n. Though we have but meager
accounts of the internal affairs of Carthage, there can be no doubt that
much attention was given, both at home and in the colonies, to the
construction of highways, which were distinguished for their solidity.
It is said that the Romans learned from the Carthaginians the art of
paving roads.

European history began in Greece, the civilization of whose people
passed to the Romans and from them to the other Aryan nations which have
played an important role in the great historical drama of modern times.
The physical features of the Balkan Peninsula were an important factor
in the formation of the character of its inhabitants. The coast has a
large number of well-protected bays, most of which form good harbors.
Navigation and commerce were greatly stimulated in a country thus
favored by Nature. Nearly all the principal cities of Hellas could be
reached by ships, and the need of internal thoroughfares was but little
felt. Nevertheless, public highways connected all of the larger towns
with the national sanctuaries and oracles, as Olympia, the Isthmus,
Delphi and Dodona. Athens, after the Persian wars the metropolis of
Greece, was by the so-called Long Walls connected with the Piraeus, its
harbor. This highway, protected by high walls built two hundred yards
apart, was over four miles long, and enabled the Athenians, as long as
they held the command of the sea, to bring supplies to their city, even
when it was surrounded by an enemy on the land.

Rome is the connecting link between antiquity and mediaevalism. The great
empire sprang from a single city, whose power and dominion grew until
it comprised every civilized nation living upon the three continents
then known. Under the emperors, the Roman empire extended from the
Atlantic to the Euphrates, a distance of more than three thousand miles,
and from the Danube and the English Channel to the cataracts of the Nile
and the Desert of Sahara. Its population was from eighty to one hundred
and twenty millions. The empire was covered with a net-work of excellent
roads, which stimulated, together with the safety and peace which
followed the civil wars, traffic and intercourse between the different
regions united under the imperial government. More than 50,000 miles of
solidly constructed highways connected the various provinces of this
vast realm. There was one great chain of communication of 4,080 Roman
miles in length from the Wall of Antoninus in th