how did romans build roads?

Question

looking for a child friendly diagram.

Answer 1

The Roman roads were built mainly for military use. At first they were constructred with slave labour, paid for by the state. The construction went very slowly and was very costly.
After the reforms of Marius, the Roman army was used for the construction work- simply because the soldiers were paid a salary and no longer had to provide their own weapons. Also, they were "in" for a fixed time and not for "emergency service only"- so Marius put them to work in constructing roads- both as a way of strength training, excercise (later used in siege works) and a way to justify the expense of maintaining a permanent army. Construction work became very quick (a legion was 6000 men- lots of manpower!)
The roads went in straight lines from city to city. The aim was to be able to move the Legions rapidly and in all weather conditions- a very nasty surprise for barbarian warriors who fought only in the summertime. The network spanned all the Republic (later Empire)- from Iraq to Scotland
The road was mainly 2-3 layers of big paving stones on a bed of crushed rock and sand- good drainage and quite solid as a result.

Answer 2

http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/history/romanrd.htm

Answer 3

Very straight...