The word "post" descends to us from the Roman _posita_ (_positus_ = placed), and is a link between our posts of to-day and the _cursus publicus_ of the time of Augustus. In those days of arms the roads were laid for armies to traverse, not for traffic, and the organisation of the _posita_ was military. Stations were established at intervals on the chief routes, where couriers and magistrates could be furnished with changes of horses (_mutationes_.) For the benefit of the travellers _mansiones_ or night quarters were erected. These State posts were only for the use of the Government, and they were ridden by couriers who had, besides their own mount, a spare horse for carrying the letters. Individuals were at times permitted to use the posts, for which privilege they had to have the permits or _diplomata_ of the Emperor. The Romans also had what may be compared with sea-posts, from Ostia and other ports. Foot-runners and messengers on horseback have been organised for Government communications in most lands where civilisation has dawned, even in remote times. In the West the Incas and the Aztecs had runners from earliest times, and in the Orient carrier-pigeons provided an additional means of communication. It is not until the fifteenth century that we find posts in operation on a more public scale, the first being a horse-post plying between the Tyrol and Italy, set up by Roger of Thurn and Taxis in 1460. From that modest beginning sprang the vast monopoly of the Counts of Thurn and Taxis, which dominated the posts of the Continent during five centuries, remaining into the early period of the postage-stamp system. By 1500, Franz von Taxis was Postmaster-General of Austria, the Low Countries, Spain, Burgundy, and Italy. In 1516 he connected up Brussels and Vienna, and his successor Leonard provided a link between Vienna and Nuremberg. In 1595, Leonard von Taxis was the Grand Postmaster of the Holy Roman Empire, and he established a post from the Netherlands to Italy by way of Trèves, Spire, Wurtemburg, Augsburg, and Tyrol. In the next century, Eugenius Alexander subscribes himself in a postal document as "Count of Thurn, Valsassina, Tassis and the Holy Empire, Chamberlain of His Majesty the Roman Emperor, _Hereditary Postmaster-General of the Realm_." The postal dominion of this princely house flourished until the wars of the French Revolution, from which period the power of the Counts began to dwindle. Some of the German States withdrew from their arrangements with the house of Thurn and Taxis, and others purchased their freedom and set up postal establishments of their own. By the middle of the nineteenth century Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Hanover, Baden, Brunswick, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Holstein, Oldenburg, Lauenburg, Luxemburg and Saxony had independent posts, but the Thurn and Taxis administration still controlled an area of 25,000 square miles (with 3,750,000 inhabitants), under the direction of a head office at Frankfort-on-the-Maine.