accommodation
will be provided. A good-sized ship might reach 200 feet in length by
50 in breadth. One of them brought to Rome the great obelisk which now
stands in the Piazza of St. Peter's; another ship had brought another
obelisk, 400,000 bushels of wheat and other cargo, and a very large
number of passengers. At a favourable season, and with a quite
favourable wind, the ship may expect to reach the Bay of Naples in as
little as eight or nine days: sometimes it will take ten days,
sometimes as many as twelve. The ship may either proceed directly
south of Crete, or it may run across to Myra in Asia Minor, or to
Rhodes, and thence proceed due west. As a rule the ancient navigator
preferred to keep somewhat near the shore. Other ships, picking up and
putting down cargo and passengers as they went along, would pass up
the Syrian coast, calling at Caesarea, Tyre, Sidon, and other places
before passing either north or south of Cyprus. From such a ship it
might be necessary--as it was with St. Paul and the soldiers to whose
care he was committed--to tranship into another vessel proceeding
directly to Italy. If, as we have imagined, the traveller is on a
cornship of the Alexandria-Puteoli line, he will reach the Bay one day
after passing the straits of Messina, and his vessel will sail proudly
up to port without striking her topsail, the only kind of ship which
was permitted to do this being such imperial liners.

There were other famous trade routes of the period. One is from
Corinth; another from the Graeco-Scythian city at the mouth of the Sea
of Azov, whence corn and salted fish were sent in abundance; a third
from Cadiz, outside the straits of Gibraltar, by which were brought
the wool and other produce of Andalusia; a fourth from Tarragona
across to Ostia, the regular route for official and passenger
intercourse with Spain. Yet another took you to Carthage in three
days. Across the Adriatic from Brindisi you would reach in one day
either Corfu or the Albanian coast at Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), where
began the great highroad to the East. Given a fair wind, your ship
might average 125 or 130 miles in the twenty-four hours, and, if you
left Rome on Monday morning, you had a reasonable prospect of landing
in Spain on the following Saturday. From Cadiz you would probably
require ten or eleven days. There was, it is true, no need to come by
sea from that town. There was a good road all the way, with a
milestone at every Roman