Road from the Past

Like many a latter-day political bigwig, Julius Caesar prepared for greater things to come by serving as a highway commissioner. His job was to take care of the Appian Way, the great road that stretched from Rome to Brindisi on Italy's southern coast. Laid out in 312 B.C. and already famed in Caesar's day, the Via Appia became known, in the centuries that followed, as the Queen of Roads. Many a victorious Roman legion marched homeward in triumph along its stone paving and over its skillfully engineered bridges. Wealthy Romans built their most sumptuous villas and tombs along its right of way. Along the same road the Apostle Paul trudged to his martyrdom.

With the Empire's fall, the great days of the Via Appia came to an end. Social chaos, armed barbarians and the passage of centuries left their marks along the roadside in the skeletal ruins of once great monuments. New generations raised new edifices, only to have them in turn become crumbling antiquities like their predecessors.

Axle Grease & Antiquities. But a visitor to Rome can still drive into the Eternal City along the serviceable roadbed of the old Appian Way, now called "Appia Antica" to distinguish it from a more up-to-date Appian Way running in the same direction. The 20th century, like those that preceded it, has left its mark on the ancient road. Rome's busy Ciampino airport lies only 200-odd yards away. Near a group of ancient Roman tombs, Actress Silvana Mangano has built herself a spanking new Hollywood-type villa, complete with swimming pool. Across the way from the Church of Domine Quo Vadis?, where tradition holds that Jesus appeared to the wavering Apostle Peter, an Esso station peddles axle grease and antiquities. Many a roadside vista of the old Roman campagna is now cluttered with factories, lumber yards and cheap houses.

Bristling over these desecrations, Antonio Cederna, a young art critic, last year sounded off in the respected Il Mondo, decrying alike the government, the public and the "gangsters of the Appia"--all those, in short, who permitted or perpetrated the outrages along the ancient highway. Cederna's plan for restoring Appia Antica to its pristine beauty was simple and forthright: tear down every vestige of hideous modernity.

Atmosphere Burden. Other ardent esthetes joined in peppering Italy's press with antiquarian indignation. But instead of inciting their fellow countrymen to mass revolt, Cederna and his followers succeeded only in setting most Italians to wondering just how far a nation could go in preserving a dead heritage. "The tribute we Romans pay to the past is rapidly becoming an almost unbearable burden," wrote one Italian professor. "Our narrow old streets keep traffic down to a snail's pace, but any thought of widening them is quashed by the magical words, 'historical atmosphere.'" A suggestion for turning the whole Appia area into a great park met the prompt disapproval of a former police chief who knew the difficulties of keeping down crime in Rome's parks. "What wouldn't go on," he asked, "in a new park of many thousand acres on the city's outskirts?"

Last week, winding up a three-month-long forum on what to do about the Appia, Rome's Giornale d'ltalia decided that public opinion is so diverse "as to embarrass anyone who wants to draw active and positive conclusions." Whizzing along the highroad of a new 20th century Renaissance in their motor scooters and Alfa Romeos, the great mass of Italians seemed quite content to let the old Via Appia find its own way into the future as it had out of the past. "We too are making history," said one Roman, "and who knows--maybe our descendants will find the ruins of our buildings quite as beautiful and suggestive as we find those which have gone before."

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