TheRoyal Road is an ancienthighway reorganized and rebuilt for trade in the 5th century BCAchaemenid Empire.[1] Theroad was built to facilitate rapid communication on the western part of the large empire fromSusa toSardis[2] and was probably perfected underDarius I. Mounted couriers of theAngarium were supposed to travel 1,677 miles (2,699 km) from Susa to Sardis in nine days; the journey took ninety days on foot.[3]
The course of this road has been reconstructed from the writings ofHerodotus,[4]archeological research, and other historical records.
Because the road did not follow the shortest nor the easiest route between the most important cities of the empire, archeologists believe the westernmost sections of the road may have originally been built by theAssyrian kings, as the road plunges through the heart of their old empire. More eastern segments of the road, identifiable in present-day northern Iran, were not noted by Herodotus, whose view of Persia was that of an Ionian Greek in the West;[5] stretches of the Royal Road across the central plateau of Iran, such as theGreat Khorasan Road, are coincident with the major trade route known as theSilk Road.
However, Darius I improved the existing road network into the Royal Road as it is recognized today.[citation needed] A later improvement by the Romans of a road bed with a hard-packed gravelled surface of 6.25 m width held within a stone curbing was found in a stretch nearGordium[6] and connecting the parts together in a unified whole stretching some 1677 miles, primarily as apost road, with a hundred and eleven posting stations maintained with a supply of fresh horses, a quick mode of communication using relays of swift mounted messengers, the kingdom'spirradazis.
In 1961, under a grant from theAmerican Philosophical Society, S. F. Starr traced the stretch of road from Gordium to Sardis, identifying river crossings by ancient bridgeabutments.[7]
TheGreek historianHerodotus wrote,[8][9] "There is nothing in the world that travels faster than these Persian couriers." Herodotus's praise for these messengers— "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"— was inscribed on theJames Farley Post Office in New York and althoughUnited States Postal Service has noofficial motto or creed, this phrase is sometimes thought of as the one thereof.[10]
Euclid is said to have replied toKing Ptolemy's request for an easier way of learning mathematics that "there is no Royal Road to geometry", according toProclus himself quotingArchimedes.[11][12] The same sentence is also attributed toMenaechmus replying toAlexander the Great.[13]
Charles Sanders Peirce, in hisHow to Make Our Ideas Clear (1878), says, "There is no royal road to logic, and really valuable ideas can only be had at the price of close attention."
Sigmund Freud famously described dreams as the "royal road to the unconscious" ("Via regia zur Kenntnis des Unbewußten").
Karl Marx wrote in the1872 Preface to the French Edition ofDas Kapital (Volume 1), "There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits."
The Royal Road to Romance (1925) is the first book byRichard Halliburton, covering his world travels as a young man fromAndorra toAngkor.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)γέγονε δὲ οὗτος ὁ ἀνὴρ ἐπὶ τοῦ πρώτου Πτολεμαίου· καὶ γὰρ ὁ Ἀρχιμήδης ἐπιβαλὼν καὶ τῷ πρώτῳ μνημονεύει τοῦ Εὐκλείδου, καὶ μέντοι καὶ φασιν ὅτι Πτολεμαῖος ἢρετό ποτε αὐτόν, εἴ τίς ἐστιν περὶ γεωμετρίαν ὁδὸς συντομωτέρα τῆς στοιχειώσεως· ὁ δὲ ἀπεκρίνατο, μὴ εῖναι βασιλικὴν ἀτραπὸν ἐπὶ γεωμετρίαν.
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