The Flaminian Way extended from Rome to Ariminum and thence was carried under the name Via Aemilia through Parma, and Placentia across to Spain. While not so much traffic passed over it, because the West was sparsely settled, as over the Appian Way, it nevertheless was a worthy rival. The Aurelian Way followed up the coast through Etruria and furnished another highway to Spain and Gaul. The Ostien highway connected Rome with a splendid harbor at the mouth of the Tiber. But the Appian Way was rightly the most famous of all; it was the earliest made, it was perhaps the longest paved road, and it carried the greatest amount of traffic. The road was built by Appius Claudius Caecus--then a Roman Censor, afterwards a Consul, from whom it takes its name--to Capua, a distance of 142 miles. Later it was extended across the Apennine Mountains through Beneventum, Venusia, and Tarentum, to Brundisium, a port on the Adriatic Sea, in the heel of the boot, a total distance of 350 miles. The improvements of Appius were begun in the year 312 B.C., and carried out at least as far as Capua. Livy speaks of a road over part of this way some thirty-five years earlier. A portion outside the walls was paved with lava (silex) in 189 B.C., and during the reign of Trajan (A.D. 98-117) the Via Appia was paved from Capua to Brundisium (Niebuhr). From Brundisium (Brindis) traffic could be carried by ship to Dyrrhacium and thence over the Via Egnatio to Macedonia and the Bosphorus; or along the coast to the Grecian towns, to the cities of the Far East and to Egypt. Many are the references to the noted highway in literature; Milton, in “Paradise Regained,” book four, bids us to watch flocking to the city, enriched with spoils, proconsuls, embassies, legions, in “various habits on the Appian road.”