THE THIRD DAY OF SEPTEMBER IDES by Ely Asher
Traveling down the Appian Way in Ancient Rome
Traveling down the Appian Way in Ancient Rome
Consider a way from Rome to Tarentum, the city and the port on the South of Italy connected with Rome by the famous Appian Way (Via Appia). Straight distance between Rome and Tarentum is about 260 American miles (Romans had different miles) or ~ 415 km (1 American mile ≈ 1.6 km). How soon a rider on the government business will cover this distance?
According to [1] such a person would have a special document - diploma - that would allow him to stay at special places - mansiones - overnight stops where he could stay at night and change the horses. Mansiones (sing. mansio), mutationes (sing. mutatio - the place to change the horses), and stationes (sing. statio - army or road police guard-post) represented the infrastructure of the cursus publicus, the imperial post.
Mansiones were located in about 32-48 km (20-30 miles) from each other. The same sources [1] says that daily march of legionaries is about 30 km (18 miles) with up to 50 km per day (30 miles) of forced march. Apparently mansiones were located based on the same calculations. Hence horsed had to go at least twice faster or have to get night cover somewhere else.
Considering the speed of horses: walk - 4.5-7.2 km/h, trot - 9-15 km/h, and gallop >15km/h, and comparing to the human walk speed of ~4-5 km/h, we see that unless the rider had a real reason to hurry, he most likely was covering about the same 40 km (25 miles) per day spending almost hours a day on a horseback at the fast walk. Which is quite a lot, by the way.
Hence the whole via Appia should take about 260 / 25 = ~10.5 days. Let round it up for an occasional stop for a day, and we get 12-13 days or almost two weeks. Of course, courier with a reason to hurry would probably cover it at least twice faster doing double daily distance, that is about 5-6 days.
[1] Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome by Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins - Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN0-19-512332-8
[2] The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome by Chris Scarre - Penguin, 1995, ISBN 0-14-051329-9
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