The Roads of the Romans (Getty Trust Publications: J. Paul Getty Museum)While the ancient Romans were not the first society to construct a system of great roads, they did introduce important technical advancements and develop a highly organized and pervasive network that joined their territories in a gigantic web. Spanning over 50,000 miles and three continents, the network was a defensive matrix as well as a means to integrate the provinces into their empire. Without it, the empire would never have grown so vast or