Roman Roads Research Paper

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Pages: 2

Roman Roads
As we have previously seen, the Mishnah never discusses the width of private or public roads in the context of the laws of Shabbat, and these are mentioned only when dealing with ownership and right of way in tractate Bava Batra. This suggests that the definition of status of road was primarily a judicial issue and only later the language was adopted for the laws of Shabbat.
The three types of Roman roads mentioned in the Law of the Twelve Tables are public, private, and subsidiary roads[i]. The terminology used by Mishnaic and Talmudic sages reflects the Roman architectural system. For example, the Talmud discusses the status of צדי רשות הרבים - the sides of the public property. This corresponds to the description of construction of public roads[ii]:
Most roads were cambered and had side gutters or ditches to assist drainage. Some ditches were originally quarry ditches dug to obtain material for the road construction, while others acted as boundaries.
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Most important to the issue of carrying on Shabbat and the definition of public property, however, is the entry in the Law of Twelve Tables regarding the width of roads. The road was supposed to be wide enough to allow two vehicles to pass, or 4.8m which is a little less then 16 feet. In reality, the width of roads varied greatly, from 12.2m to 2.4m, or forty to eight feet. The words strata and platea, commonly used in rabbinic literature to describe public property, are also Roman terms. The word strata replaced the word via in the third century, and platea or platia (πλατεία) is the Greek word for town square. The term platea was adopted by the Romans and later acquired the meaning of