CHAP. 20.—INSTANCES OF REMARKABLE AGILITY.
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,[1] the courier of Alexander
the Great, ran from Sicyon to Elis in one day, a distance of thirteen hundred and five stadia.[2] 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,[3]
there was a child eight years of age, who, between morning and
evening, ran a distance of seventy-five miles.[4] 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.[5]
1. Philonides has been already mentioned, B. ii. c. 73, as being in the
habit of going from Sicyon to Elis in nine hours.—B.
2. We may consult the learned notes of Ajasson, Lemaire, vol. ii. p.
99, respecting the exact distances here indicated by Pliny. We may remark, that a stadium is about one-eighth of a mile, according to which estimate, Philippides must have gone 142 miles in two days, and the other 150
miles in one day; as it is implied, that these journeys were performed on
foot, even the former of them is obviously impossible.—B. Query, however, as to this last assertion; according to recent pedestrian feats, it does
not appear to be absolutely impossible.
3. See B. ii. c. 72.
4. This feat is no less incredible than those mentioned above.—B.
5. We have an account of this journey of Tiberius in Dion Cassius.
Val. Maximus, B. v. c. 6, also enumerates this among the extraordinary
examples of fraternal affection.—B. We learn also from Suetonius, that
on learning the accident, a fall from his horse, which had happened to his
brother Drusus, Tiberius took horse at Ticinum, and travelled night and
day till he reached his brother, who was then in Germany, near the Rhine.
He accompanied the body to Rome, preceding it on foot all the way. There
is extant a "Consolation to Livia Augusta," written on this occasion, some
have thought, by Pedo Albinovanus, but it is more likely to have been the
work of Ovid.