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ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT)
to report to the governor at Pergamus ; but special orders must have been sent to. alter the usual course. From Smyrna the natural course would be to sail to Troas and Philippi; and it is certain that Ignatius passed through both of those towns, and that he sailed from Troas to Philippi.
If we could assume that the convoy travelled by the Great Highway, through Philomelium, Julia, Apamea, and Laodicea, it would be necessary to suppose that the call to Smyrna was received at Philadelphia. Had the orders to visit Smyrna been known at Laodicea, the natural course would have taken the party through Tralles and Ephesus. But it may be regarded as most probable that the Roman officer followed the direct path west from Julia straight through Prymnessus and near Ac- monia to Philadelphia and Pergamus, and that the convoy, travelling by this ordinary route, was called away to Smyrna from Philadelphia. This establishes a probability that the path Julia- Prymnessus-Philadelphia was the usual one for Imperial business under the early Empire. That path was an important Roman road in the early Empire, and less important later (see Cities and Bish. of Phrygia, ii. p. 588 f.).
The reason why the officer who conducted Tenatius (with other prisoners) preferred the land road to the direct voyage from the Syrian coast, did not lie in the season of the year. Friedliinder says the voyage from Seleucia to Smyrna was made in late autumn or winter; but, as we saw, there was no such voyage, and indeed that voyage could hardly have been made in winter: he is wrong also as to the period, for Ignatius was at Smyrna on 23 August, and is therefore likely to have started from Antioch in early July.* Accord- ing to the Acta, he entered Rome and was martyred on the feast of the Sigil/aria, 20 Dec., which would point to a later start; but no statement in the Acta as to the journey carries the smallest weight ; and that authority must be disregarded except when confirmed by other evidence, especially that of the letters themselves. Better authorities + give 17 October as the day of his martyrdom and presumably of his entry into Rome, for those two days were wrongly identified by the hagiographers : see p. 386.
We must therefore suppose that the land road was followed because it was the ordinary official route for government messages and parties; and that for Imperial administration and communica- tion ships were used only occasionally as oppor- tunity offered: that conclusion was stated on general grounds at the beginning of this section, and is confirmed by the circumstances of this special case. A similar conclusion is distinctly suggested by Ac 277° 28": it is evident that, but for the accidental meeting with a convenient Alex- andrian corn ship at Myra, the centurion would have conducted St. Paul and the rest of his con- voy to Smyrna, Troas, Neapolis, and so on by the same route as Ignatius travelled from Smyrna.
When Ephesus became the regular seat of government of the province Asia, the ordinary course for such a party would perhaps have been by Julia, Apamea, Laodicea, Tralles, and Mag- nesia to Ephesus, to report themselves there to the governor ; but, as we have seen, it was prob- ably not before the time of Hadrian that Ephesus became the official capital, as it had long been the
ractical and commercial capital of the province. ee by that time the road-system across Asia Minor was greatly developed : the roads of Galatia and Cappadocia were built on a great scale under
* See the calculation of time for the journey as given in the following section. ; + The earliest are Chrysostom and the early Syrian Martyr- ology. See Lightfoot, Ignatius and Polycarp, il. p. 416f. EXTRA VOL.—25
ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT) 385
the Flavian dynasty, when the administration of central and eastern Asia Minor was remodelled in A.D. 74. It is possible that under that dynasty the government couriers from Rome to Syria began to travel by Byzantium, Nicomedia, Juli- opolis, Ancyra, Tyana, and the Cilician Gates, though the route followed by Ignatius’s guards would suggest that the older and longer route through the province Asia was retained in ordinary use as late as Trajan’s time. But during the 2nd cent. (before A.D. 192, see below, § xii.) the Bithynian route or ‘Pilgrims’ Road’ was made official and ordinary. Already in A.D. 112 Juli- opolis was an important point on a Roman route (Pliny, Hpist. 77).