Via Egnatia

The Via Augusta is still traced through Valencia, Tarragona, Barcelona.

The Via Egnatia, built in 146 BC, is still the corridor through Albania, Greece, and Turkey.

The Via Appia is still a road, now a regional park.

Why does the route survive, even when the pavement doesn't? Because the route is the hard part.

He is acting as an official envoy, delivering a vital survival care package to his spiritual father.

He is essentially hiking a modern scenic trail utilizing the incredible Roman road system, the Via Egnatia.

Why do scholars constantly underestimate the physical endurance of the ancient world?

It is a profound underestimation of the Cursus publicus, the state-run courier and transportation service of the Roman Empire, and just the general mobility of the era.

Wow.

Yeah.

A dedicated, highly motivated envoy like Epaphroditus, traveling partly by sea and partly by the well-paved Via Egnatia, could certainly make the trip in a month to six weeks.

There is absolutely no logistical impossibility here that necessitates inventing a fictional imprisonment in Ephesus.

At its northern end there was a remarkable gorge cleaving the mountains from east to west, the only rent in the great mass of Skardos for more than 200 miles, through which a tributary of the Apsos flows from its source in Mount Barnas on its way to the Adriatic.

The Roman road of later days, Via Egnatia, was carried over a pass some 30 miles to the north.

But before the Roman conquest of Macedon, this gorge of the Aeordikos must have formed the main line of communication between Illyria and Macedon, whether for commerce or invasion, and lent therefore an exceptional importance to the upper valley of the Haliakmon.

To the north of Orestes lay the fertile uplands watered by the river Erigon as it pursues a winding course to join the Axios.

Not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere so that we need not say anything." So the church really took off there.

Uh, one la- one last thing there, that, uh, that, um, the next screen there, that, [clears throat] if you look, uh, sorry, on the map, if you look up at the top of the map, basically from Albania all the way to Turkey was what they refer to as the Roman Road or the Via Egnatia.

And that, uh, uh, via, you, you understand that.

If you wanna go to Cabin Fever, you're gonna get there via Pioneer.

If you wanna get to the highway, it's via Morrow Road, and so that's where we get the term Via Egnatia.

Egnatia was the proconsul of, um, of Macedonia when that Roman road was built.

And so it went through all of those towns and, uh- Their testimony was known throughout that entire region, the Thessalonian church.