From Puteoli thus started, and to it came in, a vast body of trade. After the completion of the great works by which Trajan improved the har- bour, Portus Augusti, at the mouth of the Tiber, which Claudius had planned and in part made, that port supplanted Puteoli to a considerable extent as the emporium of the Eastern trade. But in New Testament times it claimed most of that trade, though some part (especially the heaviest goods) always went direct to Ostia without break- ing bulk at Puteoli.
All ships trading between one or other of these harbours and any part of the East passed through the Straits of Messina. Beyond that, there were the three lines—one keeping well south to seek Alexandria, one keeping as near the line to Cythera as was possible, but often tending north- wards towards Zacynthos. The ships from and to the Agean kept north of Cythera, rounding Cape Malea. Trading vessels coming from Egypt and Syria kept south of Cythera: as to those which were going to Egypt or Syria, it is probable that they kept north of Cythera and through among the Cyclades: such at least was Jerome’s course— see the end of this section. Doubtless, war vessels and small trading ships always kept north of Cythera, and crept on from harbour to harbour and island to island. Thus a very large number of vessels must constantly have been passing and repassing through the southern Greek waters.
There can be no doubt that all, or almost all, heavy merchandise travelled by this route between Rome and the Aigean or Black Sea harbours. The alternative route by Corinth required tranship- ment and transportation across the Isthmus of Corinth, which would have seriously added to the cost of freight. In earlier times, when Cape Malea was an object of dread to sailors in small ships, the trouble of the Isthmus crossing might be incurred in carrying goods, but the Roman merchant ships seem to have lost the old dread : on a gravestone at Hierapolis in Phrygia we read that a certain Zeuxis had rounded ‘Cape Malea seventy-two times. Though Nero revived the old scheme of a ship canal through the Isthmus, he was probably impelled more by the tradition than by any real apprehension felt in his own time ; and the canal would not produce any great saving in hours of voyage except to ships from (and to) the Adriatic, or Epirus, or Acarnania. These facts, or the disturbed state of the Empire soon after, caused the scheme to be abandoned; and there was no good reason to bring about its re- sumption by a later Emperor, though Herodes Atticus talked about it.
* Paulus ex Festo, xi. p, 91, s.v. ‘Minorem Delum,’ quoting the phrase from Lucilius, Sat. iii, 94 (Lachmann),
Ephesus was the great harbour of the Asian: produce, though Smyrna vied with it; and other harbours also were used, such as Miletus, Caunos, etc. But most ships seem to have put in at Ephesus, even though bound to other ports; and it became a custom for the Roman governors of Asia to land first there. This custom was finally recognized and made compulsory by a formal enactment of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. The enactment probably sprang from some complaint on the part of the great rival cities, Smyrna and Pergamus ; and the Imperial rescript marked and confirmed the recognition (perhaps originating from Hadrian) of Ephesus as the capital of Asia. Ephesus was de facto the capital of the province long before it was formally recognized as such by the Imperial law. *
Passengers, also, as well as goods went some- times by this route to the Asian coast. Pliny the younger went in this way in August A.D. 111 to Ephesus, and experienced contrary winds. There he changed ship, and went on northwards in small coasting vessels to his Bithynian province.
Trade with the Black Sea harbours followed the same route as far as Ephesus, and then went on through the Hellespont and the Thracian Bos- porus. At Ephesus it met the line of ships trading between the north Aigean or Euxine har- bours and Syria or Egypt. This latter line of ships was now far less important than it had been under the Greek kings in the last centuries B.C., when Canon Hicks thinks it safe to assert that daily ships ran on the line.+| The causes stated above prevented such trade on any great scale between the provinces of the Empire. Still there was an appreciable trade, and Diodorus (iii. 34) gives a statement of the length of voyage from the Sea of Azoff to Crete and Egypt (which, as we saw reason to think, conveys a very exaggerated idea of the swiftness of the voyage).
From this passage of Diodorus it is clear that the long over-sea voyage to Alexandria was made direct from Rhodes: with a westerly or north- westerly wind that was the natural line, and not any longer than the run from the Lycian coast. With a west wind the ancient ships could hardly have reached Alexandria from Lycia on a direct course ; now the object was to make Alexandria on a straight run. Thus we see that there were three long lines common in the Levant voyages : (1) from Rhodes to Alexandria; (2) from ex- andria past Akamas towards Myra, though the latter part of this voyage could not have been made on a straight course; (3) from Myra or Patara to one of the Syrian harbours, as in Ac 2].