How quickly could a Letter cross the Roman Empire?
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- Опубликовано: 2 июн 2024
- How long did messages take to cross the Roman Empire? The answer depended on the season, the sender's connections, and luck...
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:27 Tracking the death of Nero
2:27 The speed of travel
3:56 Squarespace
4:46 The Cursus Publicus
6:21 Private couriers
6:50 The "random merchant" method
7:32 A letter from Britain to Egypt
8:34 Conclusion
Thanks for watching!
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Holy shit Nero died?! The news only just got to me
I see you're still using Internet Explorer
when were you when nero dies?
I didn’t even know he was sick
Wow. I didn't think he'd ever go. Lol
WHO IS NERO ?
As someone who grinds 50+ hours a week delivering packages in a difficult (by modern standards) area, I can safely say that getting a message/letter from Rome to Egypt in 14(edit: 27 days) days sounds very impressive... and very expensive.
And these days the postal service will deliver a letter ANYWHERE in the world for just a little over $1. Kinda wild.
Edit: I'm just talking about postage for LETTERS and POSTCARDS. Obviously shipping a package is much more costly.
@@keithbarlow9701 you may be off a little bit about your price
@@douglasthompson8927 10$ is the new 1$
@@keithbarlow9701 Not true
Check out the stories of South Korean delivery guys. You will know their problems.
52 days from Britain to Alexandria was quite impressive, just like most things the Romans did. Very interesting video
If you ever walk down the streets of Rome, you wonder how they conquered ANYTHING, let alone the entire Western Europe!😱😹
@@winnifredforbes1114(long post with some rambling 😂)
Well you need to consider that(if still using ancient Roman paths, I don't know, never been, and uneducated in this matter) , literal thousands of years of erosion, weathering & usage has been done, with weights exceeding what was known/intended with their knowledge back then.
Also, if using modern on the ground roads(non bridge roads), the Romans usually took more effort than just laying a layer of asphalt over dirt. From what I know, their more serious roads(like in the cities) were quite sophisticated for their time.
Dug a trench the size of the road a few feet down, filled with big rocks, then tiny rocks, then sand, then compacted dirt, then carved/flat rocks to use as the actual top/road. Now just imagine having/needing to do this for aaaalllllllllll the roads in Rome & their city/vassals, not to mention the makeshift roads used on military expeditions.
😱 The sheer amount of time & man power is out of this world and unfathomable for me to wrap my head around! 😲
Ancient Romans were known for the extensive engineering marvels, roads being one of their staples. It's said that they used engineers ahead of armies specifically for fort/camp, and more importantly road making & site clearing for an army and it's logistical support of supplies/reinforcements/communication weeks or months before the army even dispatched.
Their roads contributed with the success of their land trade, just as much as the wind & currents aided on sea travel. Some pathways wouldn't have even been possible without the advent of the Roman road already being pre-paved.
Roman roads were far, FAAAR ahead of their time, and I bet they contributed alot to their quick success, and contributed alot to their longevity. 🙂
@@jonhall2274 Yes. They were quite evolved in their building techniques. I saw Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland. I find it interesting that the Romans could never gain a footing in Scotland. I am fairly certain that it was the sound of bagpipes in the middle of the night which deterred them! They must have thought they had descended into the bowels of hell! 😱😹🇨🇦
@@winnifredforbes1114 well it's not that they never could've done it, it just wouldn't have yielded very much benefit to them
@@jonhall2274 Excellent analogy! Thank you.
Imagine being Vespasian, hearing about Nero's, Galba's, and then Otho's deaths sequentially, each two or three weeks after they actually happened.
There were carrier pigeons and the news were known pretty fast. But the official order to obey a new emperor took time as it could be transmitted only by a Roman official in person carrying a sealed document.
@@MrMirville They got far better than pigeons, they used optical telegraph.
Vespasians face:
:O
@@nicktamer4969 Possible. Many contraptions used by the Greeks and the Romans just died out disuse or even more probably were considered professional and corporate secrets never to be divulged to the outer world. There were Greek and Roman cities in India and most certainly trading posts near lake Chad, wherefrom long lines of exotic animals, including giraffes, were led through the Tibesti and Libya for the circuses of the main imperial cities.
