WITH the great love of comfort that distinguished the upper ranks of the Roman world in later times, we may easily imagine that sufficient provision was made for the means of locomotion, unaccompanied by any exertion on their own part. We should form a very erroneous conception if we fancied that the Romans did not possess, as well as the moderns, their travelling, state, and hackney equipages: on the contrary, the means of conveyance in their times, though not so regularly organized as our stage-coaches and omnibuses, nor so generally used by all classes, were even more numerous, and, to a certain extent, better calculated for the purpose they were intended to answer, although this was intimately connected with the (to us unknown) system of slaves, and also depended on conditions of climate.

These subjects have been often and circumstantially treated of, and but little of importance remains to be added, so that we shall rather seek to select and properly apply the most essential points of what has already been made known. The most important writings are: Schefferi, De re vehiculari veterum, lib. ii., in Poleni thes. t. v., to which is appended, De vehiculis antiquis diatribe; Beckmann, Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Erfind. i. 390; and Ginzrot, Die Wägen und Fahrwerke der Griechen und Römer und and. alt. Völk. 2 vols. 4; a work which has the advantage of being written by a connoisseur in these matters, though as a philologist he is by no means all we could wish.