iii, (TRAVEL CONFINED TO THE ROMAN EMPIRE. —One of the main causes for that certainty and confidence in travel lay in the unification of the Empire and the profound peace and security established by the Emperors over all the Mediter- ranean world. Travellers were everywhere in their own country. Travel in foreign countries was never common among the ancients. Al- though many considerable journeys 1 foreign and barbarous lands had been made, they were
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adventurous and exceptional, and stand on quite a different platform from the easy, sure journeys which we are describing as characteristic of the early Imperial period. The Roman_ traveller travelled in the Roman world; but that world was now so extensive that his journeys could be made on a much ereater scale. Moreover, war was no longer to be dreaded ; only civil war was now possible, since a foreign army could not be thought of within the Roman bounds; and when St. Paul was travelling, civil war had long ceased to be considered as a possible contingency (though it broke out shortly after his death). Again, Augustus had exterminated piracy by sea and bri- gandage by land, as Epictetus said; and though, as we have seen, the statement can only be accepted with certain limitations, it was fairly correct dur- ing a vigorous period of provincial government (such as that between A.D. 47 and 61, during which most of St. Paul’s travelling was performed), and in the thoroughly organized parts of the Empire.
When St. Paul confined his work and his im- mediate plans so entirely to the Roman world, he was not merely acting in the spirit of his time, which he had unconsciously assimilated during his childhood as a Roman Tarsian, but he was guided by the practical possibilities of communication and travel at the time. The ‘door’ was open wide in the one direction, in the other it was closed. That the Scythian was ultimately to be included in the universal Church, was of course part of his ideal ; but that lay further away and beyond the sphere of immediate work, and, moreover, the prevalent idea in the Roman world doubtless was that the Roman rule and Empire was steadily growing wider and taking in more and more of the alien world. New provinces were continually being added during St. Paul’s lifetime. A little more than twenty years after his death, Dion Chrysostom was wandering among Scythians and Getz through South Russia and Hungary from the mouth of the Borysthenes to the Upper Danube, and soon afterwards a new province of Dacia was formed on the north of the Danube.
iv. CLASSES OF TRAVELLERS, AND MOTIVES FOR TRAVELLING.—In the NT we find a large number and a great variety of travellers: Lydia, the ‘Lydian woman’ from Thyatira, dealing in turkey- red stuffs at Philippi: * Luke, the doctor, at Troas : Aquila, the Pontic tent-maker, with his wife at Rome and Corinth and Ephesus, and back at Rome again: Bar-Jesus, the Jewish magician at Paphos : Paul, taken in many cities for a lecturer on ethics and philosophy wandering in search of fame and a situation: Apollos coming to Ephesus probably in the same way: the agents of Chloe travelling between Ephesus and Corinth, prob- ably for business purposes (Expositor, February 1900, p. 104): the centurion conducting a body of prisoners to Rome: besides these, many travellers for Church purposes, like the deputation in Ac 20 and 21, Titus at Corinth, Timothy and Silas sent to Macedonia, and so on.
There was a similar variety of travellers in the ordinary society of the Roman world. Then, as now, there was a tendency in the people to crowd into the cities: farming and country life were found to be hard and not very profitable. Officials and messengers were continually travelling back- wards and forwards between Rome and the various provinces, or from province to province, as they were transferred from one to another: centurions and soldiers in charge of prisoners, a few occasionally for trial who were Romans, most mere criminals intended for the venationes (like Paul the Roman citizen and the criminals who were conducted along with him, Ac 27): many recruits, of whom at least
* See Lyp1a (country) in vol. ifi., and TuyaTiRa in vol. iv.
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20,000 annually were needed for the armies, those of the west being filled up from the western pro- vinees in general, those of the east from the eastern (though Hadrian changed that Augustan system, and arranged a series of territorial armies with local recruiting, which would diminish the number of travelling recruits). Embassies from the cities to Rome, or to provincial governors, are known from inscriptions to have been very common, ¢.g. Byzantium sent every year two complimentary einbassies, one to the Emperor in Rome and one to the governor of Mesia, until Trajan ordered the city to content itself with letters. Travelling for purposes of education, pleasure, or health kept thousands on the roads. Vast crowds flocked to the great festivals of Greece and Italy: Dion Chrysostom’s account of the Isthmian festival is doubtless founded on what he had seen, though it is placed in the time of Diogenes.* Students flocked to the great universities, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, etc. Strabo mentions it as a peculiarity of Tarsus that no students came to it from abroad, but its lecture-rooms were crowded with native students, though some of the young Tarsians went abroad to study. Curative springs and the famous medical schools which were often attached to great religious centres (such as the temple of Men Carou, near Laodicea, of Asklepios at Pergamus, etc.) attracted large numbers of patients, often from great distances: thus we saw above that Spanish invalids visited Vicarello in Tuscany for centuries. Voyages were made for the sake of health : Gallio did so twice at least—once when he was governor of Achaia, another time long after from Rome to Alexandria (see St. Paul the Traveller, p. 261: these two voyages are often confused) : we believe that St. Paul made a similar journey to the high country of Pisidian Antioch (Ac 13"). Tourists for the mere pleasure of sightseeing were numerous, and Pliny expresses his wonder that Italian people went away in numbers to see foreign scenery and remained ignorant of the wonders and beauties of their own country (Lpist. viil. 20).