@@MrMirville It's not just possible, it's totally sure. Optical telegraph relay towers are seen on Trajan's column. Polybius made a code for telegraphy as early as 2nd century BC.
Believe it or not, this is a subject that has always fascinated me - communications of all sorts within the Roman Empire. Thank you !
Ive always fantasized about a wiley Roman opening up a rudimentary news service.
@@JABS991 He better not get in trouble with the Caesar or his minions.
If you haven't found it already, check out the book "Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier" by Alan K. Bowman. It has examples of letters written by Roman citizens, soldiers, slaves, etc..... Quite interesting.
@@morgan97475 Many many thanks ! A merry Christmas to you.
I was most interested in the cost and logistics than the time it takes. Always wondered how a letter got somewhere without a modern postal service.
I have no idea why this was suggested but it was very well produced and I very much enjoyed it
Well if you enjoyed it You should buy his book naked statues fat gladiators and war elephants
He has been blessed by the almighty Algorithm.
You should rly check out the rest of this channel then
Drax! Check out the rest of toldinstone's videos - they are all fantastic! Probably suprisingly high overlap between your audiences.
If I were RUclips's suggestion algorithm then I'd recommend toldinstone 10 to 100 times more often
Imagine someone trolled or sent a message by accident, "the emperor is dead" and it takes MONTHS until there's a response, "No I'm not?!"
I've always had trouble with worldbuilding DnD worlds because finding accurate travel times is so hard. This definitely helps
same
Well these are messenger travel times in the Roman Empire. They are professionals, travelling on well built roads, sometimes going from relay to relay killing their horses if there is urgency. They were not bothered by the common obstacles and ambushes typical of DnD campaigns. But it's true it's very useful for the worldbuilding of a Roman like emmpire as an average.
I am thoroughly impressed by that roman map at the end
Considering how the later Romans used signal fires to warn the emperor of Arab raids within hours I'm shocked that it took so long for this type of communication to be invented.
But that is just like a fire-alarm or something like that. If you want to convey actual news instead of just set a kind of "alarm" for an already well-known hazard, that is way more complicated and sophisticated task. Those signal fires were way less of a technological step forward for speedy communications than you'd think.
@@stoferb876 Signaling with light is one step away from telegraphy, it uses the same sort of binary physical layer. Bronze age Greeks and Romans would have had the fabrication ability to make signaling machines with tilting mirrors to improve transmission rates, and I think they were more than smart enough to conceptualize a Morse style encoding. It's interesting to think about what history would look like if more aspects of electromagnetics were discovered in the Roman era, since they probably had the materials necessary available to make passable batteries and solenoids.
Unfortunately I'm a student so I can't afford patreon, but I'm subscribed to you and like every video of yours, whether I watch it or not. You have provided me with knowledge I don't know how I would have gotten any other way. When I get a real job in a few years, I promise I will donate you whay you deserve. Thank you
Great video as always on a topic that very rarely gets covered.
Hey could I propose the topic of "Greco-Roman novels in antiquity" to you? I feel it's another topic that is severely overlooked. You have the famous novels like the Satyricon and the Golden Ass, but then you have the more obscure romance novels like Aethiopica and Daphnis and Chloe, and then you have the really obscure fragments like Babyloniaca that was made by someone fluent in Greek, Babylonian and Assyrian if I remember correctly.
I feel like it's a topic you could definitely do justice to while making it interesting :)
I have to admit that I've always had a soft spot for the Greek novels - especially the Aethiopica - though I can't claim to have any special expertise on the topic. I'll add it to my topic list.
@@toldinstone Great! Will be interesting to hear your video on the topic, even if you don't have any special expertise on it.
