the journey of Tiberius mentioned by Valerius Maximus, the news of the mutiny of Galba as recorded by Tacitus, and the news of the death of Nero as described by Plutarch. In the last two cases, it is worth keeping in mind that bad news traveled faster than good news, and quite explicitly: a laurel was attached to the correspondence with news of victory, but a feather, as indicating haste, was fixed to the spear of a messenger carrying bad news. In all three cases, as A. M. Ramsey points out, the journey is especially urgent, and the time of travel may be recorded because of its exceptional rapidness. Such cases could not be used to find an average speed of the Roman post for carrying the vast majority of items. Ramsey, following Wilcken, illustrates the speed of the Roman post over land with examples of the amount of time it would take a message to travel from Rome to Egypt about the accession of a new emperor (in a season other than summer, when the message would travel by sea from Rome to Alexandria). In the case of Pertinax, news of the accession, which took place on January 1, AD 193, took over sixty-three days to reach Egypt, being announced on March 6 in Alexandria. Since the route that would be taken over land consisted of about — from Rome to Byzantium, including the sea crossing and almost from Byzantium to Alexandria)—and since it took about sixty-three days or a little more for the message to arrive in Alexandria, this confirms an average rate of about per day for this journey. Another example, based on a Latin inscription, is cited by Ramsey. Gaius Caesar, grandson of Augustus, died on February 21, AD 4, in Limyra, which is on the coast of Lycia. The news of death is found on an inscription dated April 2 at Pisa. The amount of time that the message took to arrive at Pisa is not less than thirty-six days. Since a voyage by sea would be too dangerous at this time of year, the message was sent over land, a distance of about . This confirms the calculation of an average rate of about fifty km per day. In his article “New Evidence for the Speed of the Roman Imperial Post,” Eliot agrees with A. M. Ramsey that the typical speed was about per