| abstract
| - Communication over long distances was a fundamental problem in pre-industrial societies. A government needed a mechanism for acquiring information about its more distant territories and regular people often needed a way to stay in touch with friends or family living outside their immediate area. For the purposes of civil unity, the cohesiveness of a society depends in large part on the uniform distribution of information (whether on recent events, ideologies, technologies, etc.) and uniformity of worldviews (whether in the form of shared political, religious, or moral views, or a shared understanding of how the world works). Without these two things, a "society" has no single culture and is instead a patchwork of different nations (whose worldviews and knowledge are related to the degree that nations can exchange information and ideas). One step toward the ideal of information distribution is the availability of a public postal service across the territories of a society. Since the reign of Caesar Augustus, the government and army of Rome had used a nationwide postal network to communicate military reports, tax revenues, census info, foreign news, and other public affairs to the proper officials. This cursus vehicularis was exclusively for affairs of the state and private citizens were not typically given access to its services. A Roman citizen who wished to send a letter would need to be lucky in finding someone traveling to the intended destination and willing to deliver the letter. No other form of long-distance communication was available to private citizens. During the reign of Caesar Heracleitus, the cursus was opened to the citizens of the empire. By opening the cursus to cives privati (private citizens), Heracleitus revealed a source of potential profit and commercial benefit to Rome. The new postal service used two systems of transportation: the cursus velox (swift service) employed messengers going on horseback, carrying military reports in a distinct baton, administrative messages in a purse slung over a shoulder, and private letters in saddle bags; and the cursus clabularis (cheap service) employed mule-driven carts carrying letters and packages along the mail routes. A regular journey on the cursus velox was broken into stages involving two independent transfers: (1) switching the horse and (2) switching the courier. An urgent report from the military to the emperor required the original courier to continue the journey concurrently to Rome, even after passing on the baton to another courier. In this way, the report itself would arrive in Rome as swiftly as possible and the emperor would still receive an oral account from someone with first-hand knowledge. A courier changed his horse every time he reached a mutation (change station) on his journey. Before Heracleitus opened affairs to the public, the average distance between two mutationes in the cursus was about 12 km (~8 Roman miles). Existing routes did not get modified but new routes had mutationes separated by precisely 10 Roman miles (~15 km). Depending on its frequency of use, a mutation would have anywhere from ten to forty horses, maintained by a proportional number of grooms. As for the courier himself, he passed his deliveries onto a fresh messenger after about six hours of straight travel, allowing the system to maintain a constant flow of messages throughout the entire empire. Such an exchange happened at one of the regular mansiones (rest stations) along courier routes. These stations were privately managed lodges that were equipped to provide food, lodging, and smithing for weary travelers of any kind. Its manceps (tenant) provided services to couriers without charge, under the conditions of his rental of property from the state. Before implementing this system, the Senate had to work out deals with existing homeowners to house couriers of the cursus vehicularis but Heracleitus arranged for the purchase of land and construction of new facilities that could be rented as tabernae (taverns) to prospective managers. Every mansion operated as a mutation for the cursus, carrying the appropriate number of horses for the fresh courier. Under these parameters, the cursus velox could deliver a message at a reliable and fast pace. Switching horses took ~10 minutes and a horse only needed to be switched after a ~40 minute trip. On this leg of a journey, a courier covered an average of 15 km. Assuming some delays, such as chit-chat, this data implies that the service could transport messages a respectable 375 km every day at a minimum. News of unrest in Athenae would reach Rome in a mere six days, where earlier methods would take two weeks to cover the same distance over land. This drastic increase in the rate of transportation would not have been possible without the ability to profit from the increased capacity of the network, from its opening to private users. However, only major routes benefitted from this speed and messages starting on the outskirts of the system had to reach a mansion by less efficient means of transport before they could, as it were, ride the wave of couriers. Unfortunately for your average Gaius, the cursus velox was far too expensive for his needs. A citizen could have a letter delivered to any major city in the empire over the fast service for a fee of 20 denarii. At this price, it is fortunate that there was another service dedicated to less urgent deliveries. This cursus clabularis consisted of carts driven by mules along the major highways. Traveling at the trotting pace of mules and without the elaborate exchanges of the cursus velox, the clabularis could manage a modest 30 km per day. Sending a letter by cart from Brundisium to Mediolanum, across only the length of Italy, took around 42 days at this rate of travel. Unlike the cursus velox, designed to send messages over land across the empire without interruption, the clabularis had routes bounded by certain waypoints, effectively limiting deliveries to certain zones. Going north from Rome, a message could continue as far as Aquileia, if bound for the East; Mediolanum, if bound for the North; or Taurinorum, if bound for the West. Other waypoints are Doclea, Byzantium, Tarsus, Damascus, Petra, Augustonodunum, and Tolosa. In general, no provinces in Africa are incorporated within the cursus clabularis, whereas the cursus velox covers the entire system of roads within the Roman Empire. A letter or package could be transferred to a new carriage at a waypoint, letting even this cheaper route carry messages a great distance. Sending a letter by cart within the distance of a single waypoint only cost a single denarius. If the sender failed to pay for the actual number of transfers taken by his letter, then the receiver was obliged to pay the remainder or risk losing the letter. For a price of 50 denarii, a citizen could send a package within the range of a single waypoint of the cursus, but he would have to make other arrangements outside the system to deliver one any farther. A user of the cursus vehicularis could only post a letter at one of the designated stationes (post offices), eventually found in all major cities. Payment for a delivery was stored in a chest, after details of the transaction - e.g. sender, destination, recipient, and starting date - were recorded for bookkeeping. If records did not match the revenue of the station or were found inconsistent with the records of stationes that had received deliveries from that station, then an investigation would usually be made to resolve the discrepancy and punish whoever had pocketed money or made a clerical error. Although a manceps was not employed by the government, the apparitores vehiculares (postal workers) who ran the post offices were civil servants and received a respectable daily wage of one denarius, equal to the payment of couriers on the routes. Even a city as large as Rome only had one station, as a means of simplifying the processing of deliveries and cutting costs. Overall, around 110 apparitores vehiculares and over 1,400 couriers were employed by the Senate once the new cursus vehicularis and its stationes, mansiones, and mutationes were done expanding (roughly around 288 CE). Construction and procurement costs for stations, carts, and horses amounted to nearly 84 million denarii. Maintenance of the system at its current size required a further 2,700,000 denarii each year but was more than offset by the nearly three million denarii the service procured in revenue over the same period. In this way, the cursus was both profitable and useful for the government of Rome.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)