A day's journey in pre-modern literature, including the

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and ancient geographers and ethnographers such as

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

, is a measurement of distance. In the Bible, it is not as precisely defined as other Biblical measurements of distance; the distance has been estimated from . Judges 19 records a party of three people and two mules who traveled from

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Gibeah Gibeah (; ''Gīḇəʿā''; ''Gīḇəʿaṯ'') is the name of three places mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, in the tribes of Tribe of Benjamin, Benjamin, Tribe of Judah, Judah, and Tribe of Ephraim, Ephraim respectively. Gibeah of Benjamin, als ...

, a distance of about 10 miles, in an afternoon. Porter notes that a mule can travel about 3 miles per hour, covering 24 miles in an eight-hour day. Another citation comes from

Priscus Priscus of Panium (; ; 410s/420s AD – after 472 AD) was an Eastern Roman diplomat and Greek historian and rhetorician (or sophist)...: "For information about Attila, his court and the organization of life generally in his realm we have the ...

(fr. 8 in Müller's '' Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum'') and is translated thus by J. B. Bury: ''We set out with the barbarians, and arrived at Sardica, which is thirteen days for a fast traveller from

Constantinople Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...

.'' From Constantinople (Istanbul) to

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is 550–720 km (311–447 mi.) distance; the passage, then, implies a pace between 42 and 55 km /day (26–34 mi./day). Based on a comprehensive review of references in Herodotus, GeusKlaus Geus, "A Day's Journey in Herodotus' Histories", in: Klaus Geus and Martin Thiering (Eds.), Common Sense Geography and Mental Modelling, Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2012, 110–118 concludes that "Herodotus has a very well-defined notion of what distance a traveller can cover under normal circumstances in a day (between 150 and 200 stades or roughly, between 27 and 40 kilometres 7 and 26 mi.," though he cites some exceptional examples of over 100 km (62 mi.) per day.

Notes

Units of length Biblical phrases {{Bible-stub