One well defined Roman road of antiquity (aside from the tracings of the great trunk lines like the Appian or Æmilian Ways) is well known to all automobilists entering Naples via Posilippo. It runs through a tunnel, alongside a hooting, puffing tram and loose-wheeled iron-tired carts all in a deafening uproar.

This marvellous tunnelled road by the sea, with glimpses of daylight now and then, but mostly as dark as the cavern through which flowed the Styx, is the legitimate successor of an engineering work of the time of Augustus. In Nero’s reign, Seneca, the historian, wrote of it as a narrow, gloomy pass, and mediæval superstition claimed it as the work of necromancy, since the hand of man never could have achieved it. The foundation of the roadway is well authenticated by history however. In 1442 Alphonso I, the Spaniard, widened and heightened the gallery, and Don Pedro of Toledo a century later paved it with good solid blocks of granite which were renewed again by Charles III in 1754. Here is a good road that has endured for centuries. We should do as well to-day.

There are, of course, countless other short lengths of highway, coming down from historic times, left in Italy, but the Roman viae with which we have become familiar in the classical geographies and histories of our schooldays are now replaced by modern thoroughfares which, however, in many cases, follow, or frequently cut in on, the old itineraries. Of these old Roman Ways that most readily traced, and of the greatest possible interest to the automobilist who would do something a little different from what his fellows have done, is the Via Æmilia.

With Bologna as its central station, the ancient Via Æmilia, begun by the Consul Marcus Æmilius Lepidus, continues towards Cisalpine Gaul the Via Flamina leading out from Rome. It is a delightfully varied itinerary that one covers in following up this old Roman road from Placentia (Piacenza) to Ariminum (Rimini), and should indeed be followed leisurely from end to end if one would experience something of the spirit of olden times, which one can hardly do if travelling by schedule and stopping only at the places lettered large on the maps.

The following are the ancient and modern place-names on this itinerary:

Connecting with the Via Æmilia another important Roman road ran from the valley of the Casentino across the Apennines to Piacenza. It was the route traced by a part of the itinerary of Dante in the “Divina Commedia,” and as such it is a historic highway with which the least sentimentally inclined might be glad to make acquaintance.

Another itinerary, perhaps better known to the automobilist, is that which follows the Ligurian coast from Nice to Spezia, continuing thence to Rome by the Via Aurelia. This coast road of Liguria passed through Nice to Luna on the Gulf of Spezia, the towns en route being as follows:—

Varium fl.The Var (river)
NicæNice
CemeneliumCimiez, back of Nice
Portus Herculis Monoeci Monaco
Albium IntermeliumVentimiglia
Albium IngaunumAlbenga
Vada SabbataVado, near Savona
GenuaGenoa
Portus DelphiniPortofino
TigulliaTregesco, near Sestri
SegestaSestri
Portus VenerisPorto Venere
Portus EriciLerici

The chief of these great Roman roadways of old whose itineraries can be traced to-day are: