How Did Rome Move Soldiers 1,000 Miles So Fast?

In 207 BC, Hasdrubal heard the Roman trumpet sound twice, and knew a second army had arrived that should have been hundreds of miles away. Rome's soldiers walked no faster than anyone else's. So how did Rome keep beating distance itself? This animated documentary follows how Rome turned distance into a weapon: the Via Appia of 312 BC and the road crews who built Rome's highways mile by mile, Vegetius' military step of twenty miles in five summer hours, route marches with sixty-pound loads, Marius's mules, Josephus' order of march with road-makers inside Vespasian's column, Caesar's ten-day bridge over the Rhine, Trajan's bridge across the Danube, eight hundred ships to Britain, Augustus' relay couriers and the cursus publicus, Caesar and Tiberius covering a hundred miles a day or more, the night march at Gergovia, and Claudius Nero's secret march north to the Metaurus that decided the war with Carthage. Sources: Livy 27.43-51 (Claudius Nero's march and the Metaurus); Polybius 11.1-3; Vegetius, De Re Militari 1.9, 1.19, 1.27; Josephus, Jewish War 3.95, 3.115-126; Caesar, Gallic War 4.17-19, 5.1-11, 7.38-41; Plutarch, Marius 13 and Caesar 17; Frontinus, Stratagems 4.1.7; Suetonius, Divus Julius 57 and Augustus 49; Pliny, Natural History 7.84; Cassius Dio 55 and 68.13; Procopius, Secret History 30; Walter Scheidel's ORBIS model of the Roman world. Ancient quotes are paraphrased; march distances, day counts and army sizes are estimates, and disputed figures are given as ranges. Subscribe for more stories from the Roman world, told one road at a time. #AncientRome #RomanHistory #RomanRoads CHAPTERS: 0:00 The Second Trumpet 0:50 Distance Was the Wall 3:08 The Road to Capua 5:40 Mile by Mile 8:10 The Military Step 10:35 Sixty Pounds, Three Times a Month 12:56 Marius's Mules 15:22 The Column That Brings Its Road 17:50 Ten Days on the Rhine 20:08 The Bridge That Was Meant to Stay 22:33 Eight Hundred Ships 24:58 Faster Than the News 27:22 A Hundred Miles a Day 29:47 The Night March at Gergovia 32:09 Claudius Nero's March 34:31 Measured in Days #RomanEmpire #HistoryDocumentary #DailyLifeInAncientRome #AncientCivilizations