epends upon the nature and facilities of the
means of transit. Herodotus mentions a remarkable example of speed in a
Hemerodromus, or running-post, named Phidippides, who in two days ran
from Athens to Sparta, a distance of nearly 152 English miles, to hasten
the Laconian contingent, when the Persians were landing on the beach of
Marathon. Couriers of this order, trained to speed and endurance from
their infancy, conveyed to Montezuma the tidings of the disembarkation of
Cortes; and so imperfect were the means of communication at that era in
Europe, that the Spaniards noted it as a proof of high refinement in the
Aztecs to employ relays of running postmen, from all quarters of their
empire to the city on the Great Lake. The speed of a Roman traveller was
probably the greatest possible before the invention of carriage-springs
and railways. We have some data on this head. The mighty Julius was a
rapid traveller. He continually mentions his _summa diligentia_ in his
journal of the Gaulish Wars. The length of journeys which he
accomplished within a given time, appears even to us at this day, and
might well therefore appear to his contemporaries, truly astonishing. A
distance of one hundred miles was no extraordinary day's journey for him.
When he did not march with his army on foot,--as he often seems to have
done, in order to set his soldiers an example, and also to express that
sympathy with them which gained him their hearts so entirely--he mostly
travelled in a _rheda_. This was a four-wheeled carriage, a sort of
curricle, and adapted to the carriage of about half a ton of luggage.
His personal baggage was probably considerable, for he was a man of most
elegant habits, and sedulously attentive to his personal appearance. The
tessellated flooring of his tent formed part of his _impedimenta_, and,
like Napoleon, he expected to find amid the distractions of war many of
the comforts and conveniences of his palace at Rome. He reached the
Sierra Morena in twenty-three days from the date of his leaving Rome; and
he went the whole way by land. The distance round the head of the Gulf
of Genoa and through the passes of the Pyrenees is 850 leagues; and
although the Carthaginians had once been masters of Spanish Navarre, the
roads were far from regular or good. The same distance would now be
accomplished in twelve days by a general and his mounted staff. From the
usual rapidity with which the great Proconsul travelled, C