About St. Paul Traveling in St. Pauls Time
Travel and Transport in St. Paul's Time
Over a period of some ten years in the middle of the first century,
St. Paul made three journeys, traveling through Anatolia and Greece
spreading the gospel. In the course of these, he visited much of
Anatolia, probably walking a good deal of the way, accompanied by
one or more companions. It has been estimated that St. Paul traveled
some 20,000 km on his missionary journeys. A considerable part of
this was overland through Anatolia, on Roman roads which followed
the ancient routes that trailed the natural river and mountain
passes which had been used for military transportation since
antiquity. The Romans had began to construct these roads immediately
after they established the province of Asia in the 130s BCE and by
the time of St. Paul had extended their network covering southern
Anatolia as far as Syria proper.
A part of this ancient military net which ran through Pisidia and
southern Galatia during the Roman period was known as the Via
Sebaste. St. Paul and his companions were able to make their
missionary journeys with relative ease and safety largely because of
the Roman presence. Under the Pax Romana, the Roman peace instituted
'by Augustus, the roads were by and large kept free of brigands and
in good repairs'. These roads were carefully engineered and built to
carry the Roman armies, which at this date mostly consisted of
troops and imperial officials, along the straightest route as
swiftly as possible. The size and type of construction varied
according to expected traffic, terrain and materials available, but
the general principles of Roman road building were those described
by the Greek author Plutarch, born about a decade before St. Paul's
death: 'The roads were carried straight across the countryside.
They were paved with hewn stones and bolstered underneath with
masses of tight packed gravel; hollows were filled in, and torrents
or ravines that cut across the route were bridged'. The milestones
placed along the road usually showed the distance in Roman miles but
sometimes carried more detailed information, such as the name of the
person who built or repaired the road, the number of available
cisterns or garrisons or regulations of transportation. A bilingual
edict - in Latin and in Greek - and dating from the period St. Paul
was born, fixes the number of animals that the people of Sagalassus
were obliged to provide for different types of officials and the
cost of such services, and the priority of the various kinds of
officials and officers who might require them and thus it shows how
much the Roman governor of the time cared for orderly transportation
in his region.
At the time St. Paul traveled on these roads the regular posting
stages belonging to the Roman government post were not yet known.
The information about the inns of the period is not flattering. They
were known to be dirty and dangerous spots. In the apocryphal Acts
of St. John, St. John, as he traveled from Ephesus to Laodicea (on
the lycus river), when bothered by bed-bugs in the inn where he
spent the night, banished them from his room. Nevertheless, next
morning he found the insects waiting outside for his permission to
return to their dwelling. Ancient literature gives the impression
that people preferred, when or where this was possible, to stay at
other people's houses. If they had no acquaintances, arriving in an
unknown town, they probably walked to the shrine of their cult, in
the case of Jews to the synagogue, or to the market place with the
members of their profession or guild, and introducing themselves
expected an offer of hospitality. Being of the same country,
religion or profession may have increased one's chance of receiving
an invitation. At the time of St. Paul's journeys some of the
synagogues in Anatolia and Greece probably had hostels.
If one, however, remembers what the Apostle preached and how the
Jewish communities reacted, St. Paul should not have expected much
hospitality from his own race. Acts mentions St. Paul's overnights
at friends' houses such as at Lydia's in Philippi (Acts 16: 15) and
the tentmakers Aquila and Priscilla's in Corinth (Acts 18:3),
Mnason's in Jerusalem (Acts 21: 16), and others. This is also
expressed by St. Paul himself when he wrote to Philemon of Colossae
and asked him to prepare a guest room for him (phlm 22). The period
of St. Paul's travels saw a considerable expansion of Anatolia
prosperity and the roads were increasingly used by traders and
private travelers. The worn out pavements on the busy main highways
indicate a traffic of pack animals, mainly donkeys or mules and farm
wagons with heavy loads drawn by teams of oxen as well as an
assortment of carts and carriages. Few people other than the cavalry
rode horses; it was tiring and uncomfortable, as stirrups had not
yet been invented and saddles were fairly rudimentary; some however
rode on mules.
People traveled for many purposes: sightseeing, pilgrimage, health
or business. Although seventy-two voyages of the merchant Titus
Flavius Zeuxis of Hierapolis to Italy may have been a rare
experience it was not surprising to come across with people like the
woman Lydia, from Thyatira in Anatolia selling home made goods at
Philippi across the Aegean (Acts 16: 14) or Aquila and Priscilla,
tentmakers originally from Pontus on the Black Sea, who had moved to
Rome and then migrated to Corinth (Acts 18:2-3) and were about to
move to Ephesus (Acts1 8- 1 9). Although there were many traders'
vehicles or carriages bearing the wealthy to their estates, most
travelers would have walked. St. Paul probably covered some 20 to 30
km a day on foot, sleeping at inns or the homes of friends or in the
open when the weather was good along the way. He would have worn
heavy shoes or sandals and perhaps a broad brimmed hat or a cloak
with a hood and kept his money in a leather purse either on his belt
or on a cord hung from the neck and a long staff to help him on
rocky paths and against dogs.
