Cursus publicus
[4][5][6] The service was still fully functioning in the first half of the sixth century in the Eastern Empire, when the historian Procopius accuses Emperor Justinian of dismantling most of its sections, except for the route leading to the Persian border.
[31][32][33] Although the government supervised the functioning and maintenance of the network of change stations with repair facilities (mutationes)[34][35] and full service change stations with lodging (mansions),[36][37][38][39] the system was not a postal service in the same way as the modern British Royal Mail, nor a series of state-owned and operated hotels and repair facilities.
As Altay Coskun notes in a review of Anne Kolb's work done in German, the system "simply provided an infrastructure for magistrates and messengers who traveled through the Empire.
It consisted of thousands of stations placed along the main roads;[40] these had to supply fresh horses, mules,[41] donkeys, and oxen, as well as carts, food, fodder, and accommodation."
As seen in several rescripts and in the correspondence of Trajan and Pliny, the emperor would sometimes pay for the cost of sending an ambassador to Rome along the cursus publicus, particularly in the case of just causes.
[47][48] Augustus, at first, followed the Persian method of having mail handed from one courier to the next, but he soon switched to a system by which one man made the entire journey with the parcel.
Although it is possible that a courier service existed for a time under the Roman Republic, the clearest reference by Suetonius states that Augustus created the system.
[49][50][51] Suetonius states:[52][53][54] To enable what was going on in each of the provinces to be reported and known more speedily and promptly, he at first stationed young men at short intervals along the military roads, and afterwards post-chaises.
[58] Presumably, he had some sort of supervisory responsibility to ensure the effective operation of the network of stations throughout the Empire and to discourage abuse of the facility by those not entitled to use it.
However, the office does not seem to have been considered a full-time position because Maecianus was also the law tutor of the young Marcus Aurelius, apparently his main function.
[52][65][66] The existence of the cursus clabularis service shows that it was used to move heavy goods as well as to facilitate the travel of high officials and the carriage of government messages.
[72] As Herodotus reports, the Persians had a remarkably efficient means of transmitting messages important to the functioning of the kingdom, called the Royal Road.
Augustus modified the Persian system, as Suetonius notes, because a courier who travels the whole distance could be interrogated by the emperor, upon arrival, to receive additional information orally.
In the 6th century, he described earlier times:[92] The earlier Emperors, in order to obtain information as quickly as possible regarding the movements of the enemy in any quarter, sedition, unforeseen accidents in individual cities, and the actions of the governors or other persons in all parts of the Empire, and also in order that the annual tributes might be sent up without danger or delay, had established a rapid service of public couriers throughout their dominion according to the following system.
In the case of Pertinax, news of the accession, which took place on January 1, AD 193, took over sixty-three days to reach Egypt, being announced on March 6 in Alexandria.
Lionel Casson, in his book on ancient sea travel, gives statistics for the amount of time that sixteen voyages took between various ports in the Roman Empire.
These towns very often provided food and horses to messengers of the Legions, theoretically receiving reimbursement, and were responsible for the care of their section of the Roman roads.
The cursus publicus provided the infrastructure of change stations and overnight accommodation that allowed for the fairly rapid delivery of messages and especially in regard to military matters.
The counts of the Treasury and Crown Estates could obtain warrants whenever they needs since these two departments supplied revenue in gold and the private income of the emperors respectively, matters of the greatest importance.
[101] Notwithstanding its enormous costs, in the Eastern Roman Empire the service was still fully functioning in the first half of the sixth century, when the historian Procopius charges Emperor Justinian with the dismantlement of most of its sections, with the exception of the route leading to the Persian border (Secret History 30.1–11).
The dromos continued to exist throughout the Byzantine period, supervised for much of it by the logothetēs tou dromou, although this post is not attested before the mid-eighth century and a revival of the service may then have occurred after a substantial gap.
The logothetes ton agelon, the overseer of the herds, was also an important figure as he provided many horses and other pack animals from the stud ranches (metada) of Asia and Phrygia.
[102] These producers who contributed to the maintenance were inscribed in a special category in the fiscal register, freed from other state burdens, and were called exkoussatoi dromou.
