Travel in the Later Roman Empire

[Lothia]

Ave Civitas,

You guys are great.

I have another question about travel in the Later Roman Empire.

I understand that there were times when Rome could not provide security to all of the land it "owned".

1. I would assume then that travel from one city to the next could be dicey.
2. I assume this did not preclude travel, but traveling in groups would be saver.
3. I imagine that life in the lesser villages was more hazardous than life in a walled city.
4. I would also imagine that merchants, loaded down with valuables would not want to travel from one city to the next without accompaniment (other merchants, armed guards, hired guards)

My question is:
a. Are my assumptions correct?
b. Can someone point me in the direction of a good reference to this?

Thanks again,

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Tom,

I'd say that in general, your assumptions are correct.

Of course, 'no security guarantee' would not be typical just for the Later Roman period, but it would become more of a problem. I'd say that the economic recession of the 5th century would partly be due to a downturn in trade, but of course we cannot be sure whether trade loss was caused by rising insecurity, or by the loss of markets, which in turn would cause more social unrest and hence rising insecurity. This period is also known for a drop in population levels.

1. Yes, travel between fortified settlements could become problematic, although of course nor everywhere to a similar level.
2. Travel did indeed never stop, but it would become more and more difficult. Due to the impoverishment of local government, road were no longer kept up.
3. No doubt. We see a move towards walled towns (which shrunk nonetheless) or to burgi (fortified places or fortlets) dotted around the countryside. In Britain we see a return to hillforts, but in no way comparable to the scale of these places during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.
4. Indeed, and if you could not expect to sell these goods, you probably would not undertake the journey in the first place.

Of course, we should not overestimate the impact of all this. I would say that in general, travelling from Rome to Gaul would hardly be different during the mid-5th century than it would be during the mid-8 century, looking from the political or economic point of view. And let’s not forget that trade still continued between the Empire out-of-the-way places such as Cornwall during the 6th century, although at a lower scale than before.

Sources for travel in Late Antiquity include pilgrimages to the Holy Land or travelling clerics. News about the world could take months to reach certain parts, when we reach the end of the 5th century.


There are a number of articles in which travel in Antiquity is described, for instance from the point of view of trade or pilgrimage.
I can recommend Ward-Perkins, Brian (2005): The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, (Oxford University Press).
Or perhaps this book: Travel, communication, and geography in late antiquity: sacred and profane by Linda Ellis and Frank Kidner?

[Caballo]

Thanks Vorti- I was just about to recommend Bryan's book as well! There is also a great (and free) podcast by him on the Oxford University Alumni Weekend series on ITunes U on the Fall of the Roman Empire. Well worth a listen. The economic impact on trade and the Roman free trade economy through the roads becoming tougher is (I think) often underestimated. Arguably an unforseen consequence of the mobile Field Army/ Limitanei strategy?

[Medicus matt]

Given that all policing duties seem to fall to the military (including customs and excise, weights and measures, patrolling country roads and traveller/merchant escort), I'd say that as long as you're in a region with a local military presence then you've got localised protection whose remit would extend beyond the town/city walls.
As for life in the 'lesser villages' being more hazardous....why? What have they got that's worth stealing?

If you read the opening lines of Ausonius' "Mosella" (composed in the late 4th century, describing a journey from Bingen through Gaul), you don't get any impression of danger, even though he goes alone through 'trackless woodland'.

I had crossed the swift Nava with its misty flow
amazed at the new walls added to old Vincum
where once Gaul equalled Latian Cannae
and penniless troops lie dead upon the fields, unwept.
Beginning my lonely journey from there through trackless woodlands
and spying no traces of civilization
I pass by dry Dumnissum, the land parched on all sides
and Tabernae, well-watered by its perpetual spring,
and the fields of the Sauromates, recently measured out for colonists:
and at last I catch sight of the beginning of the territory of the Belgian Noiomages,
famed camp of the divine Constantine.
Here the air over the fields is purer, and Phoebus
bright now with his clear light, opens radiant Olympus;
no longer through the mutual link of boughs woven together
is the sky sought for, shut out by black mist;
but the free breeze of perspicuous day does not begrudge
onlookers the transparent rays and the ruddy sky.
Then all things drove me toward the sight of my fatherland,
the elegance of shining Bordeaux, with its pleasing aspect:
the peaks of country estates, raised up on the hovering banks
and the hills green with the grapes of Bacchus, and the lovely waters
of the Moselle flowing silently beneath.

