The new road was a “street” built up of _strata_.
There was never much trouble in getting men to work on these highways after they saw the convenience of them. They could not have built them for themselves, because they had not Calvo’s eye for the right place or his knowledge of every kind of stone and other road material. The roads led out from Rome like the spokes of a wheel, but Calvo did not build any roads from town to town. He said it was better not to.
There came to be a proverb that all roads lead to Rome. Calvo’s object in roadmaking was to make it easy for outsiders to reach the city and return. He was not concerned about their visiting one another. The natural result was that Rome got all the trade of a growing country.
Another consequence of Calvo’s road-making system was that it would have been very difficult for the outlying settlements to join in any attack against Rome itself, because they could not reach their neighbors half as easily as they could reach Rome. Calvo saw—what most generals have to see if they are to have any success in fighting—that wars are won by the feet as well as the weapons of an army. The quicker they march and the less strength they have to expend on getting from one place to another, the better the soldiers will fight. It came to be almost second nature for any Roman to look out that the roads were in good condition, and a general on the march took care that he did not go too far into an unknown country without leaving a good road over which to come back.
In the course of their wandering about, before they found a place for their home, the colonists had not only learned the importance of good water but had found out where some of the springs and wells were. Here and there, as he discovered a good place for a camp, Calvo caused a rude shelter to be built, where any Roman could find a place to sleep and make a fire. On some of the roads he and Romulus took counsel together and planned the erection of a kind of barrack, so that if they sent a company of troops out that way there would be a place which they could occupy as a shelter, and if necessary hold against an enemy. They were not exactly houses, or forts; they were known as _mansiones_,—places where one might remain for a night or two. The practical use of these places proved so great that the plan was never given up, and _mansiones_ were built at the end of each day’s march, in later ages, wherever the Roman army went. But in the beginning there was only a rough shelter like the khans of Eastern countries,—walls and roofs, to which men brought their own provisions and bedding, if they had any. People had these places of refuge long before there was any such thing as a tavern or hotel known in the world.