Roman Road Built to Last

1914

Parts of Magnificent Marble-Paved Highway Across Macedonia Are Still Passable as in Days Past

We do not know how Neapolis looked in Paul's time though it must have been a place of some considerable importance, since the great Egnatian Way, a splendid road paved with marble, and which stretched all the way from Rome to this outermost boundary of Macedonia, ended here.

This road, traversing the whole southern part of Italy, from the Mediterranean to Brindisi on the Adriatic, began again after the interruption of the Adriatic at Durazzo; then it went across the breadth of Macedonia to Salonica, Apollonia, Amphipolis, Philippi and Neapolis. With all our modern pride in road building, since time began there has perhaps never been constructed such a magnificent highway as this.

After passing some large modern tobacco warehouses and some fine homes belonging to the tobacco magnates, we came to the edge of the city and faced a tremendous rock hill, seemingly composed of solid granite, on which not a blade of grass or the smallest shrub could find lodgment. Black and forbidding is this great mass of rock, like the "black hills" of Montenegro. Beside the modern road, and not more than fifty yards away in many places, the old Roman road was plainly visible.

It is now so out of repair as to be impassable, and yet in some small stretches it is as smooth and as well paved as in the ancient days, though I saw none of the marble slabs with which it is said to have been covered. I descended from our ancient chariot and walked upon some of these stones of the old road. — Christian Herald.