[Medicus matt]

Worth a read if you can get hold of a copy:-

Constable, Olivia Remie
"Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in
Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.2003

[Robert Vermaat]

As for life in the 'lesser villages' being more hazardous....why? What have they got that's worth stealing?

Cattle? Harvest? Drinks? Daughters? For a band of marauders, anything could be good enough to roast a farmer over a small fire. As happened a lot during Europes wars.

If you read the opening lines of Ausonius' "Mosella" (composed in the late 4th century, describing a journey from Bingen through Gaul), you don't get any impression of danger, even though he goes alone through 'trackless woodland'.

Does it? I get more the impression of total desertion due to a lot of violence:

amazed at the new walls added to old Vincum
where once Gaul equalled Latian Cannae
and penniless troops lie dead upon the fields, unwept.
Beginning my lonely journey from there through trackless woodlands
and spying no traces of civilization

I think the poet is not describing a idyllic empty countryside, but one bereft of population after a great slaughter. The new walls of Vincum amaze him - i guess he was not used to such construction activity!
The 'empty land' syndrome is a figure of speech much used in Late Antiquity:

The works of Fastidius, chapter 3
Of these some, who had frequently shed the blood of others, felt the wrath of God to such effect that they were compelled at last to shed their own. …Others who had committed similar deeds were so completely overthrown by the wrath of God that their bodies lay unburied and became food for the beasts and the birds of the air. Yet others who had unjustly destroyed a countless multitude of men have been torn to pieces limb from limb, piece by piece…

Orientius, Commonitorium, II.167-84
Neither the harsh terrain of dense forest and high mountain [celsi montis], nor strong rivers with their rapid currents, nor castles [castella] with their stones, nor cities protected by walls, nor the barrier of the sea, nor the troubles of the wilderness, nor caves, nor even caverns beneath black rocks, were sufficient to escape the hands of the barbarians. To many false trust was the cause of death, to many injury, to many civic treachery. What was not overcome by force was overcome by famine. The unlucky mother fell with her child and husband, the master underwent servitude with his slaves. Some lay food for dogs, and flaming roofs deprived many of life, giving then a funeral pyre. Throughout towns and villas, throughout fields and crossroads and all regions, on every road this way and that, there was death, sorrow, ruin [excidium], burning, grief. All Gaul was a single funeral pyre.

Salvian, De Gubernate Dei, VI.15.83-85
Those whom the enemy had not killed while they pillaged the city were overwhelmed by disaster after the sack; those who had escaped death in the capture did not survive the ruin that followed. Some died lingering deaths from deep wounds, others were burned by the enemy’s fires and suffered tortures even after the flames were extinguished. Some perished of hunger, others of nakedness, some wasting away, other paralysed with cold, and so all alike by diverse deaths hastened to the common goal. Worse than this, other cities suffered from the destruction of this single town. There lay all about the torn and naked bodies of both sexes, a sight that I myself endured. These were a pollution to the eyes of the city, as they lay there lacerated by birds and dogs. The stench of the dead brought pestilence on the living: death breathed out death. Thus even those who had escaped the destruction of the city suffered the evils that sprang from the fate of the rest. What followed these calamities? Who can assay such utter folly? The few man of rank who had survived destruction demanded of the emperors circuses as the sovereign remedy for a ruined city!

Sidonius, Epistulae, book III, letter 2
What joy it was for the afflicted when you set your sacred foot within our half-ruined ramparts! …What tears you shed, as if you were the father of all, over buildings destroyed by fire and half-burnt homes. How greatly you grieved over fields that were buried under unburied bones! How splendid then was your encouragement, how spirited your arguments for reconstruction! To this it may be added that, when you found the city evacuated because of civic dissension as well as barbarian attack, you, by urging peace, restored charity to the people and the people to their fatherland. Thanks to your advice the people have returned to a single mind as well as to a single city; to you the walls owe the return of their people, the returned people their unity.

