Campanica | Monitoring Italy's Campania region around Naples

"HAUGHTY ROME, THE SECOND ROME" In the fourth century BCE, the statesman Appius Claudius Caecus wished to connect Rome with Capua, which was at that time the peninsula’s second largest city. The road that resulted—the via Appia, or Appian Way—would bear his name. But between Rome and Capua lay an alluvial plain, the Pontine Marshes, that for most of history had resisted human habitation. Early Romans desired to cross it more than they wished to settle it. Appius decided that his road project would not be diverted by a bit of stagnant water, and so he built a causeway across the marsh. The Via Appia: Elegy For a Queen | 3 Quarks Daily