His provisions would have been probably loaded on a pack animal or
carried by his companions. Whilst most of St. Paul's missions were
accomplished by walking, he traveled also by boat. Although
considerably faster than land travel, it was also more dangerous,
not just because of pirates who - despite some flattering claims
that they were cleared from the Mediterranean by the Romans - still
roamed in some waters, but also because of the weather. Even in
summer, voyages across the open sea were unpredictable. This was an
era when passenger ships were not known. One had to go to the port
and ask for a merchant vessel scheduled to sail to one's
destination. Writing some three hundred years after the time of the
Apostle, Libanius, the pagan Antiochene orator remarks, 'In
Constantinople I went down to the Great harbor and made the rounds
asking about vessels sailing for Athens'. Having found a vessel that
could take him to his destination, the passenger would have to wait
near the harbor, perhaps several days, as perhaps the Apostles had
to do in Seleucia Pieria at the beginning of their first journey to
sail to Cyprus and on many other occasions, for the right winds and
omens.
By the first century the captains and pilots who navigated in the
Mediterranean possessed information accumulated over the centuries
since the Phoenicians. Although in the Mediterranean the winds and
currents are known not to have changed for the last two thousand
years, in order to minimize the dangers of sailing in the open sea,
during this period, captains are thought to have sailed without
losing the sight of the coastline, a practice which lasted as late
as the sixteenth century. The Mediterranean was good for sailing in
the open sea except in winter when storms and fog affected
visibility of the coast and stars. Writing in the seventh century
BCE, the Greek poet Hesiod limits the navigable season in the
Mediterranean to the period between 5 May and 25 October. In fine
weather captains either followed the Pole star or any landmark. With
a few exceptions, it was always possible to see the silhouette of a
mountain such as the peaks of the Taurus range of Anatolia, the
African coastline or the islands. The sailing season was short and
limited to the period of good weather, beginning in the early spring
and lasting until October.
It may be for this reason that St. Paul cut his stay short when he
stopped at Ephesus during his return from Corinth to Jerusalem at
the end of his second journey IActs 18:20). In winter when the skies
were cloudy, the stars and sun, by which sailors found their course,
were often not visible. The dangers of winter weather and tempests
are vividly described in the account of the voyage that ended in
shipwreck off Malta, when St. Paul was being taken to trial in Ronie
IActs 27). In such cases there was nothing that the pilot could do
but to shelter in a port and wait for favorable weather. Acts does
not give any information about the kind of ships that the Apostles
embarked on during their sea journeys. Ancient literature, in
addition to small coastal vessels, mentions the existence of large
ships with the capacity of as many as six hundred passengers or
more. Very different were the many small boats, that sailed along
the coasts, coming into harbor each night. Such boats hopping from
one port to the other, collected any kind of available passenger or
merchandise. This practice is evident in the schedule of the boat on
which St. Paul embarked on his journey to Rome as a prisoner; a boat
'bound for ports in the province of Asia' (Acts 27:21 which shortly
after its departure from Caesarea stopped at Sidon.
On such coastal boats merchants, exiles, prostitutes or priests, all
traveled together. As they made zigzags between islands and mainland
the traveling merchants would be collecting timber from Phoenicia,
copper and wine from Cyprus, amphorae from Rhodes and Samos or grain
mills from Coos such boats did not have a schedule and when the
captain decided that his business was done and the wind was
favorable he would send one of the crew to announce in the streets
and taverns of the port that he was soon leaving. By the time that
darkness fell unless he reached a port, he usually found a sheltered
shallow bay and dropped anchor or beached his ships. Lifeboats were
unknown. In case of danger, without the pilot there was no chance of
survival. St. Paul, as an experienced traveler who claimed to have
suffered three shipwrecks (2 Cor 11 :251 knew this well because when
the vessel carrying him faced shipwreck off Malta during his last
journey and the crew tried to sneak off using the dinghy to save
their own lives, he got the centurion and the soldiers and told them
that unless those men stayed with the ship, they could not be saved
(Acts 27:30-311.
People also took passage on vessels carrying cargo. On the same
ill-fated voyage, St. Paul embarked at Myra on one of the big grain
vessels bound from Alexandria to Rome. We know from the words of St
Luke that this ship had 276 people aboard (Acts 27:37), but some
took even more, the passengers sleeping on the open decks. On boats
such as this, or probably larger, would St. Paul have sailed the
eastern Mediterranean, to carry Christ's message to Cyprus,
Anatolia, and Greece.
Journeys of St. Paul
About St. Paul
Traveling in St. Pauls Time
City of St. Paul
Antioch on the Orontes
Seleucia Pieria
First Journey
Ministry in Antioch - Orontes
Second Journey
Third Journey
Arrest and Imprisonment
Journey to Rome
Story of Paul and Thecla
St. Paul's Letters