Aday's journey in pre-modern literature, including theBible[1][2] and ancient geographers and ethnographers such asHerodotus, is a measurement of distance.
In the Bible, it is not as precisely defined asother Biblical measurements of distance; the distance has been estimated from 32 to 40 kilometers (20 to 25 miles).Judges 19 records a party of three people and two mules who traveled fromBethlehem toGibeah, a distance of about 10 miles, in an afternoon. Porter[3] notes that a mule can travel about 3 miles per hour, covering 24 miles in an eight-hour day.
Another citation comes fromPriscus (fr. 8 in Müller'sFragmenta Historicorum Graecorum) and is translated thus byJ. B. Bury:We set out with the barbarians, and arrived atSardica, which is thirteen days for a fast traveller fromConstantinople. From Constantinople (Istanbul) toSofia is 550–720 km (311–447 mi.) distance; the passage, then, implies a pace between 42 and 55 km /day (26–34 mi./day).
Based on a comprehensive review of references in Herodotus, Geus[4] concludes that "Herodotus has a very well-defined notion of what distance a traveller can cover under normal circumstances in a day (between 150 and 200 stades or roughly, between 27 and 40 kilometres [17 and 26 mi.])," though he cites some exceptional examples of over 100 km (62 mi.) per day.
