The saying “All roads lead to Rome” – In Latin Omnes Viae Romam DuCont – is certainly one of the best known and most recurring, both in the Italian and French language, in form “Tous Les Chemins Mènent à Rome“Although it is very used, its real meaning is a lot ambiguous. Often this proverb is thought to be linked to the capillary road network of the Roman Empirebut it is only partially true, also because of course not all the streets built in the vast empire led to the eternal city.
First of all the first testimony of this saying does not go back to antiquity, but to the Middle Agesmore precisely to the XII century. The sentence appears in fact in the work of the French theologian Alano di Lille (1125 – 1202 BC), in the Latin form “A thousand Viae Duund Homines for Saecula Romam Qui Dominum Toto Quaerere Corde Volunt“, that is to say “A thousand ways for centuries have conducted men who want to look for the Lord with all their hearts in Rome“. With this figurative expression, the theologian wanted to highlight how All men looking for God in one way or another can find him. In this case Rome is simply the epicenter of Christianity as seat of the pope.
In the following centuries, to this meaning of Christian matrix Two more have been joined. The first is strictly proverbial: all roads lead to Rome in the sense that There are many different ways of reaching the same solution. The proverb, a popular saying that condenses a teaching taken from the experience, is effective in wanting to underline how a problem can be solved starting from different directions and, any choice we make, the final result will always be the same. The second, much more recenthighlights the effectiveness of the Roman road system, demonstrating how, in one way or another, Each corner of the Empire was reachable starting from the Aurean billion in Rome, A signacle located in the Forum of Rome, from which all the distances traveled by the different roads were calculated.
