Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on the passage below.
All roads lead to Rome
A At the height of its power, the Roman Empire was bound together by a network of more than 80,000 kilometres of paved roads, stretching from the cold hills of northern Britain to the deserts of Egypt. These roads allowed armies to march quickly to trouble spots, carried officials, merchants and messages across vast distances, and spread Roman goods, laws and ideas throughout the known world. Many of them were so well built that they are still in use today.
B The first great Roman road, the Via Appia, was begun in 312 BCE by a public official named Appius Claudius, who gave it his name. It ran south-east from Rome towards the port of Brindisi, and was built mainly to move soldiers during a war against neighbouring peoples. Romans called it the ‘queen of roads’, and its success encouraged the building of many more.
C Roman engineers preferred their roads to run as straight as possible, even if this meant cutting through hills or building bridges across valleys. Before construction began, surveyors marked out the route using an instrument called a groma, a wooden pole with weighted strings hanging from its arms, which allowed them to sight straight lines across the landscape. Where a road had to climb a steep hill, however, it would wind back and forth to keep the slope gentle enough for carts.
D A major road was built in layers, rather like a cake. Workers first dug a trench down to firm ground. At the bottom they laid large stones; above these came a layer of smaller stones mixed with lime mortar; and above that a layer of fine gravel or sand, packed down hard. The top surface was made of large, flat paving stones fitted closely together. The finished road was slightly curved, higher in the middle than at the edges, so that rainwater ran off into ditches on either side.
E Not every Roman road was as grand as this. Minor roads in the countryside were often simply made of earth or gravel, and their quality varied greatly from region to region. The building of roads was paid for in different ways: some by the state, some by local towns, and some by wealthy individuals who wished to win public favour. Maintaining the network was a constant challenge, and roads in distant provinces were sometimes left to decay.
F Along the main roads, a system of stations provided food, fresh horses and a place to sleep. Official messengers of the imperial post, the cursus publicus, could change horses at these stations and cover more than 75 kilometres a day — a speed that would not be matched in Europe for over a thousand years. Milestones placed beside the roads recorded the distance to the nearest town, and sometimes the name of the emperor who had paid for the road.
G The influence of Roman roads did not end with the empire. In many parts of Europe, modern highways follow almost exactly the routes chosen by Roman surveyors two thousand years ago, and many towns grew up at the places where Roman roads crossed rivers or met one another. The proverb ‘all roads lead to Rome’, meaning that there are many ways to reach the same goal, is a reminder of how central the network once was.