Administration and Logistics in the Ancient/Hellenistic world

**edyzmedieval** · 06-19-2015, 12:28

Picture this - you're the leader of the Seleukid empire and it's approximately 220BC (esentially the reign of Antiochos III Magas). How was the administration of the Seleukid Empire done? How were the logistics carried out?

The example of the Seleukid empire is given because it stretched from Antiocheia (on the Orontes) to Antiocheia-Margiane and beyond, to even Baktria. That's a huge place to govern, hence the question of administration and logistics. How was the administration handled? How were the logistics done?

How would Antiochos Magas issue an order to his eastermost armies from his base in Antiocheia? A royal courier would most likely be the choice to send his orders, but travelling half a continent in 220BC wasn't exactly the fastest way of relaying news, command orders and supplies. It would perhaps take at least a month, maybe two, until the royal courier would arrive and relay the orders of Antiochos. From there, the courier would have to return to Antiocheia to relay the news from the commanders dealing with the Parthians. The Seleukids did have the advantage of the Persian Royal Road that would have greatly sped up the couriers and allowed for a more efficient way of dispensing with news, orders and the such, but that would still be rather slow given how much battle was being done against the Parthians, the Baktrians and the rest of the satrapies that rebelled against central Seleukid rule.

On the other hand, it would have been faster to reach Ephesus/Sardes/Pergamon due to it's closer proximity, but that would still have required at least two-three weeks of constant travel.

All of this would have required a very dedicated team of couriers, and a large one at that, which would have been very necessary particularly in the times of Alexander the Great as he advanced in his campaign.

Was this relaying of orders/logistics done just through royal couriers? Or were there other methods to more efficiently administer such an empire?

**CBR** · 06-19-2015, 15:03

AFAIK the Successors kept using the Royal Road and why shouldn't they? If we are to trust the sources, couriers could move 300+ km a day.

Supplies would have had to be handled nearer to the where it was needed.

**edyzmedieval** · 06-19-2015, 22:33

CBR, good to see you around these places.

You mentioned 300 km a day - that's an incredible amount to of road to cover in the Ancient world. Can you detail on this bit?

**CBR** · 06-20-2015, 03:12

Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

CBR, good to see you around these places.

Thanks

You mentioned 300 km a day - that's an incredible amount to of road to cover in the Ancient world. Can you detail on this bit?

Herodotus does tell us that a new rider and horse was used for each day. We are told that the road from Sardis to Susa had 111 stations, and that at least makes sense with one station per day for long range army movement (22'ish km/day) But it also means the infrastructure was there to switch horses more often than Herodotus says. We can compare it to Roman couriers doing 240+ km/day for 8-9 days or emperor Tiberius doing 320 km in one day. Bear in mind that the Roman system did not switch riders as it was possible to interrogate the rider for further information. Early Byzantine couriers on urgent business could do 385 km in a day and the American Pony Express managed to cross the continent(3100 km) in ten days, but they changed rider and horse several times a day. These days we have the 100 mile in one day Tevis Cup, done in rough terrain and taking about 14-15 hours for the winners.

I'm not suggesting that news/orders always traveled at the greatest possible speed and historians seem pretty confident that the Roman system did maybe 60-100 km/day. But when things were urgent it could be done very fast and the Persian system should have been slightly faster than the Roman system, thanks to fresh riders every day.

**edyzmedieval** · 06-20-2015, 11:57

Thank you for that wonderful bit of info.

Did the Seleukids, Romans and other empires have a dedicated team of trained, experienced couriers who were tasked with the urgent matters or did they just use "normal" couriers?

**CBR** · 06-20-2015, 13:11

Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

Did the Seleukids, Romans and other empires have a dedicated team of trained, experienced couriers who were tasked with the urgent matters or did they just use "normal" couriers?

Not that I know of, but I would think it was logical to pick the best riders and horses available. At least the Romans who had to pick a man who had to go through the whole route.

If urgent messages didn't happen often, it might be overkill to have dedicated teams for it, IMO.

**Montmorency** · 06-20-2015, 15:17

Don't forget that larger empires like the Romans and the Achaemenids/Parthians/Sassanids had dedicated secret-service bureaucracies (e.g. Roman frumentarii, Achaemenid spasaka/King's Eyes), and they would have operated along the signal system according to their own internal standards and with their own agents, since their transmissions would have basically constituted Classified/Top Secret material. Most of the messages passed along this subsystem would have been related to internal operations, but as these would have often constituted high-priority reading for the emperors/autocrats, and the agents were already used to carrying out that sort of clandestine stuff, I'm sure that especially-sensitive direct orders from the head honcho(s) would have utilized this network as well. At the very least, regular royal messengers and secret service messengers could have been utilized at a single moment by a ruler to, for example, mislead spies or test loyalties by having two variants of the same order submitted. And so on, whatever political maneuvering you could think of. Unsurprisingly, the heads of secret services would have tended to be very powerful men, close to the right hand of the autocrat.