Conclusion

John Chrysostom’s admiration for the patriarch’s willingness to travel, alluded to at the beginning of this essay, thus depends upon a prior acknowledgment of the effects of empire. Wherever the Romans went, they built roads and established shipping routes to secure access to outlying areas and to encourage mobility. The twin themes of dominion and travel are strikingly linked in Aelius Aristides’ fulsome praise of the second-century Roman emperor, Antoninus Pius:

Now it is possible for both Greek and barbarian, with his possessions or without them, to travel easily wherever he wishes, quite as if he were going from one country of his to another. And he is frightened neither by the Cilician Gates [a mountain pass in southern Turkey], nor by the sandy, narrow passage through Arabia to Egypt, nor by impassable mountains, nor by boundless, huge rivers, nor by inhospitable barbarian races. But it is enough for his safety that he is a Roman, or rather one of those under you. And what was said by Homer, ‘‘The earth was common to all,’’ you have made a reality, by surveying the whole inhabited world, by bridging the rivers in various ways, by cutting carriage roads through the mountains, by filling desert places with post stations, and by civilizing everything with your way oflife and good order. . . And now, indeed, there is no need to write a description of the world, nor to enumerate the laws of each people, but you have become universal geographer for all men by opening up all the gates of the inhabited world and by giving to all who wish it the power to be observers ofeverything. . . and by organizing the whole inhabited world like a single household. (Aelius Aristides, Or. 26. 100-2, tr. Behr 1981-6, ii: 95-6)

Not just a happy result of empire, mobility was its main building block. By moving across the empire, late antique travelers created its unity and were, in turn, romanized.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

To learn more about the essential connectivity and fluidity of the Mediterranean region, see Horden and Purcell’s groundbreaking and immensely learned study (2000).

For details about the infrastructure of overland travel in Late Antiquity, Casson’s works remain indispensable (1974, 1988). The older, technical, studies of Forbes (1955) and Chevallier (1976) continue to illuminate, as does William Ramsay’s astonishingly comprehensive encyclopedia article (1904). Casson (1969, 1971) and Roug{; (1966) should be consulted for issues pertaining to maritime travel. Dilke remains the classic study of maps and mapmaking (1985); for newer, theoretical perspectives and helpful correctives, see Salway (2001), Brodersen (2001), and Ray Laurence (2001, 2004). More recent bibliography is abundantly available in Horden and Purcell (2000).

For reevaluations of travel in Late Antiquity, especially as it related to imperial ideology, see the work of Ray Laurence (1999, 2001) and the volumes of essays collected by Adams and Laurence (2001) and by Ellis and Kidner (2004).

To learn more about Christian pilgrimage in Late Antiquity, one can turn to the magisterial works of B. Kotting (1950), E. D. Hunt (1982) and R. Wilken (1992). These should be supplemented by Frank’s study of pilgrimage to living people, especially to ‘‘holy men’’ (2000), and by Elsner’s and Jacobs’ illuminating application of postcolonial criticism (Elsner 2000; Jacobs 2004). See Hirschfeld (1992) for the material contribution of monasticism to pilgrimage. For a new appreciation of the extent of ascetic mobility, see Caner (2002) and Dietz (2005).

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Map 3 Travel and Communication in the Late Empire.