Why the roads of the Roman Empire had no curves?

For an empire as great as it was in Rome at the time when it was more splendour to create a communication capable enough to fulfill its function in the best way was something quite vital as more and more lands were conquered and they had to move to different parts of their empire, also to provide supplies to the troops, among other things.

Although the fact of creating roads in antiquity was a fairly simple task since they only consisted of dirt roads without anything else. Not very different from those of Rome at first. Much later, the use of stone as a road material was implemented in different cases, although it should be noted that the Romans were not the pioneers when it came to implementing such material, because the Babylonians had used it much earlier, but within that, to emphasize that they were nothing compared to the routes so complex and long distances that were elaborated by the Roman Empire.

The Romans, as can be mentioned throughout history, stood out for their quality and they were quite efficient, not only when building their highways, but also militarily speaking, these roads that they set out as an alternative to the communication that they had to exercise in their empire that each time became bigger, they could also be used by the common people not only they were of exclusively military use.

During the IV century the Romans began to evaluate that more and more their empire was expanding in a vertiginous way and more and more it was difficult to fight against a more distant enemy with what constantly came to have problems of supply, for which they urged of a road communication system that would allow them to cross rivers by means of bridges and at the same time pass their resources of supplies to the troops that fought in the most recondite parts of the empire.

It was not until almost the end of the 4th century that the first construction project was started, the first and one of the largest Roman roads, the path to the road was from Via Apia to Brindisi. The main function that was given to this great highway was of armamentistic type, because they wanted to solve problems of shortage of supplies of the troops due to the constant fights in which the Romans were immersed especially against the most distant regions that the Romans wished to submit .

It is then that the best solution was clearly to improve the road communication system, because it was more than necessary militarily speaking

But there was something quite curious about the roads made by the Romans, and that for them there were no curves no matter what they had ahead, it could be a precipice, mountains or a river they always looked for the shortest way build your way without making a curve

But perhaps at this point you would ask yourself, why did they do this? Well, all their problem was in the systems used when creating their paths, they used objects that signaled and it was easier for them to see them in a straight line. The Romans could perfectly curve because the geometry was very good, because they had been teachers to the Greeks, but as I had mentioned much earlier the Romans were practical and it was easier to do it straight, so to speak, although the most of its roads were built in a straight way, if there is a minimum proportion of elaborate roads that have curves.

 

The building materials mostly used by the Romans at the time of building their roads were volcanic ash, was very abundant in the area, also used tiles that was what covered the road, sand and gravel.

It should be noted that they also used animals such as horses that dragged the rollers to flatten the land and then put the layer of stones mentioned above. Another very interesting fact is that they somehow tried to implement signaling in a primitive way, obviously not like the signaling system of today, which was limited to giving information about the road and who had built it as well as its distance.