Famous historical saying about Rome may be wrong, new study suggests

A sweeping new study of the Roman Empire’s vast road network is challenging the age-old saying, “All roads lead to Rome.”The study, published Sept.15 in the journal Nature Communications, analyzed roughly 190,000 miles of Roman roads spanning Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.The team combined existing data to create a new map of the Roman Empire’s road network and analyze its structure on an empire-wide scale.The study’s lead researcher, Tom Brughmans, a classical archaeologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, and his colleagues found that Rome was not uniquely central to the empire’s road network, with provincial capitals playing key roles in overland travel.Constantinople, now known as Istanbul, Turkey, emerged as a far more central hub for overland travel after Emperor Constantine made it the imperial capital in the fourth century AD.Constantinople’s location between Europe and Asia made it exceptionally central to travel across the empire, according to the researchers.Therefore, the phrase “all roads lead to Rome” — coined centuries after the Roman Empire fell — may not reveal the whole story.Brughmans told Fox News Digital that the proverb, which he described as medieval in origin, should not be taken literally — noting that none of the roads in Roman Britain actually led to Rome.“It is quite surprising how persistently this maxim has shaped popular understanding of Roman roads,” he said.“It’s fair to say our study complicates the proverb,” Brughmans added.

“I prefer to say, ‘All roads lead to Rome and everywhere else.'” Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.Please provide a valid email.

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Taco Terpstra, a professor of history and classics at Northwestern University in Illinois, told Fox News Digital the findings don’t diminish Rome’s importa...