Safety

While the maintenance of the great roads in Italy was entrusted to special officials of pretorian or even of consular rank,t the care of the roads in the provinces was part of the duty of the provincial governors. At important points, and especially at knots in the road system, permanent military guards in special guard-houses were stationed.

These stationes were charged not merely with the care of the roads, but still more with the keeping of them safe from robbers or brigands, and in general with the safety of the public in the region around. In the more important stationes, at least, the commander was a centurion regionarius. A soldier in such a statio was called stationarius.§ On the sub- ject, see O. Hirschfeld in Berl. Sitzwngsber. 1891, p. 864 f.; Mommsen, Strafrecht, p. 307 ff., esp. p. 312; Domaszewski, Om. Mittheil.

Instit. 1902, p. 330 ff. Thus the charge of the roads was closely con- nected with the maintenance of peace and order in the districts served by the roads; and there grew up in the later time a tendency to name some districts of Italy according to the great road which connected them with Rome. * Cicero, ad Q. frat. iii, 1.185 17.25; ad Att. iv. 17. 3. t Cicero, ad Fam, xii. 25. 1 ;~ Curators of the greatest roads, sometimes consulares.

§ The name statio was used widely in military service ; but stautionarius was practically restricted to stationes for police duty and public safety, and the use of the word belongs to a ‘ater period than the NT. But, in spite of these attempts to keep the peace along the roads, there was a considerable amount of insecurity. ‘The inscriptions often mention guards or travellers slain by robbers.

* Juvenat speaks of the brigands of the Campanian roads, who when actively pursued in their usual haunts find it the safest course to take refuge in Rome itself (Sat. iii. 306 f.) The case described in Lk 108) was no uncommon one. St.

Paul’s ‘ perils of robbers’ (2 Co 11%’) were very real: it was espe- cially in journeys through mountainous districts, where roads were not carefully guarded, that he had experienced those dangers, as Ac 13/451 1424 168; but there was sometimes danger on the most frequented roads. Poorer travellers were those who suffered most, as was natural; the rich had large trains: important persons were granted an escort in some cases, e.g. Lucian was escorted by two soldiers through Cappadocia (Alex.

55). The Roman roads were probably at their best during the Ist cent., after Augustus had put an end to war and disorder. In the troublous period at the close of Nero’s reign, disorder crept in again ; and it is doubtful if the Flavian rule ever suc- ceeded in repressing it so completely as Augustus had done. ‘Thus St. Paul travelled in the best and safest period, and yet the roads even then were in some places far from safe (though probably this was only in exceptional parts).

In the decay of the Empire and the general relaxation of order during civil wars and during the growing weak- ness of administration in the 3rd cent., travelling was much less secure. On the whole subject see Friedlander, p. 46 ff.; O. Hirschfeld, ‘die Sicher- heitspolizei im rom. Reich’ (Berl. Sitzungsber. 1891, p. 845 ff.), ‘die aegypt. Polizei der rom. Kaiserzeit’ (2b. 1892, p. 816 ff.)

The Roman roads only traversed properly organ- ized provinces, and not either foreign countries or territory not yet administered on thorough Roman principles, such as Cappadocia. ‘That province oc- cupied a peculiar position in the Roman Empire, as we have described it above, § viii. In the Pauline time, therefore, there was no Roman road lead- ing across it from Ancyra to the Cilician Gates. That road could not have been made before A.D.

74, when Vespasian made Cappadocia into a fully organized province. There was one remarkable exception to this general rule. The road from Derbe to Tarsus led almost entirely through non-Roman _ territory (governed in St. Paul’s time by Antiochus IV.) Yet that road had been necessary for Roman com- munication with the province Cilicia ever since that province was organized in B.c.

104, The precise authority which Rome exercised along the road, and the relation between Roman and regal power over it, are wholly obscure. It was impossible to leave a road, along which Roman officials and couriers were frequently obliged to travel in the exercise of their duties, entirely under non-Roman authority; and yet it seems practically certain that Rome did not exercise authority over the cities on the course of the road before the time of Vespasian.

It is in accordance with this anoma- lous position of affairs that no reference is made in Acts to that part of the road: it is wholly dropped out of sight, and the author speaks as if St. Paul passed directly from Cilicia into the Roman terri- tory of Galatia at Derbe. St. Paul and his his- torian were thoroughly penetrated by the Roman spirit, and simply ignored non-Roman, 7.e. non- provincial, territory. ii, CONSTRUCTION, MEASUREMENTS, MILE-