Roman Roads #9 (Posting Stations)

[Marcus Minucius Audens]

From the earliest days of roads in Europe and the Near East, after the discovery of the horse, the idea of ‘posting stations’ came into being. Essentially at the beginning these were stations where post riders who carried official mail, almost always from the King, Emperor, or the Governor of a province, could get a change of animals, some food, and water. These posting stations over the years, and the new men in office, grew to become more that mere small buildings and a corral of animals, into inns and places where a full hot meal, a place to rest and to sleep, could be had. Now, before we get too far into this, let us go back to a period of 3000 to 1200 BC, where in Mesopotamia the poet Shulgi wrote in his hymn about the Pharaoh of the time:

“I enlarged the footpaths, straightened the highways of the land,
I made secure travel, built there ‘big houses,
Planted gardens alongside of them, established resting-places,
Settled there friendly folk,
(So that) who comes from below, who come from above,
Might refresh themselves in it’s cool,
The wayfarer who travels the highway at night,
Might find refuge there like in a well-built city.

In short, the pharaoh had constructed small villages which were fortified against bandit attack. These small settlements were a type of hostel manned and built by the government. However, very often the decent of a holiday throng who descended upon the road that found for the most part at the many sites listed, no formal facilities for their food and lodging. Much like the many hundreds of people, who today, gather for various activities, they made arrangement to sleep in the open, and feed themselves as best they could. For most of these gatherings, the local populace was left the task of cleaning up where the crowds had settled for the period of their stay.

In the period of 1200 to 500 BC, the Assyrians laid down a network of roads. These roads were used regularly by the king’s messengers, as well as the army. With these messengers was a list of the names of places along the route of travel and the distances between them The Persians in the maintenance of their ‘Royal Road’ which ran from Sardis, near the East Coast of the Mediterranean, 1600 miles to Susa, the capitol of Persia. On this road, were rest houses and inns about every ten to fifteen miles. Herodotus reports on this Persian Dispatch service:

“There is nothing on earth faster than these couriers. The service is a Persian invention, and it goes like this, according to what I was told. Men and horses are stationed a day’s travel apart, a man and a horse, for each of the days needed to cover the journey. These men, neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stay away from the swiftest possible completion of their appointed stage. The first man, having covered his; hands the dispatches to the second, the second to the third, and so on, the dispatches going from one to the other through the whole line.”

Now let us come down to the Roman period and we find that those who traveled the Roads of Rome were in a great variety, from the folk who were on a vacation, and the variant wanderer, to business men, governmental officials, couriers, the legions, and even at times an Emperor with his inevitable parade. The voyager (traveler) then chose his conveyance, or riding, or use of pack animals and moved along, with his next view to find a place for a change of animals, and a place to stay or just get food and water. In this instance, his choice was very often a selection of the variety of hostels and small inns which were a very important part of the government post (cursus publicus). In the system that Augustus developed, the courier carried the message the whole way. He rode in a four wheeled carriage called a (reda) pulled by two horses, with a trace horse. There was a driver, the courier, and his servant holding a spear with a special head signifying the office represented by the courier. The courier carried a post warrant (diploma) which allowed him to get the government required services from the designated posts along the road.

Sepimus Severus changed the system drastically at the beginning of the third century AD when he added the transport service (cursus clabularis), which now required two different post warrants (diploma); the partial warrant (evectio) authorizing only transport and the full warrant (tractoria) authorizing both transport and subsistence. In the second half of the fourth century, along the designated routes at strategic intervals were inns called (mansiones or stationes) with facilities to handle imperial parties and posts maintained by the road police. In the following book, you can find a complete description of all of the myriad of facts about the cursus publicus;

>> Lionel Casson, “Travel In the Ancient World,” Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore and London, 1974 in the chapter ‘On the Road,’ Pages 182-193.

Respectfully Submitted;
Marcus Audens