MILLE PASSUUM (in Greek writers μίλιον
the Roman mile, consisted of 1000 paces (passus
) of 5 ft. each, and was therefore=5000 ft. Taking (with
Hultsch) the Roman foot at .2957 met.
the Roman mile would be 1617 English yards, or 143 yards less than the
English statute mile. This = .1996 German geographical mile. [MENSURA
] The Roman mile
contained 8 Attic stadia. The most common term for the mile is mille passuum,
or only the initials M. P.; sometimes
the word passuum
is omitted (Cic. Att. 3.4
; Sallust, Sal. Jug. 100.114
): less frequently
The mile-stones along the Roman roads were called milliaria.
They were also called lapides;
thus we have ad tertium
(or without the word lapidem
for 3 miles from Rome, for Rome is to be understood as the starting-point
when no other place is mentioned. Sometimes we have in full ab Urbe,
or a Roma.
(Plin. Nat. 33.159
; Varro, R.
3.2.) The laying down of the mile-stones along the Roman
roads is commonly ascribed to C. Gracchus, on the authority of a passage in
6, 7). It is true that this only proves
that Gracchus erected mile-stones on the roads which he made or repaired,
without necessarily implying that the system had never been used before, and
there are passages in the historians where mile-stones are spoken of as if
they had existed much earlier; but such passages are not decisive; they may
be anachronisms, in which lapis
expresses the distance. (Liv. 5.4
; Flor. 2.6
; comp. Just.
.) The passage of Polybius (3.39
), which states that, in his time, that part of the high road
from Spain to Italy, which lay in Gaul, was provided with mile-stones, is
probably an interpolation.
The system was brought to perfection by Augustus, probably in connexion with
that, measurement of the roads of the Empire which was set on foot by Julius
Caesar, and the results of which are recorded in the so-called
(of the 4th century A.D., according to Teuffel, Rom.
§ 406). Augustus set up a, marble pillar with a gilt
tablet in the forum, close to the flight of steps which lead up to the
temple of Saturn, to mark the central point from which the great roads
diverged to the several gates of Rome (D. C.
; Plut. Galb. 24
). It was called
the Milliarium Aureum;
and its position is
defined as being in capite Romani Fori
(Plin. Nat. 3.66
; Suet. Otho 6
). Some remains still
exist, close to the Arch of Septimius Severus, consisting of a round
brickwork [p. 2.172]
pedestal, which is by many assumed to
have been the base of the Milliarium Aureum: a cylindrical piece of marble,
found near it, may have been part of the mile-stone. (Burn, Rome and
p. 124.) Professor Middleton, however
p. 167), takes these remains (a cylinder of concrete
faced with brick and lined with slabs of marble) to be work of the third
century A.D., and believes them to be the base of
the Umbilicus Romae,
a gilt column marking the
centre of Rome, which is mentioned in the Notitia
and also in the anonymous author of the Einsiedeln
Itinerary. This stands at the north end of the supposed Graecostasis, and
Professor Middleton places the Milliarium Aureum at the opposite end. Mr.
Burn and others make the Milliarium and the Umbilicus different names for
the same thing, but against that is the evidence of the Notitia,
which mentions both. It seems that the marble pillar
was covered, on each of its faces, with tablets of gilt bronze. These
tablets recorded the numbers of miles covered by the various trunk roads
from Rome and the names of the chief stations. The stone is called Umbilicus Romae
in the anonymous Einsiedeln
It must be observed that the miles on the Roman roads were measured, not from
the Milliarium Aureum in the forum (which was set up long after
the regular mile-stones were placed), but from the gates of
the city. (Burn, op. cit.
The Milliarium Aureum
at Byzantium, erected by
Constantine in imitation of that of Augustus, was a large building in the
forum Augusteum, near the Church of S. Sophia. (See Buchholz, in the
Zeitschrift fiir Alterthumswissenschaft,
1845, No. 100,
London also had its Milliarium Aureum,
fragment of which still remains; namely, the celebrated London Stone, which
may be seen affixed to the wall of St. Swithin‘s Church in Cannon
From this example it may be inferred that the chief city of each province of
the Empire had its Miliarium Aureum.
The ordinary milliaria
along the roads were
short marble columns inscribed with some or all of the following points of
information:--(1) the distance, which was expressed by a number, with or
without M. P. prefixed; (2) the places between which the road extended; (3)
the name of the constructor of the road, and of the emperor to whose honour
the work was dedicated. Several of these inscriptions remain, and are
collected in the following works:--Gruter, C. I.
&c.; Muratori, Thes.
vol. i. pp. 447, &c.;
Orelli, Inscr. Lat. Sel.
Nos. 1067, 3330, 4877; and
especially Bergier, Hist. des grands Chemins des Rom.
ii. pp. 757, &c., Bruxelles, 1728, 4to. An example may be seen in
the first milestone of the Appian road, which has been placed in the Piazza
of the Capitol, having been found one Roman mile from the Porta Capena.
On some of these mile-stones, which have been found in Gaul, the distances
are marked, not only in Roman miles, but also in Gallic leugae,
a measure of 1500 passus.