When the poet Horace travelled from Rome towards Brundisium, today’s Brindisi on the Adriatic, in the late 30s BCE, he described the practical difficulties of travelling. At one stop, the water was too unpleasant to drink. At another, the bread was so good that travellers bought some to take with them. Rain damaged the road, a canal boat was delayed, and the places where he spent the night were sometimes wretched. Horace had companions and attendants, but even a traveller with his advantages could not take food, drink and a reliable night’s rest for granted.
What a person packed depended first on what they expected to find along the road. A cloak and sound footwear were useful almost everywhere; food, a drinking container and a way of carrying valuables helped when the next stop was uncertain. Money, or people willing to provide hospitality, reduced the amount of baggage needed. Merchants required seals and accounts, officials might carry authorization, and winter travel across mountains demanded more protection than a summer journey between well-supplied towns. The necessary equipment changed with the traveller and the route.
No Greek or Roman packing manual survives that tells us what everyone carried on a long journey. The evidence comes from letters, inventories, travel accounts, carved reliefs and archaeological finds. Some travellers are far better documented than others. Soldiers and people living at frontier forts have left an especially informative record; cloth and leather belonging to an ordinary walker seldom survive. The objects can establish what was available, but we must be more cautious about saying how regularly travellers took them along.
A bag, a bundle, or an animal to carry it
A person travelling on foot needed a practical way to keep possessions together without occupying both hands. A shoulder bag or a cloth bundle could serve that purpose. Ancient leather bags survive, although archaeologists cannot always establish how one was worn or what it once contained. At Qasr Ibrim in Nubia, the British Museum catalogues Roman-period leather fragments as a bag that may have been a knapsack. Because the identification is tentative, these fragments cannot establish a standard design for an ancient backpack.
The Greek pēra, a pouch or wallet, is particularly familiar from accounts of Cynic philosophers, for whom simple possessions formed part of a deliberately austere life. It was not a regulation travelling bag carried by every Greek. Latin sources use several terms for luggage and purses, while actual containers included baskets, cloth sacks, chests and small money bags. A prosperous family with servants and carts could move spare clothing and bedding without having to carry it by hand. Someone travelling aboard a ship might take a heavy chest that would be unmanageable on a long walk.
Roman military equipment provides a better-known example of baggage carried on the march. On Trajan’s Column, soldiers appear with utensils and bundles hanging from poles; the LWL Roman Museum’s marching-equipment display offers a reconstruction of how the weight could rest across a shoulder. Such representations concern soldiers and their equipment; they provide no standard inventory for civilian travel. A merchant carrying accounts, a pilgrim carrying offerings and a soldier travelling with a unit might all have packed quite differently.
Travellers also had to decide what would stay within reach. Money, correspondence and something to eat on the way were harder to entrust to the main baggage than a spare cloak, grain or a cooking pot. Those bulkier supplies might go on an animal or with a servant. The famous chest discovered at Corbridge contained a striking assortment of military possessions, writing tablets and papyrus. The collection illustrates what a person or group might possess, although it was deposited rather than recovered as a complete travelling kit at an inn.
How did travellers know what to take for the route?
The opportunities to replenish supplies helped determine how a journey was planned. Someone who knew a road might know which settlements sold food, where animals could be fed and how far apart reliable wells lay. On an unfamiliar route, a ferry, an inn or a village could matter far more than an estimate of miles per day. Pack animals made it possible to take more provisions but needed fodder themselves. If flooding forced the party onto another road, even a careful calculation of the next day’s supplies might prove inadequate.
Roman itineraries recorded destinations and distances between them, sometimes with stopping places. The Roman mile markers set along roads give separate evidence for how distances were counted. One much-discussed route diagram is the Tabula Peutingeriana, preserved as a medieval copy of a late-antique original. Its long, compressed depiction was meant to show connected routes, not the straight-line geography of a modern scale map. Nothing about its survival shows that ordinary travellers owned miniature copies. Directions could come instead from companions, local residents, officials or people working on the road. The diagram preserves a systematic representation of routes, without establishing that travellers carried pocket maps.
Horace’s journey in Satires 1.5 illustrates why access to stopping places was so useful. He mentions lodging houses and water supplies, and he praises the bread at a town where travellers bought enough to carry onward. The satire is written for comic effect and leaves much unreported. The purchases and stopping places he describes nevertheless show how travellers used services along the road. Horace and his companions did not need to depart with every portion of food they would consume before reaching the Adriatic.
