Latin Texts & Translations

It was considered a very great thing for Philippides to run one thousand one hundred and sixty stadia, the distance between Athens and Lacedæmon, in two days, until Amystis, the Lacedæmonian courier, and Philonides, ^[Note] the courier of Alexander the Great, ran from Sicyon to Elis in one day, a distance of thirteen hundred and five stadia. ^[Note] In our own times, too, we are

fully aware that there are men in the Circus, who are able to keep on running for a distance of one hundred and sixty miles; and that lately, in the consulship of Fonteius and Vipstanus, ^[Note] there was a child eight years of age, who, between morning and evening, ran a distance of seventy-five miles. ^[Note] We become all the more sensible of these wonderful instances of swiftness, upon reflecting that Tiberius Nero, when he made all possible haste to reach his brother Drusus, who was then sick in Germany, reached him in three stages, travelling day and night on the road; the distance of each stage was two hundred miles. ^[Note]