Seems like very few people talk or even know about them so the video will be much appreciated. Thanks for the reply by the way :)
Well received here, what a great idea! Glad to hear it's going on the list 🙂 I'll be sure to be there for that one, might even bring 🍿
@@kennethgrundmann5576 Thanks! Im glad you enjoye the suggestion and it seems well both be enjoying the video whenever its made :)
@@HerculesMays 👍👍
I just got out of work, I looked at my cell phone and toldinstone video, great way to start the weekend!
Io Saturnalia everybody!!!
As usual this was a fascinating insight. I suspect mail transport during the Roman Empire was faster than in subsequent periods, such as the Middle Ages, and only eclipsed with the arrival of modern postal services.
I think the Mongols could have easily surpassed the Romans in speed. They were masters of horses.
@@deepkadamba7083 in the Roman Empire it was quicker and easier to transport things around, because it was smaller and had major roads connecting urban centers. The Mongolian Yam had to bring messages WAY farther, but as you say it was impressively fast.
You are an inspiration to big nerds everywhere. Just graduated, bought your book as a grad present to myself. I love all your videos, please keep making them!
Videos like these on the day-to-day life olin the past are what I like.
I have begun referring to this channel as the Ancient Rome channel. You make learning about one of the most important civilizations truly fun and enlightening. Next thimg I'm off to do is buy your book, you're a fantastic writer and I too have a sincere enjoyment of obtaining the most concise descriptions possible when I write.
All the things I ever wanted to know about Rome on one channel!
Keep these coming man, I've always had this question in my mind and it bugged me. Thanks !
My big brother introduced me to your excellent channel-- I am grateful he did!👌Your channel is superb!
Merry, Blessed Christmas, and very happy Holidays to you, good sir!
Great video. One thing I have been curious about is how long it would take an army to March different places within the Roman republic/empire. How in the world, for instance, did Caesar and his legions march from Rome to Spain, or from Alexandria to Syria? What were those logistics like?
Glad you enjoyed it! I talk a bit about the logistics involved in my recent video "A Roman Army in the Heart of Germany."
Learning about how dependent ships were on the weather really makes you appreciate engines.
There are two things going on in this clip. Second of which is how long it took "ordinary" communication to traverse the Roman Empire, which I suspect is fairly accurate. The initial, and most interesting point, is how fast juicy gossip traveled in the same. Example in point - Nero's death. None of this is too far removed from modern day communication. In my former occupation with a Fortune 500 company, factual rumor spread like wildfire and the troops were often privilege to it before management. Apparently, this is centuries old and I assume that it applied not only to the Romans but to other large, bureaucratic civilizations as well - Egyptians, Persians. I guarantee that non recorded scandalous bits of communication traveled relatively quickly around their respective empires.
Rumors travel fast, but not as fast as optical telegraph, wich is known since the greeks and widely used by romans (optical telegraph relay tower are shown on Trajan's column). But obviously, nowaday, nobody have a clue about it, and nobody wants to hear about it.
It's seems like 2 months ago you had 2k followers, you def earned it. This content is always brilliant!
It was less than 40k when I started watching I'm glad things have exploded too👌
It's important to note that messenger pigeons were also used during ancient times.
I really enjoy your content. Your focus on minor day to day activities of the ancient world is interesting. You have a subscriber in Africa
I love that Orbis site. I used it extensively in plotting a D&D game in a fantasy Roman Empire.
The only things in the universe that travels faster than light is quantum entanglement and gossip.
You mentioned a courier being a "freedman, or a trusted slave"....and it made me think of those definitions and how small the difference can be...in the present or past.
This is really neat stuff to learn... that figure of 20 miles a day being a good pace is crazy to me. The next town over is 25 miles and I can get there in about half an hour if traffic is good. Really puts things into perspective. Thank you for the well-made, interesting video!!
I’ve always been really curious how communication worked back then compared to today. Thank you so much for satisfying that curiosity!
I watch these every morning, thanks TIS!
I'm wondering how long it will take for my copy of Fat Gladiators, Naked Statues and War Elephants will arrive!
Has your order been delayed? If so, I'm sorry to hear it...
@@toldinstone not at all, I am just impatient to get my Christmas present for myself!
Thank you for delivering the news of Nero's death to me.
