This Bloody Road

The Appian Way is named so after its founder, Appius Claudius Caecus. In 312 BC, Caecus, a Roman censor and engineer, started the road to improve military supply issues to and from Rome. Statius, a 1st century AD Greek-Roman poet, said the road was often referred to as the “Queen of the Long Roads”( Appia longarum… regina viarum) due to its size, historical importance, and impressive construction. It connected Rome with Capua, near Naples, and in true Roman fashion it ignored natural contours and ran in an almost straight line for most of it’s length. It eventually travelled the full 430 miles to Brundisium, the port from where Roman ships sailed for Sicily, Greece and beyond.

Today you can take the bus from central Rome to the Via Appia, and enjoy a walk, or a cycle ride to view some of the monuments that line the route. But the road wasn’t always a place for a relaxing day away from the noise and bustle of the city. There was once a beaten and bloodied group of men, closely guarded by Roman soldiers who were force marched along this road to their deaths.

Survivors from the final battle between Crassus and the slave army of Spartacus in 71 BC, over 6000 of them were crucified along the side of this road, in batches at regular intervals from Capua to Rome, a distance of more than 100 miles. Their bodies remained in place for weeks afterwards, as a warning to others not to rebel against the state.

Karen L. G. Eisenlord wrote the following poem about that dreadful punishment:

The Crucifixions Along Appian Way

Six thousand slaves
were crucified that day
along the Roman road of Appian Way.
It went on for miles and miles,
sending a message
to those who might betray.
There for all who pass to look upon
and see the punishment
to cruel empire’s rebellious pawns.

Who fathomed that this
crucial lifeline path
to the world
harboured such a spectacle
of horror and death,
a slave rebellion
led by Spartacus –
This is what became of them.

If you listen closely
you can still hear their
yells of pain
echoing through the centuries,
until muted by their own weight
where they held no more breath
for they slowly suffocated
in the cold sinister silence that followed.

Crosses upon this famous stretch
soon vultures circling above,
their sickening shrieks
and the muffled weeping
of onlookers below.

God have mercy on them all
these victims along Appian Way.

© Oct 2023, Karen L. G. Eisenlord 

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For more information on The Queen of the Long Roads click here