Travelling

In the NT we find a large number and a great variety of travellers: Lydia, the ‘ Ly- dian 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, probably for busi- ness purposes (Zzpositor, 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 Mace- donia, 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 occasion- ally 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 yol, iii, and Tayatira in yol.

iv.

398 ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT) ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT) 20,000 annually were needed for the armies, those of the west being filled up from the western pro- vinces 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, e.g.

Byzantium sent every year two complimentary em- bassies, one to the Emperor in Rome and one to the governor of Masia, 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, Alexan- dria, Rome, etc. Strabo mentions it as a pecu- liarity of Tarsus that no students came to it from abroad, but its lecture-rooms were crowded with native students, though some of the young Tar- sians went abroad to study. Curative springs and the famous medical schools which were often at- tached to great religious centres (such as the temple of Men Carou, near Laodicea, of Asklepios at Per- gamus, 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 Trav- eller, 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 131), 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 (£pist. viii. 20). Again, there was a great deal of emigration in search of employment. ‘This led chiefly to the great cities, and, above all, to Rome.

Inthe great city men of all nations were found; and the Syrian Orontes, as Juvenal (Sat. iii. 62) says, emptied itself into the Tiber. But in every city visitors or strangers resi- dent for business purposes were common: they came as traders, actors, and artists, physicians, magicians, and quacks, teachers of grammar, phi- losophy, and rhetoric, and so on. ‘The inscriptions of every province offer numerous exainples.

Formal geographical accounts of the products, resources, cities, and monuments of various coun- tries in the Roman world were in existence. Strabo’s Geography, written about A.D. 19, and Pausanias’s elaborate account of all that was worth seeing in Greece (written in the 2nd cent.), were the outcome of a great many previous works of similar kind. vy. ROAD MAPS, GUIDE-BOOKS, AND STATISTICS.

—Maps of the roads, lists of halting-places and distances both by land and by sea journeys, and other means whereby intending travellers could plan out and reckon their route, were evidently common. A fragment of an account, indicated day by day, of a journey through the Cilician Gates, has been found in Rome ;t ,and it is quite probable that such an itinerary on papyrus could be purchased in Tar- sus in the time of St. Paul.

Many such itineraries in more or less complete form have been pre- served, belonging mostly to a later time. But * Isthmiaca, Or. 8, By a slip his Corinthiaca is quoted in its stead in the art, on ‘Corinth’ in vol. i. p. 479. t CLL vi, 5076; Hist. Geogr. of Asia Minor, p. 68; see art. on ‘Tarsus and the great Taurus Pass’ in Geogr. Journal, 19038. similar ones were at the disposal of the geographers such as Strabo (B.C. 64-A.

D, 19), whose account even of countries which he had not seen is accu- rate to a degree otherwise impossible of attainment. Four silver vases have been found at Vicarello in Etruria, shaped like milestones, and inseribed with the full itinerary from Cadiz to Rome.

They be- long to different periods, and represent therefore a long-continued custom: they can hardly be ex- plained otherwise than as dedications made at the famous baths of Vicarello by Spaniards, who in gratitude left a memorial of themselves and their journey as a votive offering to the Divine healing power at the baths, vi. MEANS OF LOCOMOTION IN JOURNEYS BY