REFERENCES: Marquardt, 469-474, 731-738, 799-833; Voigt, 359 f.; Göll, II, 418-462, III, 1-45; Guhl and Koner, 538-544, 766 f., 783 f.; Friedländer, II, 36-291; Ramsay, 76-78, 512-516; Pauly-Wissowa, _carpentum_, _cisium_, _charta_, _Brief_, _Buch_, _Buchhandlung_, _Bibliotheken_; Smith, Harper, Rich, Lübker, _viae_, _tabulae_, _liber_, _bibliothēca_, and other Latin words in text; Baumeister, 2079 f., 354, 361-364; Blümner, I, 308-327; Johnston, Latin Manuscripts, 13-21, 27-34, 36. §379. For our knowledge of the means of traveling employed by the Romans we have to rely upon indirect sources (§12), because if any volumes of travel were ever written they have not come down to us. We know, however, that while no distance was too great to be traversed, no hardships too severe to be surmounted, for the sake of fame or fortune, the Roman cared nothing for traveling in itself, for the mere pleasure, that is, of sight-seeing. This was partly due to his blindness to the charms of nature, more perhaps to his feeling that to be out of Rome was to be forgotten. He made once in his life the grand tour (§116), he spent a year abroad in the train of some general or governor (§118), but this done, only the most urgent private affairs or public duties could draw him from Italy. And Italy was to him only Rome and his country estates (§145). These he visited when the hot months had closed the courts and adjourned the senate, roaming restlessly from one to another, impatient for his real life to begin again. Even when public or private business called him from Rome, he kept in touch with affairs by correspondence, expecting his friends to write him voluminous letters, ready himself to return the favor when positions should be reversed. So, too, the proconsul kept as near to Rome as the boundaries of his province would permit; almost all the uprisings in farther Gaul were due to Caesar's habit of hurrying off to Italy as soon as winter had put an end to active operations in the field.