be surrounded by a
spiders web of roads, as in the days when the Campagna was thickly
populated. At present the main lines still exist and are in use, but hardly
any of the deierticula are available even for cart traffic, so that the high
roads remain unconnected, and to reach one from another without return-
ing to Rome is, except on foot or on horseback, well nigh impossible.
The object of the present papers is two-fold : to determine the course
of each of the three main roads (with their branches) which traverse the
district under consideration, and to describe the ancient remains which
exist near each road, as evidence of the inhabited character, or the reverse,
of the country through which it runs, and of its comparative importance
or unimportance. The evidence by which the course of a road may be
ascertained is of two kinds, the literary, and what we may call the material.
The first is naturally of a more general character than the latter, consisting
as it does of passages in classical writers, and of the ancient Itineraries,
which merely give the towns and post-stations on the road and the
distances between them. The material evidence, on the other hand, is that
which exists upon the spot, consisting of, first, what is left of the road
itself: the remains of its pavement, of its embankments and bridges, of
the cuttings made through the hills to avoid steep ascents and descents.
To these must be added the inscriptions belonging to it, on milestones,
bridges, &c. Then come the ruins of buildings connected with it: tombs
with their inscriptions, ustrina, where the bodies of the dead were burnt, villas
and water reservoirs bordering on the road, and so forth. It may happen,
as is the case with the Via Praenestina, that this evidence is so abundant
that the course of the road may be traced without great difficulty : on the
other hand, it is sometimes the case, especially where a modern road
coincides with an ancient one, that the only argument in favour of its