Roadside lodging and keeping possessions safe
Knowing where one would sleep affected how much bedding or shelter had to be carried. Inns and roadside establishments might supply meals, drinks and accommodation for animals; other people relied on private hospitality through relatives or patrons. Kevin O’Gorman‘s work on commercial hospitality at Pompeii helps put literary accounts of disreputable and dirty inns into perspective. Standards differed between establishments, and complaints in literature cannot describe them all. A traveller expecting a place in a private home could pack much less for the night than someone forced to sleep outdoors.
Possessions also needed looking after at every stop. Cash and important documents were best kept close, while merchandise in a cart required arrangements of its own. Weather and interruptions to transport posed other risks. Horace’s rain and delayed boat demonstrate how suddenly such plans could fail. If a ferry was unavailable, a person might spend the night short of the intended destination, using food that had been reserved for another stage of the journey.
Cloaks and shoes did much of the work
The garments worn on the road had to deal with dust, heat, wind and cold, sometimes within the same trip. In Greece, a himation was a substantial wrap; the shorter chlamys was particularly associated with riding and movement. Roman travellers had other forms available, including the heavier paenula and the sagum familiar from military dress. Their use depended on date, region, fashion and status. Whatever its name, a cloak offered protection by day and could provide another layer of covering when the traveller stopped to rest.
That did not mean one cloak could replace bedding in every situation. A person staying with a host might have no need to bring additional coverings at all, while a cold night in the open could require considerably more. Wet cloth was heavier and offered less comfort. Ancient travellers adjusted their clothing and the distances they attempted to the conditions they faced, often without the choice of shelter or spare garments available to someone wealthier.
Shoes were another concern for travellers moving on foot. Excavated Roman shoes range far beyond the familiar legionary sandal with nails in its sole. The Vindolanda Trust has recorded thousands of footwear fragments, including military and civilian shoes and slippers. The Vindolanda Archaeological Leather Project studies shoes together with bags, straps, saddles and other objects. In Roman London, leather finds include repaired shoes: extra leather patches show that wear could be dealt with rather than prompting immediate replacement.
For someone covering a long distance on foot, a secure fit and sound fastenings mattered more than an impressive design. A piece of cord, an extra thong or a needle might help deal with a broken strap. These are plausible items for repairing a shoe, although there is no evidence for a standard repair kit in every traveller’s bag. Some footwear had hobnailed soles, but not all did. The army’s caliga provides a well-documented example, not a universal pattern for shoes across the Greek and Roman worlds.
Water containers, wine and the limits of the next well
Drinking water was indispensable, yet every extra measure increased the weight a traveller had to carry. The next dependable well, the temperature and the means of transport all affected the quantity worth taking. Skins, ceramic flasks and other containers had different advantages. A skin could be attached to baggage and was less vulnerable to shattering than a thin pottery jug; pottery was familiar, reusable and relatively easy to wash. The choice depended on the route and how much the traveller could carry.
Wine often appears in Greek and Roman accounts, sometimes mixed with water. We should not infer from that practice that adding wine reliably rendered contaminated water safe. Horace’s refusal to drink at one stop illustrates the risk of relying on an unsuitable water supply. A traveller with enough money and time could try to buy another drink, refuse that supply or press on to a different source. Someone without those options faced a more difficult choice.
A wineskin depicted in art shows that the object was familiar to the artist and audience; it does not establish how many travellers owned one. The Walters Art Museum’s bronze satyr holding a wineskin requires further caution, since the museum notes doubts about the figure’s authenticity. Literary and visual images remain helpful evidence, but they must be distinguished from surviving vessels whose archaeological context can be studied.
Bread, dried foods and what could be bought along the road
Food needed to last long enough to reach the next place where more could be obtained, including when rain or transport delayed the journey. Bread, cheese, olives, nuts and dried fruit were known in parts of the Mediterranean and would make plausible provisions. Their durability depended on how they were prepared, stored and exposed to heat. Salted meat or fish could be carried too, although expense, thirst, smell and storage presented problems. A single standardized ration cannot be reconstructed for travellers across Greece, Egypt and the Roman provinces.
Horace’s praise for bread bought at one stopping place is evidence for purchasing provisions during a journey, something a reconstructed travel menu cannot show. Travellers could buy where the provisions were good and keep something for the next stage. Richer passengers might rely on servants, inns or the hospitality of hosts. A poorer person might have to take a larger share of their food from the start or depend on help along the road. Without enough money for small purchases, reaching the next market was not necessarily enough.
The carbonized loaves recovered at Pompeii preserve valuable information about the bread made and eaten there before the eruption in 79 CE. They cannot tell us that everyone on a journey packed a special kind of travel loaf. Finds of cooking utensils raise a similar question of how commonly travellers carried them. A group travelling with baggage might bring a metal pan, and examples of bronze pans and colanders certainly survive. Their existence does not make it likely that an ordinary pedestrian carried both or stopped routinely to cook porridge beside the road.
