The rates which we have found reason to ac- cept as customary may seem slow, but they are probably quite as great as is consistent with the climate and the character of the people. Travel was performed. chiefly in the summer season, and there is no doubt that the day’s journey began early in the morning, and that a stop was made by noon, after six hours (25 miles) ; while, in the case of ordinary travellers who were not in a hurry, it is probable that no second journey was begun after the heat of the day was passed.* Couriers and rapid travellers did one stage before noon and a second in the evening, each of five hours, 25 miles. As has been pointed out in art. TYRANNUS in vol. iv. p. 822», ordinary people regarded the day’s work in summer as finished by the fifth hour, one hour before noon, though active, energetic persons still kept up the older Roman strenuous custom of a distinctly longer day.
Practical experience will show that walking 16 miles or driving 25 miles day after day without intermission, in the hot season, is quite sufficient for the strength of the ordinary man, and that only men of more than average strength and en- durance can stand a long course of riding 50 miles perday. We have quoted the testimony of experi- ence as to the rate of walking journeys; and as to carriage travelling, the following may be quoted from a Times telegram from the Transvaal about a journey performed in a carriage, with all the careful equipment that can now be commanded, in January 1903: ‘Mr. Chamberlain’s journey to-day amply testified to his physical strength and. powers of endurance. The thirty miles constitute a for- midable trek . . . and the sun proved very trying.’ On the other hand, in the wet season or the winter a long course of travelling is even more fatiguing, from other reasons. During that period very few travellers except government couriers and carriers of goods would be on the road.
The question might be raised whether during the most temperate months of the year a quicker rate of travelling was required of the post couriers. The evidence at our disposal does not permit a certain reply ; but it is most probable that the rate was uniform for the whole year. Every season offers, or may offer, its own special hindrances to rapid travel ; and it would be necessary either to
thinks of five days as the post-distance. The distance is 214 miles in the Antonine Itinerary; but Friedlander gives 224. From Mutina to Rome he gives 317: the Antonine has 313, but even this seems too great (Cic. ad Fam. xi. 6. 1; Philost. Apoll. Tyan. vii. 41).
* Even in the Republican period it was not thought idle to be ready for the principal meal (after work and exercise and bath were all finished) full four hours before sunset.
have one uniform rate, or to estimate the proper rate for each journey separately according to the weather and circumstances, which would be absurd.
x. THE CENTRAL ROUTE BETWEEN ROME AND THE EAst.—The routes which we have described were those by which goods were sent, and which were, as a rule, employed by travellers contem- plating a steady, continuous journey, without halts. Travellers along the land route were in- deed able to stop when they pleased, or when it was necessary to do so; but as a rule they under- took the journey for the sake of reaching Italy, and not with any thought of staying in the little civilized and rather inhospitable regions through which the Egnatian Way led. Thessalonica, Philippi, and a few other towns on that part of the road were doubtless much like the ordinary second or third rate cities of the Grecized countries east of the Aigean Sea; but west of Thessalonica the traveller passed into half- barbarous lands, where there was no temptation to stop, though occasionally (as was the case with Aristides through sickness, see p. 384) a halt was unavoidable. Onthe sea route there was, as we have seen, rarely any opportunity of stopping (except in Crete during a winter detention).
But the route most favoured by those travellers who intended to make halts by the way, whether for business or for pleasure, passed across the Isthmus of Corinth and through Ephesus, the two great business and commercial centres of the Aigean world. This was in many respects the greatest and most typical road to the East, most patronized by tourists and travellers, and by far the most important in the history of eae! Chris- tianity ; for along that road, incomparably more than by any other, travelled and intermingled the thoughts, the inventions, the intercommunication, of the busiest parts of the ancient world. Thus, as we have seen, the sea routes carried Christi- anity direct to Rome, and did not affect the lands and cities by the way except Crete. The over- land route, also, was not very important in the diffusion of Christianity. Philippi and Thessa- lonica, two early centres of the new religion, were Christianized almost, as it might seem, accident- ally, and hardly anything is known with regard to any important development along the road, nor did those two cities play any leading part in early Christian history. But Ephesus and Corinth are critical points in that history, and continued to be centres of activity and development for many centuries.