Gregory of Tours, Homilies on Ezekiel, II.6.22
What is there to please us in this life? On every side we see grief, on every side we hear groans. Cities are destroyed, forts overthrown, fields depopulated, the lands reduced to a wilderness. No inhabitant remains in the fields, and scarcely any dweller in the cities; and yet these tiny remnants of the human race are still afflicted every day without respite. And the lashes of heavenly justice do not end because their faults are not corrected even under the lash. Some we see carried into captivity, other mutilated, others killed. What then is there to please us in this life, my brothers? If we still delight in such a world, it must be wounds we love, not joys. We see what will be left of Rome herself, who for a while seemed mistress of the world; bruised again and again by many great sorrows, by desertion of her citizens, by oppression by her enemies, and by repeated destructions, so that we may see in her what the prophet says against the city of Samaria [Ezekiel 24] …Where is now the senate? Where now the people? …And we few who have remained are still daily oppressed by the sword and innumerable tribulations… For because the senate is missing and the people lost, and because even among those who remain sorrows and groans daily increase, Rome. Now deserted, burns.

Of course, how much of this is pure hyperbole? I assume that a lot of it is, all the more since archaeology never found the traces of wholesale slaughter and devastation on such a massive scale. To the ancient authors, things must have looked bleak, but it never got as bad as they actually wrote.

[Medicus matt]

Does it? I get more the impression of total desertion due to a lot of violence:
I think the poet is not describing a idyllic empty countryside, but one bereft of population after a great slaughter. The new walls of Vincum amaze him - i guess he was not used to such construction activity!

Ahh, I didn't say it was idyllic, just pointing out that the author felt able to make the journey alone without fear of being waylaid.

All of those doom and gloom merchants remind me of Gildas. 5th/6th century Christians...they're all 'glass half empty' sorts of men aren't they?

[Epictetus]

I think there could be some differentiation between different parts of the Empire, although broad trends were probably in evidence everywhere. Where is your story taking place?

I have recently read Mitchell’s Anatolia, and I was surprised at how much the responsibility of local security fell to cities and local magistrates during Late Antiquity. Municipal magistrates organised and supervised patrols on local roads and kept the peace. In some cases on the Eastern frontier cities even constructed their own border fortifications and watch towers independent of imperial authority (although doubtlessly with imperial approval, or perhaps even by imperial command!). You read all these stories about invaders besieging a city while the emperor and the armies were thousands of miles away and wonder who was doing the defending. Well, the locals were the defence, or at least helping the defence, in many cases.

I think question #3 poses some difficulties. As others have hinted, there was a broad shift of power from cities to rural areas, which included the construction of fortified locales in the country. Yet the defences of urban areas were also strengthened, especially by a frenzy of wall-building. Does this mean walled towns were “safer”? I don’t think there is an easy answer, but I have my doubts. If cities remained the safest places I couldn’t imagine the power shift to rural seats taking place.

[elagababbalus]

I might also suggest A Voyage Home to Gaul by Rutilius Namatianus

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...text*.html who talks about his difficulty in getting home to Gaul in the aftermath of the sack of Rome

Pope Gregory's letters also talk about life among the ruins. The chronic insecurity leads to reduced trade and less investment in maintenance and upkeep leading to less taxes in turn leading to more insecurity.

The collapse in economic specialisation and chronic insecurity would no doubt give rise to a very bleak view of the world as indicated by this poem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruin

McCormack's Origins of the European Economy talks quite a bit about the decline in travel in late antiquity/early medieval period.

[Tiberio]

Well looks like you fellows are not familiar with the treasure find of Neupotz?
It dates from around 277/278 AD. With 700kg it is the largest roman metal finding in Europe.
http://www.kreis-germersheim.de/barbarian-treasure.html
Recent studies have shown that a large portion of the loot is from around Lyon, which shows that germanic raiders could roam long distances fairly unchallenged.

[Lothia]

Ave Epictetus,

My story (the one that prompted asking about travel) takes place in northern Italy, Croatia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. (following the trek of the Goths back to Lower Moesia from northern Italy.)

But, in another story, (back burner now) I have scenes that take place in central Anatolia, so thanks.

Tom