The work went by these stages. On 27 February of last year the administrative court ordered it halted, because it was disputed whether an imperative reason of overriding public interest, which they call the RIIPM, had been sufficiently proved. So, as Gerlinger tells it, about a thousand workers were sent home and 350 machines scattered across all of Gaul. The halt lasted three and a half months. In May and June the court of appeal allowed work to resume. But recalling the machines and gathering the crews again took another three or four months, and what should have been done in summer was done in winter. Total delay: nine and a half months. The road was due to open at the end of 2025.

This is the first thing I inspect. The fault lay in the order of the rulings. Public utility, which they call the DUP, had already been decreed, after the neighbours were heard and appeals were already lodged. Then, with the machines standing in the field, a second question was raised: whether the work was needed at all. What is that but pitching camp and, with the legions already drawn up in line of battle, holding a council on whether to make war? Now, Gerlinger reports, the state has changed the order: the need for a work will be examined together with its public utility, before the work begins. Rightly, if late.

I finished the Portus Iulius in a single winter. I joined Lake Avernus to the Lucrine lake and to the sea, and trained twenty thousand rowers in safe water. Had anyone ordered me halfway through to send the rowers home and scatter the ships across Italy, Sextus Pompey would hold the sea to this day. A fleet disbanded does not come back at the same price: double the cost, double the time, a season lost. The same happened in Gaul. Appius Claudius brought his road and his aqueduct through in one censorship, because the decision to build had been made before the work, not in the middle of it.

Gerlinger further states that the company suffered more than six hundred malicious acts, from threats to the wrecking of machines, and lodged nearly three hundred complaints with the authorities. These are the contractor's own words. Who did these things, and how many convictions followed, the reports do not say. Nor do they give the opponents' reasons: what they objected about the fields, the waters or the money goes unmentioned. A prudent magistrate hears the opponents and rules before the first stone, then defends the work. Whoever breaks machines after judgment is given violates the public faith and should be restrained under the law on wrongful damage; the work should have had guards from the start.

Still, concord counted for something here: Gerlinger says the state and the local authorities stood behind the work throughout. I recall the maxim always on my lips: "by concord small things grow; by discord the greatest fall apart." One question remains. The road belongs to the company, not the people, and the extracts of the report are silent on the tolls to be charged to travellers. The remedy is at hand, and it is not new. First, rule once and quickly on the need. Next, give the work guards. Then put one prefect in charge, with money and a deadline. Last, open the road to the people at a price the people know. What slowed this road most was neither the shovel nor the saboteur, but the backward order of the rulings.

M · AGRIPPA · SON OF LUCIUS · THREE TIMES CONSUL · INSPECTED THIS