The early history and development of the Roman road-system in Italy under the Republic has been the subject of much recent study, notably in a book by Dr. T. Pekáry of Berne and in a series of papers by Professor G. Radke of Berlin, who now promises an article on viae in a forthcoming supplement-volume to Paully-Wissowa. The aim of the present paper is to ask how far the theories put forward by these scholars can be accepted, and how much the existing evidence can and cannot tell us. Professor Radke's views are considered first—the basic criteria for his arguments in section I and the results he obtains for the individual roads in section II. Dr. Pekáry's arguments about the chronology of the early road programmes are examined in section III, and his theory about the financial responsibility for the building and repair of roads in section IV. The final section contains some positive, if tentative, suggestions about the development in scale and expense of the roads in the second century B.C., about the political importance of road-building under the Republic, and about the introduction and purpose of milestone inscriptions.

When the quaestor C. lulius Caesar began his aunt's funerary laudatio with these words in 69 B.c., he was not claiming any unique glory appropriate only to ‘imperial Caesar’, but indulging a form of family pride shared by many aristocrats in the late Republic.

Two viae Anniae are known, in Etruria and near Aquileia; another has been reasonably conjectured between Capua and Rhegium. The Etruscan Annia was a minor road and is of only peripheral importance, but the relationship of the other two roads and the date (or dates) of their construction have provoked lively discussion in Italy in the last ten years. The question is a complicated one, and perhaps does not admit of a decisive solution. However, one answer to it has recently found widespread acceptance, and I believe that an alternative suggestion, even if not formally provable, may justifiably be put forward in order to prevent the current theory from crystallising into dogma.The current theory, which rests on the powerful authority of Professor Degrassi, is that P. Popillius C.f.P.n. Laenas, cos. 132, built both the Capua-Rhegium road and the Via Popillia from Ariminum up the Venetian coast at least as far as Atria, where the milestone bearing his name was found; before his programme was fully carried out, however, Popillius' term of office ended and the commission was transferred to a praetor of the next year, T. Annius Rufus, who extended the Venetian road from Atria or Patavium to Aquileia and completed the road to Rhegium by setting up milestones, one of which was found near Vibo Valentia several years ago. Prof. Degrassi thus accepts Mommsen's identification of P. Popillius Laenas as the author of the acephalous elogium at Polla set up by the man who built the Capua-Rhegium road, and rightly rejects Mommsen's suggestion that the Venetian Via Annia ran northwards into Noricum.

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It is nearly forty years since Filippo Coarelli's brilliant Guida archeologica di Roma (FC 1974) announced the arrival of a new era in Roman topographical studies. A series of seminal monographs soon followed, on the Roman Forum (FC 1983, 1985), the Forum Boarium (FC 1988), and the Campus Martius (FC 1997). A volume on the Palatine was advertised as forthcoming, but unforeseen circumstances put that project on hold.