Since the Imperial Roman government was intensely interested in the construction of public buildings, it also granted contractors working on these structures the right to convey their materials by wagons during the day. Triumphing generals, vestal virgins, and priests could always employ chariots or carriages one would also find vehicles in the processions prescribed for particular religious festivals. There were certain exceptions as one would expect. It followed that all business deliveries were made at night while heavy, privately owned coaches which carried paying passengers and their baggage left the city very late in the afternoon or early in the morning before the sun rose. This meant that during the last two hours before darkness settled one might begin his driving. In every Roman day there were twelve hours of daylight adjusted according to the season. At one sweep he outlawed the use of private vehicles on the city streets during the first ten hours of the day. The problem faced by Caesar, however, was of a much broader scope and it took a man such as he to produce the ultimate solution. This seems to have been the result of Caesar’s legislation of 44 B.C.Ī street of shops in the Market of Trajan, one of the commercial districts where goods were delivered by wagons at night. the same restrictions on feminine riding were again in force. Twenty years later they forced the repeal of this law but during the 1st century A.D. This was included in a war measure restricting the display of feminine luxury and we can imagine with little difficulty the feeling which the ladies of Rome had for Gaius Opius, the originator of the law. For quite different reasons a law had been passed at the end of the 3rd century B.C. By the time of Julius Caesar, vehicles had become such a potential problem to the citizens and magistrates alike that something had to be done. A few broad and many narrow streets twisted their way among an intricate mesh of winding alleys and footpaths. In Rome one did not find the touch of a Hippodamus or a Haussmann. Then too, the city of Rome had grown without the guidance of a city planning commission and a master scheme of streets and byways. A comparison of problems and solutions in ancient Rome with those existing in our American cities today offers us some rather interesting surprises.įirst we must remember that the Romans handled chariots and wagons drawn by horses or mules which required more physical strength than that expected of a driver today. A late afternoon street scene in ancient Pompeii: with traffic restrictions lifted during the two hours before nightfall, the driver races his chariot between stepping stones over which two ladies have just walked to avoid the puddles of rainwater.įrom the legislative and literary material produced in the heart of the ancient Roman world, we can recreate rather accurately the situation existing in the field of vehicular traffic. And surely those who walked the streets of Rome had a few choice words for drivers. In all probability their antagonism was directed toward pedestrians, but when we come to the busy streets of Imperial Rome we find sufficient cause for drivers to become annoyed with one another as well as with pedestrians. Three millennia ago drivers swore in the streets of Egyptian Thebes and in Babylon too. Do not go back a hundred years in your mind or, for that matter, even five hundred years rather consider the time in thousands of years. But this does not make you a suffering citizen typical of the twentieth century alone, for you are only experiencing an aggravation as old as the concept of pleasure vehicles themselves. As a driver do you become annoyed with present-day traffic conditions? Most probably you do and the same may be said of motorists in all of our major cities.
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