Like the billboard-lined highways of today, Via Appia was a place to advertise: here, the aristocracy showed their wealth via their tombs, and the Roman Empire showed their might through engineering and punishment.
Here again it is safer in the white West to see the Palestinians as they advertise themselves as an "occupied" people denied sovereignty and simple human dignity by a white Western colonizer.
The suggestion here is that by chaperoning a female in a platonic relationship, a male might advertise his parental skills to other females, who then might consider him a worthy partner.