But that point of view was traditional among the poets; it had been handed down from the time when travelling was much more dangerous and difficult, when ships were small in size and fewer in number, when seamanship and method were inferior, when few roads had been built, and travel even by land was uncertain. Moreover, seafaring and land travel were hostile to the contentment, discipline, and quiet orderly spirit which Greek poetry and thought loved to dwell on and to recommend: they tended to encourage the spirit of disorder, rebellion against authority, self-confidence and self-assertiveness, the vavurixy dvapxla, stigmatized by Euripides in the Hecuda. In Roman literature the Greek models and the old Greek sentiments were looked up to and imitated as sacred and final; and those expressions of the Roman writers, like the Corinthian Canal and the dread of Cape Malea,* were a proof of their bond- age to their Greek masters in thought.
When we look deeper, we find underneath and behind those superficial sentiments very different views expressed by the writers who wrote in closer contact with the real facts of the Imperial world. Writers like Philo and Pliny in the Ist cent., Appian, Plutarch, Epictetus, Aristides in the 2nd cent., are full of admiration of the Imperial peace and its fruits: the sea was covered with ships interchanging the products of different regions of the earth, wealth was gel) increased, comfort and well-being improved, hill and valley covered with the dwellings of an increasing population : wars and pirates and robbers had been put an end to, travel was free and safe, all men could journey where they wished, the most remote and lonely countries were opened up by roads and bridges: such is the picture of the Roman world which those writers place before us.
It is the simple truth that travelling, whether for business or for pleasure, was contemplated and performed under the Empire with an indifference, confidence, and, above all, certainty, which were unknown in after centuries until the introduction of steamers and the consequent increase in ease and sureness of communication.
ii, TRAVEL IN THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE.— The impression given by the early Christian writings is in perfect agreement with the lan- guage of those writers who spoke from actual contact with the life of the time, and did not merely imitate older models and utter afresh old sentiments. Probably the feature in those Chris- tian writings, which causes most surprise at first
* See above, pp. 382, 389.
t Friedliinder quotes Philo, Leg. ad Gaium, 7 and 21, pp. 552, 566; Plut. de fort Rom. 2; Appian, Pref. 6; Epict. Diss. iii. 13. 9; Plin. Nat. Hist. xiv. 2, xxvii. 2f.; Aristides, Ov. ix, eis Baotréc, p. 66 (Dind. i. p. 111).
ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT)
to the traveller familiar with those countries in modern times, is the easy confidence with which extensive plans of travel were formed and an- nounced and executed by the early Christians. In Ac 16!#- a journey by land and sea through ak of Syria, Cilicia, a corner of Cappadocia,
yeaonia, Phrygia, Mysia, the Troad, Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece is described, and no sug- gestion is made that this long journey was un- usual or strange, except that the somewhat heightened tone of the narrative in 167° corre- sponds to the rather perplexingly rapid changes of scene and successive frustrations of St. Paul’s in- tentions. But those who are most intimately acquainted with those countries know best how serious an undertaking it would be at the present time to repeat that journey, how many accidents might occur in it, and how much care and thought would be advisable before one entered on so exten- sive a programme.
Again, in 18” St. Paul touched at Ephesus in the ordinary course of the pilgrim-ship which was conveying him and many other Jews to J erusalem for the Passover. When he was asked to remain, he excused himself, but promised to return as he came back from Jerusalem by a long land journey through Syria, Cilicia, Lycaonia, and Phrygia : that extensive journey seems to be regarded by speaker and hearers as quite an ordinary excursion. In Ro 15%, when writing from Corinth, St. Paul sketches out a comprehensive plan. He is eager to visit Rome: first he must go to Jerusalem, but thereafter he is bent on visiting Spain, and his course will naturally lead him through Rome, so that he will, without intruding himself on them, have the opportunity of seeing and affecting the Romans and their Church on his way. Through- out medieval times nothing like this off-hand way of sketching out extensive plans was natural or intelligible: there were then, indeed, some great travellers, but those travellers knew how uncertain their journeys were, and they would hardly have expressed such rapid plans as a matter of serious business, because they were aware that any plans would be frequently liable to interruption, and that nothing could be calculated on as reasonably certain: they entered on long journeys, but re- garded them as open to modification or even frustration: in indicating their plans they knew that they would be regarded by others as attempt- ing something great and strange. But St. Paul’s methods and language seem to show clearly that such journeys as he contemplated were looked on as quite natural and usual by those to whom he spoke or wrote. He could go off from Greece or Macedonia to Palestine and reckon with practical certainty on being in Jerusalem in time for a feast day not far distant: ‘I must by all means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem; but I will return again unto you, if God will’ (Ac 18° AV). The last condition is added, not as indicating uncertainty, but in the usual spirit of Eastern religion, which forbids a resolve about the future, however simple and sure, to be declared without the express recognition of Divine authority—like the Mohammedan ‘inshallah,’ which never fails when the most ordinary resolution about the morrow is stated.