of the Roman road in engineering antecedents. The Roman road 
was a by-product of papyrus and fast-moving couriers. Cesare 
Foligno has the necessary approach to this kind of problem 
when writing on “Vernacular Literature” in The Legacy of the  
Middle Ages  (p. 182): “Rome had produced no popular epics. . . . 
These undaunted builders were wont to construct their epics 
in stone; miles and miles of paved roads . . . must have 
possessed an almost emotional appeal such as the long 
sequences of single rhymed lines may have had for the French.”

Print, in turning the vernaculars into mass media, or closed 
systems, created the uniform, centralizing forces of modern 
nationalism.

*      The French, more than any other modern nation, have 
felt the unifying force of their vernacular as a national