# all roads lead to Rome

idiom · CEFR B2

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/all-roads-lead-to-rome
Updated: 2026-08-10

## Meaning

Different paths can take one to the same goal.

## Examples

- You can solve it either way — all roads lead to Rome.
- Whichever course she picked, she would end up qualified for the same jobs; all roads lead to Rome.
- The three teams took entirely different approaches to the problem and arrived within a week of each other at almost identical answers, which is one more piece of evidence that all roads lead to Rome.

## Origin

The saying comes from the Roman Empire's vast road network — over 50,000 miles (80,000 km) of paved highways that fanned out from the capital to the empire's farthest corners, because Rome was its political and economic heart. Travel across the Roman world genuinely funnelled toward the city. It even had a literal anchor: in 20 BC the Emperor Augustus erected the Milliarium Aureum, or "Golden Milestone," in the Roman Forum — the symbolic point from which the empire's major roads were measured and radiated. The wording itself, though, is medieval rather than ancient; writers used Rome as the image of the ultimate destination. The earliest recorded version is by the French theologian Alain de Lille around 1175: "Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam" — "a thousand roads lead men forever to Rome." It entered English through Geoffrey Chaucer, whose A Treatise on the Astrolabe (1391) gives the first documented English use. Today it simply means that many different routes can reach the same goal.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.