It is impossible that ancient ships ordinarily sailed from the Sea of Azoff to Crete in ten days. A voyage from Crete to Alexandria in four days is more credible, because ships could often have a continuous run with a steady breeze, and a lucky voyage might reach Alexandria in four days. But there is a great variety inevitable in the former part of the voyage—changes of direction, changes of wind, passing from sea to sea, and through the long narrow passages of the Bosporus and Darda- nelles, Finally, the statement that ten days was the time from Alexandria up the Nile to Ethiopia is entirely inconsistent with the tendency of all the evidence that Wilcken has collected as to the length of time needed for even great Imperial events to become known in Upper Egypt (even though in many cases the indifference and carelessness of the peasants may account for their ignorance),
In an admirable excursus to his posthumously
* See vol. iii. art. PeR@AMUS, p. 7512.
+ See Paton and Hicks, Inscriptions of Cos, p. xxxiii.
{ Diodorus is more probably speaking of ships in his own time than quoting from some Greek account of older voyages.
ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT)
ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT) 3838
published Commentary on First Peter, Dr. Hort traces the course of the messenger who carried that letter from Rome to a harbour on the south coast of the Black Sea: he considers that Sinope was the harbour, but Amastris seems more prob- able. Sinope was no longer so important a har- bour under the Romans as it had been in older times: Amastris surpassed it, and bore the title Metropolis Ponti. Moreover, if the messenger had landed at Sinope, he would naturally have visited Cappadocia before Galatia, whereas Dr. Hort has rightly argued that the strange order of enumeration of the provinces is due to the order of the messenger’s journey. He landed at Amastris, visited Pontus first, then passed through North Galatia to Czsarea and perhaps Tyana, and thence through South Galatia to Asia, and finally reached Bithynia.
It may be added to Dr. Hort’s examination of the facts, that the journey in its eastern part prob- ably corresponds to the actual order in which Christianity spread; that is to say, the new re- ligion was carried by ship to the Bithynian and Pontic harbours, and thence spread south into the northern and north-eastern regions ef the province Galatia, including inner Pontus* and the north of Cappadocia. Thus we find that this new thought and teaching, ‘floating free on the currents of communication across the Empire,’ spread first directly along the great tracks that led to Rome, as every free and natural movement of thought necessarily did owing to the circumstances of that period, and from that centre was redirected to the outlying parts of the Empire. As Christianity spread from Syria and Cilicia through the Cilician Gates, it did not radiate out west and north and north-east, but passed along the great route that led by Ephesus, Corinth, and the sea-way, or by Troas and Philippi and the overland way, to Italy.
It is extremely difficult to get even an approxi- mate idea of the time required on these courses between Rome and the various eastern provinces. There was no rule possible in this case, such as we could ‘determine roughly in the direct Alex- andrian passages, and as we shall be able to deter- mine more accurately in the overland postal route (see § ix.). The ships generally were merchant vessels, liable to minor variations in their course according to the conditions of the carrying trade, and sometimes waiting in harbours for some time to unload or take in fresh cargo, as in Ac 20. Thus their voyages were evidently slow, as a rule. Probably they were generally much smaller than the Alexandrian ships, and some would not ven- ture to do more than make short runs from har- bour to harbour or point to point, in the ancient Greek fashion: the last class of vessels had more reason to dread Malea than the better built traders. Even war vessels, which were compara- tively independent of winds, evidently required much longer time for the eastern voyage than the large Alexandrian trading vessels. ,
Statistics as to the time which despatches during the Republican period, or private letters under the Empire, required to reach a distant destination on this course, are of little value as indications of the rate of travel: there was no regular postal ser- vice, and the letter-carriers were liable to many delays and interruptions. Hence the recorded facts vary widely. Friedliinder (p. 31) uotes two cases of letters from Syria addressed to Cicero In Rome : one, dated 31 Dec., took over a hundred days in delivery; the other, dated 7 May, hardly over
* See the article Pontus in vol. iv., where emphasis is laid on the important, but often neglected, distinction between Pro- yincia Pontus on the coast (which was united with Bithynia) and mediterraneus Pontus (a kingdom at first, in Prov. Galatia tili about 106, thereafter in Prov. Cappadocia).
fifty :* presumably the latter was carried straight through, while the other was carried by a messenger who was detained on the way. The slow letter was sent during the worst season of the year, the quick letter during the best; but in the case of land travelling (if either went in that way), the season ought not to make any serious difference. Both were sent by men of high standing, who could command all the resources of the State for quick transmission ; but the period was disturbed, and the machinery of government was dislocated and liable to stoppages. The quick letter travelled at much the same rate as the Imperial postal service organized by Augustus (see below, § ix.), taking only a few days more than Imperial despatches probably required. The slow letter perhaps went by ship.