The calculation changed when people travelled as an organized body rather than alone. In the fourth century BCE, Xenophon’s account of the Greek mercenaries in the Anabasis repeatedly draws attention to provisions, animals and the difficulties of moving an army and its baggage. Such accounts show organized provisioning on a much larger scale, with problems that cannot simply be transferred to a civilian walking between towns. For both, however, there was an unavoidable limit: food sufficient for the next stage added weight and made moving forward more difficult.
A knife, cord and perhaps the means to make a fire
Among smaller possessions, a knife could be especially convenient. It could cut bread or other food, trim cord and assist with an improvised repair. Archaeologists have found Roman knives made for different tasks. The late Roman knife in the Metropolitan Museum of Art combines a steel blade with an ornamented handle, while the London Museum interprets a folding knife from Roman London as a toilet knife, perhaps used for nails. Neither find establishes that folding knives were standard all-purpose tools carried by every traveller.
A length of cord, an awl or a needle would also help when clothing or baggage needed attention. Those tools are archaeologically attested, though we rarely know whether a particular example travelled inside someone’s bag. A broken strap on a pack saddle could interrupt a day’s journey until it was repaired. A traveller therefore needed either equipment and skill to deal with such problems or a place along the route where a repair could be purchased. The choice depended on what the road offered and how much weight could be spared.
A spark could be produced with flint and appropriate metal or by other methods. The archaeological record does not support reconstructing a standard travel pouch containing striker, flint and prepared tinder for every pedestrian. Ancient fire-making equipment survives unevenly, and strikers can be difficult to date. In Vergil’s Aeneid 1.174-179, Achates strikes a spark and kindles dry material after a shipwreck. The passage shows a Roman audience could understand the procedure; it does not document the contents of an excavated travel bag.
Roman oil lamps are common archaeological finds, but their presence in houses or settlements does not mean travellers usually took them on the road. A Roman ceramic lamp in the London Museum has the familiar hole for filling and a nozzle that carried the wick. It could illuminate a room at an overnight stop, provided fuel was available. It was also breakable and poorly suited to wind. Many people may have used whatever lighting their hosts or lodging houses supplied instead of carrying a lamp of their own.
Money, letters and the business of travelling
Money made it possible to leave some supplies behind. Instead of carrying meals for every day, a person could pay an innkeeper; a boatman could provide a crossing, a stable fodder and a craftsman a repair. Prices and coinage varied considerably by period and place. Small coins were useful for ordinary purchases, while merchants dealing in valuable cargo might use accounts or agents to avoid moving all their cash personally. Keeping money secure was sensible, but there is no basis for presenting concealed neck pouches or coins divided between pockets as standard ancient precautions.
Some journeys demanded paperwork as well as money. Travellers might use reusable wax tablets marked with a stylus, or thin wooden leaves written on in ink. A British Museum tablet from Vindolanda records money received and may relate to a civilian trader providing supplies to the military. Another preserves a business letter from Octavius to Candidus concerning a dispute. Both attest to commercial writing on the Roman frontier, but the tablets came from a settlement. Neither was discovered as part of a complete personal travelling pouch.
These writing surfaces served different purposes and should be distinguished. A wax tablet had a recessed area filled with wax that could be written on and corrected with a stylus. The thin wooden tablets from Vindolanda carried ink directly on wood, with different means of correction and preservation. Both types were portable. Not all travellers could write; agreements might also be made orally or with the assistance of a companion or professional scribe.
A journey could sometimes require an official document. P.Oxy. 1271, a papyrus from 246 CE, records a woman asking the prefect of Egypt for permission to depart through Pharos. It demonstrates a particular requirement in one place and period, rather than a system of passports checked at every Greek and Roman town gate. The imperial transport network offered additional privileges to people holding the appropriate authorization. Cristina Corsi’s study of privileged travel and stopping stations explains these arrangements, which ordinary travellers could not simply claim by arriving at a station.
Personal connections might help as much as formal permission. Letters of introduction and ties of guest-friendship connected households and sometimes communities over generations. Inscribed tesserae hospitales, discussed in a scholarly study, could identify people bound by hospitality agreements in certain Mediterranean settings. They belonged to particular social and legal arrangements, not a system of tokens that allowed the general travelling public to demand free board. Most people on the road cannot be assumed to have carried one.
Donkeys, mules and the larger load
With a donkey or mule, a traveller could move grain, bedding, tools and merchandise that would be awkward or impossible to carry on foot. Pack animals offered different capabilities from riding horses, and the weight they could manage changed with their size, health, feed, the road and the balance of the load. It would be misleading to assign every donkey a safe load of precisely one-quarter to one-third of its body weight on the basis of the ancient evidence. Any defensible capacity estimate would have to account for those conditions.
