or CARRIER, (from the French courier, "to run?") a messenger sent post, or express, to carry dispatches.

Antiquity, too, had its couriers. We meet with two kinds: 1. Those who ran on foot, called by the Greeks hemerodromi, q.d. "couriers of a day." Pliny, Corn. Nepos, and Caesar, mention some of these who would run 20, 30, 36, and in the circus even 40 leagues per day. 2. Riding couriers (curiores equitantes), who changed horses, as the modern couriers do.

Xenophon attributes the first couriers to Cyrus. Herodotus says, they were very ordinary among the Persians, and that there was nothing in the world more swift than these kind of messengers. "That prince (says Xenophon) examined how far a horse would go in a day; and built stables, at such distances from each other, where he lodged horses, and persons to take care of them; and at each place kept a person always ready to take the packet, mount a fresh horse, and forward it to the next stage: and thus quite through his empire."

But it does not appear that either the Greeks or Romans had any regular fixed couriers till the time of Augustus: under that prince they travelled in cars; though it appears from Socrates they afterwards went on horseback. Under the western empire, they were called viatores; and under that of Constantinople, curiores: whence the modern name. See POST.