INTELLIGENCE

“Chani Derveni was a transfer station during the Ottoman Rule, located in the roadway extending from Tripolitsia to Constantinople. The Tartar postmen of the time, i.e. the postmen at transfer stations, covered that distance in five days (you can still hear the phrase “like a Tartar’s horses” today). On first hearing this information from an old lady, I assumed it was merely a typical overstatement communicated to us by way of folk tradition. However, when I estimated that the distance from Tripolis to Constantinople along the line the main roadway followed amounted to nearly one thousand and two hundred (1,200) kilometres, I was convinced that covering the distance in only five days was feasible, given that the postmen alternated and consequently the documents addressed to his Highness travelled day and night; provided the alternating postmen covered an average of ten kilometres per hour, it would take a total of one hundred and twenty (120) hours, in other words five (5) days.

In the Megara district, a station operated in Pika, another one in Derveni, which was connected with a station in the direction of Constantinople located in Maliagoritsa and with another station in the direction of Athens.”

excerpt from Megarean Fragments A’, by Meletios Benardis, Professor of Religious Education, with the contribution of the Municipality of Megara, April 1936