A pack saddle distributed weight while straps kept containers in place on each side of an animal. Archaeological leather from Vindolanda includes saddles and horse gear, although the original functions of individual pieces cannot all be assigned to pack journeys. An uneven load might rub or injure the animal, and a failed strap could delay its owner. The animal also needed fodder and water. Carrying more baggage therefore involved planning for the needs of the means of transport itself.
A pedestrian had to make much harder choices about weight. Between closely spaced towns, suitable shoes, a cloak, money and a small supply of food might suffice. Longer stretches without settlements made extra water and provisions desirable, but carrying them required more effort. Elite travellers could shift that burden to servants, carts and animals, allowing them to bring bedding and spare garments or other comforts. People without those resources had to do without or hope to buy what they needed later.
Washing, grooming and medical supplies
After hours of walking, dust and sweat made washing desirable. Greek and Roman methods of cleaning the body, also discussed in daily life in ancient Greece, included applying oil and removing it with the curved scraper known as a strigil. Someone used to baths or gymnasia might plausibly take a small oil flask and scraper along. Neither item can be treated as an essential part of every ancient traveller’s equipment. Bathing and washing depended on local habits, privacy and the availability of water or a bathhouse.
A longer walk could also mean blisters, cuts and sore muscles. Cloth for a dressing, oil or ointment and a few simple personal-care implements were possible additions to someone’s baggage. Equipment recovered from a Roman physician’s workplace cannot therefore establish the contents of a typical pedestrian’s first-aid pouch. Treatments differed between periods and communities, and evidence that a remedy was used is not evidence that it worked.
Sometimes mosquito bites or soaked clothes caused more difficulty than the absence of a grooming tool. Horace complains about insects and other discomforts during his canal journey. Spare clothing might help, but many people could carry only what they wore. A rich passenger with servants could have additional garments stored in the baggage. To someone walking alone, even taking a second tunic meant accepting extra weight for every mile of the route.
What changed in Egypt, Greece and the eastern provinces?
The materials left behind by ancient travellers do not survive equally in every region. In the dry conditions of Egypt, papyrus letters, receipts and permits are relatively well represented. A scribe there might have taken ink and writing implements suited to papyrus. Farther north in the Roman provinces, wet archaeological deposits have preserved leather shoes and wooden writing tablets. These differences reflect conditions of preservation and cannot establish that documentation mattered only in Egypt.
Geography often had a greater effect on baggage than whether a traveller was Greek or Egyptian. Boats on the Nile made resupply and transport possible in ways unlike a land crossing of the Greek mainland; coastal shipping could move loads that would be expensive to carry by mule. In desert areas, knowing the next water source might determine whether animals and guides were necessary. Busy routes linking major cities offered markets and accommodation. Each situation calls for a different calculation, and none establishes a distinctive kit used by every traveller of one culture.
The traveller’s business made a further difference. A merchant might bring seals and accounts, a government official permission to use services, a soldier issued equipment, and someone visiting a sanctuary a religious offering. Amulets existed throughout the ancient Mediterranean, but their popularity does not make them compulsory baggage. Doctors and craftsmen might carry their instruments; musicians might travel with an instrument. A flute among a performer’s belongings would reflect that occupation rather than the equipment of most pedestrians.
A historically plausible pack for a long journey
A person walking for several days through the Roman Mediterranean, expecting to sleep at settlements along the way, would have made choices according to the available evidence. Well-fitting shoes and an outer garment suitable for the weather would be a reasonable beginning. A small bag might hold coins, bread or another portable food, a drinking vessel, and perhaps a knife and cord. A literate traveller conducting business could add writing materials; a letter to a prospective host might prove equally useful. This is a reconstruction drawn from separate sources, not a claim that archaeologists have found one bag containing all these things.
The contents would change quickly if settlements were far apart. More water and food would be prudent, and uncertain lodging might call for extra covering. A traveller with a donkey could bring additional clothes and equipment, provided there was feed and water for the animal. A merchant hauling merchandise needed boxes, seals, records and perhaps assistants. A soldier’s issued gear reflected the demands of military service. All travelled, but the word does not make their possessions or needs interchangeable.
Horace’s journey ends up teaching us as much about the road as about a bag. The problem was reaching somewhere with tolerable water and food, paying for crossings and lodging, and coping with rain or a delayed boat. Ancient travellers packed in anticipation of what the route, their money, the people they knew and the help of strangers might make available. The small set of objects carried on the body was important, but it only worked as part of that larger calculation.
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