There were other famous trade routes of the period. One is from
Corinth; another from the Graeco-Scythian city at the mouth of the Sea
of Azov, whence corn and salted fish were sent in abundance; a third
from Cadiz, outside the straits of Gibraltar, by which were brought
the wool and other produce of Andalusia; a fourth from Tarragona
across to Ostia, the regular route for official and passenger
intercourse with Spain. Yet another took you to Carthage in three
days. Across the Adriatic from Brindisi you would reach in one day
either Corfu or the Albanian coast at Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), where
began the great highroad to the East. Given a fair wind, your ship
might average 125 or 130 miles in the twenty-four hours, and, if you
left Rome on Monday morning, you had a reasonable prospect of landing
in Spain on the following Saturday. From Cadiz you would probably
require ten or eleven days. There was, it is true, no need to come by
sea from that town. There was a good road all the way, with a
milestone at every Roman mile, or about 1600 yards. Unfortunately that
route would generally take you nearly a month.

It is not probable that sea travelling was at all comfortable; but it
was apparently quite as much so, and quite as rapid, as it was on the
average a century ago. Ships were made strong and sound; nevertheless
shipwrecks were very frequent, as they always have been in sailing
days. Wreckers who showed false lights were not unknown. There is also
little doubt that the vessels were often terribly overcrowded; one
ship, it is said, brought no less than 1200 passengers from
Alexandria. That on which St. Paul was wrecked had 276 souls on board,
and one upon which Josephus once found himself had as many as 600. It
is incidentally stated in Tacitus that a body of troops, who had been
both sent to Alexandria and brought back thence by sea, were greatly