Talk:Royal Road

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

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Euclid[edit]

Is there any reason to believe that Euclid was referring to the specific "Royal Road" as opposed to a metaphorical "special path" to make the learning easier for Ptolemy?Czrisher (talk) 20:59, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Far as I know, no other royal road was famous among the Greeks of the time. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:07, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Same question, hopefully more to the point: Is there any reason to believe that the persons referred to in section Cultural References referred to any real, physical road that you once could ride along on a horse? – Actually, I believe that never anybody has provided such a reason, so "by default" one just should not believe in such a "cultural reference" to a "real road," and that section should at most consider such a reference to a real road as a "possibility." – Ok, I am trying a quick fix! -- Lueckless (talk) 09:10, 24 July 2011 (UTC) – So it's a section A Metaphorical “Royal Road” in Famous Quotes now. -- Lueckless (talk) 09:39, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This should convince that neither Sigmund Freud nor Fred Brooks referred to the Persian Royal Road: In German, Persian Royal Road is Persische Königsstraße – "-straße"! When the section in question attributes "royal road to the unconscious" to Freud, the corresponing German phrase you often find is "Königsweg zum Unbewussten" (DIE ZEIT) or "Königsweg in das Unbewusste" – "-weg"! – Also, the section in question closes as "The phrase was echoed in a modern context in the essay No Silver Bullet where Fred Brooks said of software engineering improvements: "There is no royal road, but there is a road." Now, "silver bullet" in "idiomatic usage" is what "Königsweg" (literally king's way, "a simple yet optimal solution to a problem") is in German, cf. Wiktionary [1][2]. One may already conclude that Brooks referred to "silver bullet," not to the Persian Royal Road.

Freud, however, literally wrote "Die Traumdeutung aber ist die Via regia zur Kenntnis des Unbewußten im Seelenleben." [3] and »Die Traumdeutung ist in Wirklichkeit die Via regia zur Kenntnis des Unbewußten, die sicherste Grundlage der Psychoanalyse.« [4]. So when German authors attribute "Königsweg" to Freud, they are not quoting him, they are rather translating "Via regia" for readers who haven't learnt Latin. Now, did Freud refer to the Persian Royal Road when he wrote "Via regia"? I don't know, but what evidence could support this view? Via Regia, interestingly (the capital "R" perhaps is due to some Wikipedia convention), is something entirely different: "Via Regia, i.e. "Royal Highway", denotes a mediæval historic road. The term, in the usual sense, means not just a specific road, rather a type of road. It was legally associated with the king and remained under his special protection and guarantee of public peace. There were many such roads in the Holy Roman Empire [...]" I think Freud did study historic themes eagerly as a boy, but the Middle Ages? ...

-- Lueckless (talk) 13:16, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, Brooks has just been removed ... -- Lueckless (talk) 17:59, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Physical Road?[edit]

Was there a physical road, perhaps paved, which has left behind actual remains, which could be photographed, or was it just a literary device used by various writers both ancient and modern? If so, then there should be a picture of such road, perhaps with a section on archeological excavation, methods of ancient Persian road building, &c. 67.206.183.40 (talk) 02:34, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Clarification of who built the road.[edit]

The main article first says The Royal Road was "reorganized and rebuilt" by Darius and then that "Darius built the road..." Are those phrases not contradictory?

Further, when "The Royal Road was an ancient highway...", does that mean ancient in our modern view, or already ancient from Darius' perspective? -- 17:53, 10 September 2021 RobbieGoodwin

It says in the article: "Because the road did not follow the shortest nor the easiest route between the most important cities of the Persian Empire, archeologists believe the westernmost sections of the road may have originally been built by the Assyrian kings" -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:33, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is this not the Chapar Khaneh?[edit]

I feel there is some overlap - should the two articles be merged in some description? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.168.125.112 (talk) 21:48, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

They should at least be correlated. I doubt whether the term "Chapar Khaneh" is very widely known in English... AnonMoos (talk) 20:52, 13 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]