TheAngarium (Latin; fromGreekἈγγαρήιονangareion) was the institution of the royal mounted couriers inancient Persia. The messengers, calledangaros (ἄγγαρος), alternated in stations a day's ride apart along theRoyal Road. The riders were exclusively in the service of the Great King and the network allowed for messages to be transported fromSusa toSardis (2699 km) in nine days; the journey took ninety days on foot.[1]
Herodotus, in about 440 BC, describes the Persian messenger system which had been perfected byDarius I about half a century earlier:
Now there is nothing 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 entire journey consists, so many horses and men are set at intervals, each man and horse appointed for a day's journey. These neither snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness of night prevents from accomplishing each one the task proposed to him, with the very utmost speed. The first then rides and delivers the message with which he is charged to the second, and the second to the third; and after that it goes through them handed from one to the other, as in the torch-race among theHellenes, which they perform forHephaestus. This kind of running of their horses the Persians call Angarium.[2]
A sentence of this description of theangarium, translated as "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," isfamously inscribed on theJames A. Farley Building inNew York City.