Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/72

 wear to be discovered on their surface—a fact worthy of notice. The Romans travelled very fast on them, so well adapted were they, all things considered, for the preservation of the horses' hoofs.

Towards the Christian era, Augustus introduced couriers (publici Cursores, or Veredarii) to forward the public despatches, and along these roads government post-houses (mutationes) were erected at intervals of five or six miles, and each was constantly furnished with forty horses. By means of these very frequent relays, no doubt necessary where the hoofs were exposed to damaging attrition, it was possible to travel a hundred miles a day.

About a century before our era, Cicero received at Rome, on the 28th September, a letter dated in Britain the first day of the same month. Considering the passage by sea, and crossing the Alps, or making a wide détour to avoid this troublesome mountain range, the twenty-six days appear a remarkably short space of time to travel this distance in. And three hundred years later, during the reign of the Emperor Theodosius, Cassarius, an important magistrate, travelled from Antioch to Constantinople, a distance of 725 Roman (665 English) miles, in six days.

At Terracina, where a stony ridge is cut through to a depth of 26 feet to form the public way, the glassy surface of this rocky thoroughfare is grooved (sillonné) transversely, so that the horses might have foot-hold.

It may here be noticed that at Tempe, by the side of the Peneus, the highway is excavated in the rock, but is so steep and rugged, that possibly to save their horses' hoofs, as well as to prevent their tumbling into the river,