Do all roads lead to Rome?

Editor's note

Do all roads really lead to Rome? In fact once upon a time they did. In their latest in our series investigating the myths surrounding Ancient Rome, Caillan Davenport and Shushma Malik show that Rome’s road network really did place the city at the centre of the world, an idea that endured for millennia.

James Whitmore

Editor, Arts + Culture

Top story

The Peutinger Table. Reproduction by Conradi Millieri - Ulrich Harsch Bibliotheca Augustana. Wikimedia Commons

Mythbusting Ancient Rome -- did all roads actually lead there?

Caillan Davenport, Macquarie University; Shushma Malik, The University of Queensland

Today the phrase 'all roads leads to Rome' means that there's more than one way to reach the same goal. But in Ancient Rome, all roads really did lead to the eternal city, which was at the centre of a vast road network.

Politics + Society

Grooming the globe: denying fairness, complexity and humanity

Julianne Schultz, Griffith University

Making self-interest seem normal and a commitment to fairness an elite aberration has been a long-term project.
Is The Bachelor anti-feminist, or is conventional heterosexual romance the real problem?

Beatrice Alba, Monash University

A pattern of male leadership and female passivity in heterosexual romance is woven into the formula on the popular TV show The Bachelor.

Cities
Cars, bicycles and the fatal myth of equal reciprocity Ashley Carruthers, Australian National University The primacy given to the car has shaped our cities, the roads that serve them and our very thinking about the place of driving in our lives. And it's a mindset that leaves cyclists highly vulnerable.

Science + Technology

When it comes to same-sex marriage, not all views deserve respect

Peter Ellerton, The University of Queensland

Your ideas are not immune to criticism just because you express them with sincerity: people are worthy of respect, ideas are not.
When artists get involved in research, science benefits

Craig Stevens; Gabby O'Connor

When artists and scientists get together, they fuel each other's creativity and inquiry.

Health + Medicine

Artificial vision: what people with bionic eyes see

Matthew Petoe, Bionics Institute; Lauren Ayton, Centre for Eye Research Australia; Mohit Shivdasani, Bionics Institute

The artificial vision provided by a bionic eye is not like natural sight, and takes a lot of getting used to.
Health Check: do joint and muscle aches get worse in the cold?

Andrew Lavender, Curtin University

Many people complain their aches and pains get worse in the cold, but there are a number of ways to reduce that discomfort in the winter months.

Environment + Energy
Australia emits mercury at double the global average Robyn Schofield, University of Melbourne Australia is the fifth-largest emitter of mercury in the world. A huge amount comes from coal power stations – and a new report argues our pollution guidelines are hopelessly lax.

Business + Economy
The Buy Queensland strategy breaks international trade deals Giovanni Di Lieto, Monash University The Buy Queensland strategy has questionable economic logic and also explicitly contravenes a number of Australia's international trade obligations.