Bruh were you still living under Nero's rule before this vid? He's been dead for 2,000+ years!
@@rfkwouldvebeenaok1008 Sic semper tyrannis. The tyrant is/was dead, I am/was free!
I’m so glad I found this channel, constantly answering questions I’ve always wondered but never had a chance to learn about!
I am watching all of your videos now. Thank you for the good quality.
Amazing as always! Thank you.
These types of videos are why I love this channel, I’ve always just randomly wondered facts like this and never researched them, and then boom right on my suggested. Thank you so much for doing what you do, hoping to get your book for christmas this year!
Every video been amazing. Ty!
I’ve always wondered about this. Thanks for answering my questions.
Great content, thank you!
Excellent, as always, ToldInStone. A big thanks.
great topic and great video, keep up the good work
This channel is amazing, history is so much more than great battles and great people. Thank you for highlighting more obscure elements of ancient life!
Brilliant video! Thank you.
This channel is just so great. These movies make my day every time.
And today, with all the technics, I am waiting for the letter from my parents, living 100 km away, for at least three days. Doesn´t seem to be such a great improvement. ;-)
Thank you very much and Happy Christmas.
Loved everything about this video, I'd also love to see you do coins/economy next!
I had read somewhere that letters were also passed along aqueducts as well to report issues pertaining to water supply’s
That would make perfect sense since it's basically a "secure connection" albeit one-way. I wonder if they have way stations along the aqueduct where they have nets/grills ready to catch the letters and maybe chuck it downstream if it's intended for a station farther down the line.
I really enjoy the Orbis model!! Very interesting to see the logistics. Love your videos
Been subbed for a few months now and I just wanted to say I love these videos and you always pick something unexpectedly fascinating
he has by now more than 80 videos.
Happy Holidays Everyone!
Your work is amazing! So much research, so accessibly presented. Thank you.
did you watch his recently uploaded and older videos? aswell amazing! check out, if you havent
First video I've listened to of yours and now I'm subscribed :)
Why does every ancient history youtuber have such a relaxing voice
Interesting topic, thanks!
Indepth and credible ... well done!
Mail has always interested me, and I'm always glad to hear how it happened previously.
3:05 the guy in the mosaic, although he doesn't have actual stirrups, is clearly stuck in gaiters that are fixed to the saddle. That's a dedicated long distance rider.
Excellent travail comme d'habitude!
I love your channel!
awesome video!
Just what we all needed another squaresoace ad.
It's kind of insane to think that the emperor of Rome could be dead for almost a month and you'd have no idea your official documents are being made in the name of a corpse.
It's kind of insane because it's wrong. Romans used optical telegraph with relay towers since the Republic. And an information as important as the death of an emperor was widely known in the entire empire in just a bunch of days depending of visibility.
@@nicktamer4969 Source? 🤔
@@bezahltersystemtroll5055 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_telegraph
@@bezahltersystemtroll5055 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_beacon_system
@@bezahltersystemtroll5055 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius#Cryptography
What a wonderful video! It's these explorations of regular civic life that really fascinate me!
Great vid
I'm trying to get the librarian to buy your book. I love your videos.
Good video,bravo! Greetings from Rome,Italy
The best thumbnails too!
yeah, i.love that one of horseshoe most distant battlefield
Until the advent of Penny Post in the UK in 1840 our methods of post, etc were were similar to the Romans.
An ancient warp drive? Fascinating🖖🏼
great video
Nice. My suggestion got a video! Thanks!
Suggestions like yours are always appreciated!
wow Thanks! Was actually thinking of requesting a video about travel times and messages and here it is! Crazy that the empire stuck together, even with the delays. Would also love to know how they made maps and what their model of earth was
Very glad you enjoyed it! You might be interested in reading more about the Peutinger Map, our best indication of what a Roman map may have looked like.
@@toldinstone Thank you! Will check that out :)
In the De Bello Gallico, Julius Caesar describes a communication instrument used to transit orders from the command post to the front lines.
