What is most striking about the British results is the contrast they point up between native and Roman. Where the native tracks usually follow the line of least resistance, the Roman Via Amerina is driven across any obstacle, with what Ward Perkins aptly calls “ruthless thoroughness,” whenever there is no reasonable alternative. One might almost think that the new road was built deliberately to impress; in any case the massive viaducts and lofty bridges served to symbolize to the Faliscan peasantry the Roman conqueror’s energy and resources, by which it was hopelessly outclassed. With the same ruthlessness with which they imposed their roads upon the landscape, the Romans imposed law and order upon the countryside. The archaeological evidence is the way in which the peasants shifted from their old anarchical life in small strongholds of armed retainers, which is what Grotta Porciosa must have been, down into settled life in Roman cities, or in the open country beside the Roman roads. The great primeval Ciminian Forest, northwest of Nepi, once the fearsome haunt of brigands, was cleared under the Romans and turned into farms. When after eight centuries Roman power waned, the countryside reverted to pre-Roman conditions; the country-folk crept back into the cliff-top villages, there to remain until quite recent times. These, the results of careful and enjoyable outdoor work in the Italian countryside by a United Nations of archaeologists, enable us to appreciate how the competence of the Roman road-builders made possible both the cold-bloodedness of the Roman conquest and the security of the Roman peace. * * * * *