Herodotus describes the road between Sardes and Susa in the following words.note[Herodotus, Histories five.52-53.]
Equally regards this road the truth is as follows. Everywhere there are imperial stations with excellent resting places, and the whole road runs through state which is inhabited and safe.
Through Lydia and Phrygia there extend xx stages, amounting to 520 kilometers.
Subsequently Phrygia succeeds the river Halys, at which there is a gate which one must needs pass through in order to cross the river, and a potent guard-post is established there.
Then afterward crossing over into Cappadocia information technology is by this way twenty-eight stages, being 572 kilometers, to the borders of Cilicia.
On the borders of the Cilicians you will pass through two sets of gates and guard-posts: then after passing through these it is 3 stages, amounting to 85 kilometers, to journey through Cilicia.
Sardes, where the Regal Road started The purlieus of Cilicia and Armenia is a navigable river called Euphrates. In Armenia the number of stages with resting-places is fifteen, and 310 kilometers, and there is a guard-mail on the way.
Then from Armenia, when ane enters the land of Matiene, at that place are thirty-4 stages, amounting to 753 kilometers. Through this country flow 4 navigable rivers, which cannot be crossed but past ferries, commencement the Tigris, and then a 2d and third called both by the same name, Zabatus, though they are not the same river and do not menses from the aforementioned region (for the first-mentioned of them flows from the Armenian land and the other from that of the Matienians), and the 4th of the rivers is called Gyndes [...].
Passing thence into the Cissian land, there are eleven stages, 234 kilometers, to the river Choaspes, which is also a navigable stream; and upon this is congenital the city of Susa. The number of these stages amounts in all to 1 hundred and xi.
This is the number of stages with resting-places, as one goes up from Sardes to Susa. If the royal road has been rightly measured [...] the number of kilometers from Sardes to the palace of Memnon is 2500. So if one travels 30 kilometers each day, some xc days are spent on the journey.
The Halys
This road must exist very old. If the Persians had built this road and had taken the shortest route, they would have chosen a dissimilar rails: from Susa to Babylon, along the Euphrates to the capital of Cilicia, Tarsus, and from at that place to Lydia. This was not only shorter, only had the boosted advantage of passing along the sea, where information technology was possible to trade goods. The route along the Tigris, however, pb through the heartland of the ancient Assyria. Important towns like Arbela and Opis were situated on the road. kingdom. It is likely, therefore, that the road was planned and organized by the Assyrian kings to connect their capital letter Nineveh with Susa.
Information technology is sure that the Assyrians traded with Kaneš in modern Turkey in the beginning quarter of the second millennium BCE. The names of several trading centers and stations are known and suggest that the road from Assyria to the west was already well-organized. This road was still in existence in the Persian age.
The Persian Gate
A traveler who went from Nineveh (which was destroyed by the Medes and Babylonians in 612) to the westward, crossed the Tigris near a boondocks that was known as Amida in the Roman historic period (and today as Diyarbakır). This was the capital of a country called Sophene. Further to the west, he crossed the Euphrates nigh Melitene, the capital of a minor state with the aforementioned name, which may have been office of the Persian satrapy Cilicia. It is probable that the ruins of the guardhouse mentioned by Herodotus are to be found nearly Eski Malatya.
The border between Cilicia and Cappadocia was in the Antitaurus mount range. The last town in Cilicia, and probably the place of the "2 sets of gates and baby-sit-posts" mentioned past Herodotus, was at Comana, a holy place that was dedicated to Ma-Enyo, a warrior goddess that the Greeks identified with Artemis.
The road continued across the key plains of mod Turkey, a country that was called Cappadocia. The exact course of the route is non known, simply it is probable that information technology passed along the capital of the former Hittite Empire, Hattusa.
The Halys was crossed near modern Ankara (which may well have been a guard-post along the road) and the next stop was Gordium, the capital of another kingdom that had disappeared in the Persian age, Phrygia. The road has been excavated at this site and was 6 meters wide. Crossing the Phrygian obviously and passing through Pessinus, a famous sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Cybele, and Docimium, famous for its pavonazetto marble, the Imperial road reached Sardes.
At Persepolis, many tablets were found that refer to the system of horse changing on the Majestic road; information technology was called pirradaziš. From these tablets, we know a lot most the continuation of the road from Susa through the formidable Western farsi gate to Persepolis (23 stages and a distance of 552 kilometers) and about other main roads in the Achaemenid empire. No less important was, for example, the road that connected Babylon and Ecbatana, which crossed the Royal road near Opis, and continued to the holy city of Zoroastrianism, Rhagae. This road connected to the far east and was later known every bit Silk road.
Herodotus describes the pirradaziš - for which he uses some other name - in very laudatory words:
There is nix mortal which accomplishes a journey with more speed than these messengers, so skillfully has this been invented by the Persians. For they say that according to the number of days of which the unabridged journey consists, so many horses and men are set at intervals, each man and horse appointed for a twenty-four hour period's journeying. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness of night prevents them from accomplishing the task proposed to them with the very utmost speed. The kickoff one rides and delivers the message with which he is charged to the second, and the 2d to the third; and after that it goes through them handed from one to the other, as in the torch race amongst the Greeks, which they perform for Hephaestus. This kind of running of their horses the Persians call angareion.note[Herodotus, Histories 8.98.]
Map of the chief roads in the Achaemenid Empire
To the Greeks, this was most impressive. There is a story past Diodorus of Sicily that betwixt Susa and Persepolis, even greater communication speeds were reached:
Although some of the Persians were afar a thirty days' journey, they all received the order on that very mean solar day, thanks to the skilful organization of the posts of the guard, a matter that it is non well to pass over in silence. Persia is cut by many narrow valleys and has many lookout posts that are high and close together, on which those of the inhabitants who had the loudest voices had been stationed. Since these posts were separated from each other by the distance at which a homo'south phonation can be heard, those who received the order passed it on in the aforementioned way to the side by side, and then these in turn to others until the bulletin had been delivered at the border of the satrapy.note[Diodorus, World history xix.17.five-six.]
The span across the Tigris at Diyarbakir
We cannot constitute whether this is truthful. If it is, information technology is the ultimate tribute to the Persian talent to organize this; if it is a mere fantasy, it is a beautiful compliment.
The road, although without the pirradaziš organisation, was still in use in Roman times. The bridge near Amida (modern Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey) is an illustration. In the fourth century CE, it was important plenty to be dedicated past an unabridged Roman legion, V Parthica, and it remained of import: the bridge was repaired several times.
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