This instrument was made of a number of long tubes (10 m IIRC) and between two tubes there was a soldier which repeated the order. I read this system was used for distances up to 180 Km. But it was prone to errors when the order was too long or too complex, or spoken using the Latin from the elites, which was different from the Latin spoken by the common people...
Oh wow. Yet another interesting real life topic of Ancient Rome. Lovin this channel
The fastest traveling news event of the Ancient Roman world was the Rod Stewart stomach pump story.
nothing like the Mongolian Yam; although stirrups were probably the paramount factor for speed and fatigue.
I remember reading that George Washington traveled no faster than Julius Ceaser but that changed dramatically with the coming of the railroads and steam ships. That is why we have time zones. Before fast reliable travel when people arrived in a town they checked the local time and adjusted their pocket watch accordingly. When trains came along conformity was needed to maintain a train schedule so the railroads came up with the idea of time zones.
In my little Kansas town we have a 12 O'clock whistle. Most small towns have one. It tells all citizens to adjust their pocket or wrist watch to noon.
A very interesting topic, thanks.😃👌👏👏👏🇦🇺
How safe was the travel for a horse rider I wonder. Were the roads well guarded or was banditry the norm?
I'm not sure whether bandits would bother with post carriers....they would be more on the lookout for the bearers of intrinsically high-value objects, presumably on carts.
Everytime I see a new Video like this in my notifications, I think of the Sheldon Cooper Meme "I don't need sleep, I need answers!" That's just the truth with these questions
I watched all of this presentation.
Parts of my country got devasted by a typhoon and one of the complaints was communication, like thet still don't have a clear idea of the death toll. This makes me wonder how quickly would it have been to send messages via pigeons coz they're really the only ones that can go back and forth towns now until the all the debris has been cleared.
I think the "rudimentary" saddles is not a solid argument. The gallic saddles were pretty good, and not necessarily less comfortable that later types. The stirrup was not needed with such saddles, as the saddle did did a good job of keeping the rider seated. The real reason stirrups later became the norm was not that it was "hard" to stay on the horse with gallic saddles, but rather that those saddles did not offer a convenient way to climb onto the horses. Horses of antiquity were smaller than modern horses, and as they grew taller over later antiquity and early middle ages, saddles with stirrups replaced the gallic ones. The taller horses made the change to stirrups necessary to climb onto the horse. Since the stirrups could also help the rider stay seated, the older gallic saddles were no longer necessary. The fact that ancient horses were smaller than modern horses is also the reason that they could not travel as fast as modern horses. They had a shorter gait.
Fascinating!
Monday 21 Aug 2023 :
I watched this presentation when first posted , now I have watched it , fully , again .
It is worth the time .
It worries me that so few Americans have any interest in such knowledge , and even are derisive about it . This knowledge , and modern West European and American postal systems , are tremendous achievements and hubs of good and valid governmental employment.
Modern U.S. philatelic-ology is educational , fun , and for shrewd and active enthusiasts , can be profitable as stamps are bought and sold as valuable items .
In federal prisons , postal stamps are used as currency among prisoners , although sometimes prisoners get their postal stamps confiscated by correction officers . Some inmates get overly enthusiastic about privileges .
Pretty amazing how far we have come in communication today. Instant messanging cross globe.
1:00 what are the names supposed to show? Because it was definitely not called "Constantinopolis" in Nero's time
Yes, it would have just been Byzantion. The ORBIS model, however, included Constantinople there by default.
Very good video. Bravo.
I would like to know if you have read Edward Gibbon's work on ancient Rome ... a masterpiece!
I have indeed read it - it's one of my favorites, both as history and as literature.
You should make a video about life in Roman London
I hope to do a few videos on Roman Britain this spring.
0:45 - Constantinopolis, in Nero's day? Sorry, couldn't resist a bit of pedantry ;)
Yes, the ORBIS model included it by default. To be honest, it bugged me too.
