Pompeii’s streets show how the city adapted to Roman rule

A close look at Pompeii’s stone-paved streets has shown how traffic through the ancient city changed dramatically after it was incorporated into the Roman world.

Although often seen as a quintessentially Roman place, Pompeii was anything but. For several centuries it was actually governed by a different people known as the Samnites – and even after it fell to the Romans in 89 BC, Pompeii retained traces of its Samnite identity right up until its destruction by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.