Why did workers build up roadbeds and add drainage?

To help water leave instead of quickly damaging the surface (The first paragraph says layers and drainage helped keep water from quickly ruining the road.)

Why might a conquered farmer view a road differently from a merchant?

The farmer could experience taxation and control while the merchant valued market access. (The passage contrasts roads as routes for exchange with roads as tools of occupation, taxation, and extraction.)

Which statement best gives the passage’s main idea?

Roman roads combined engineering and exchange with conquest and imperial control. (The final sentence joins the network’s engineering and commercial uses to administration and conquest.)

In the passage, “extraction” means

removing resources or wealth from a place (The nearby examples of taxes, supplies, and resources moving toward Roman centers show what extraction means.)

Roman Roads: Movement and Power: Level 3 Reading Comprehension Questions

After conquering territory, Roman armies built and improved roads to connect forts, towns, ports, and administrative centers. Surveyors aimed for direct routes where the land allowed. Workers raised some roadbeds, added layers of stone, and built drainage so water would not quickly ruin the surface. The network helped troops and official messages move across a province.

Those roads were tools of imperial power. They helped authorities occupy land, collect taxes and supplies, and respond to resistance. Roads could carry resources toward Roman centers as well as soldiers toward a frontier. For communities brought under Roman rule, faster movement could therefore mean control and extraction, not a neutral benefit.

The same routes also supported travel and exchange. Traders took goods to markets, officials and other travelers used stopping places, and some towns grew near busy roads. Benefits varied by person and status; a merchant, a soldier, and a conquered farmer did not experience the network in the same way. Roman roads lasted because they joined engineering with administration, commerce, and conquest.

Comprehension questions