The sheer size of the Roman empire and the time that it was taking for the messages to arrive on one destination, really makes a man start to think how the hell it was so well managed and ever more so, how the hell was the war made. I mean, let's imagine that you are an Emperor and that there is a Persian invasion in the East. In the absolutely ideal situation you in Rome would get the message about the Persian invasion in 15 days, more likely in 20 days. Then it would take your message with the orders and instructions to the Eastern legions take another 15 to 20 days to arrive back in the East, meaning that the army in the East would be at least month to month and a half without the orders from the central command in Rome, a great deal of time during which your orders could be absolutely obsolete in comparison to the real situation on the frontline. And that is just if you the emperor are in Rome. If you are say in Gaul, Spain or campaigning Britain or Germania it could take two or even three months for your response to reach the Eastern legions. Of course you yourself would probably rush to the East in order to oversee the frontline in person, but still in would take you month and half or two to reach Syria. Not to mention the months and months that it would take you to gather and organize say the Danubian legions to come to help in the East. It truly must've been a nerve-wracking thing to always be in doubt wether your orders are going to properly reflect the situation on the ground in various parts of your Empire.
I think that's why the empire was divided: it was just too big for a single emperor to control
This is why Roman governors has so much power. The acted in the Emperors name and attempted to respond as the Emperor would wish. Woe to those that guessed incorrectly.
true. i believe this fact was one reason why later emperors state for a while in hot provinces like in syria, think of Antioch or germania, think of Trier
Bravo!
No carrier pigeons? I just checked and carriers pigeons were already used to summon all cities of the Alexandrian empire and then of the whole Roman empire to the Olympic games and to announce the champions : the results of the games were known in the same day or the day after at worst in all places where there were columbaria. Like is still a time-honoured pastime in today's Italy, flying pigeons with messages or not was a hobby enjoyed by both the elite and the peasants, and many would have announced Nero's death for free. The Phoenicians would do it for a hefty fee but it was guaranteed with a return receipt or you got your money back : they even sent money orders so as to minimize any risk of your mailman being intercepted by pirates. The Roman bureaucracy loved to take more time than necessary to send sealed postage, but the stamp of approval gave it more value.
There is limited evidence for Roman use of carrier pigeons, but - as far as we can tell - the cursus publicus was the normal method of sending messages quickly.
@@toldinstone the columbaria that still stand are monumental.
@@MrMirville i guess you are refering to the funeral columbaria
@@toldinstone Varro, Columella and Pliny wrote about pigeon farming and that kind of stuff
Dear toldinstone, can I make a suggestion; it would be wonderful to get distances and other measurements in metric units as well. Love the videos!
Cheers 🍺
Really is amazing it could months to spread a message just a few centuries ago. Now, if something major happens anywhere in the world, I’ll probably find out within 60 seconds. In the not so distant future, we’ll have humans on other planets, but even at maximum the one way delay of a message to mars is only 23 minutes.
It goes to show that communications-distance is a very important measuring stick. I enjoy that Earth is more and more like a big interconnected village no matter where you are on it. If the future economy is all about interconnected (and largely automated) systems making split second (or nanosecond) decisions then a 23-minute communications-distance is an insurmountable rift for some things. The solar system fully colonized with a deeply interconnected solar information economy would probably feel like a bunch of big villages just over the hill from one another.
Information goes quick but stuff not so much..90% off stuff i order on e_bay 3-4 months still not arrived ..because stuff still travel with ships
ESP would be a great way to send messages, if only it really worked.
@@deewesthill4705 I've got an open mind about it (no pun intended). I am sure the universe has all kinds of things in it we haven't discovered or documented yet. But, if it did exist, then why would there be any reason for it (this notion of a thought wave transmitting from person to person) to go faster than light? Examples of deliberately "sending" data from consciousness to consciousness abound (language, electronic communications, visual signals and audio signals, etc.) but they all seem limited by the speed of light. Why would any extra senses be different? The discovery of an extra sense which was faster than light would be a bigger and more interesting discovery (because of its implications) than the discovery of the extra sense itself.
Yeah only 23 minutes... So you click on a video and it starts playing 46 minutes later 😂👌
It would be nice to have the miles also as km so people wouldn't have to pause and google mid video, love your channel tho!
I have your book on audible. I really wish you voiced it though. Still a good book.