NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN NOR HEAT NOR GLOOM

“NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN NOR HEAT NOR GLOOM OF NIGHT STAYS THESE COURIERS FROM THE SWIFT COMPLETION OF THEIR APPOINTED ROUNDS. ” Erich Pulfer

During the Persian Wars, the Persian Empire had an extremely efficient messenger system known as “angareion, ” with a single messenger known as “angaros, ” the plural being “angaroi” This system utilized a relay of horsebound men to move the message quickly, passing the message from one angaros to another along a designated courier route, such as “The Royal Road” Depicted in the following excerpt from Herodotus’ The Histories: Book 8: [98] At the same time, Xerxes also dispatched a messenger to Persia with news of their defeat. There is nothing mortal that is faster than the system the Persians have devised for sending messages. Apparently, they have horses and men posted at intervals along the route, the same number in total as the overall length in days of the journey, with a fresh horse and rider for every day of travel. Whatever the conditions—it may be snowing, raining, blazing hot, or dark— they never fail to complete their assigned journey in the fastest possible time. The first man passes his instructions on to the second, the second to the third, and so on, in the same kind of relay found in Greece in the torch-race which is run during the festival of Hephaestus. The Persian word for this postal system involving horses is angareion. CLASSICAL MEANING

Many believe this phrase to be the motto of the United States Postal Service, but the U. S. P. S. actually has no official motto This phrase was associated with the U. S. P. S. due by William Mitchell Kendall, the architect of the General Post Office Building, now named the James A. Farley Building, in the center of Manhattan Kendall, whose father was a classics scholar, modified the passage from Herodotus’ The Histories and inscribed it on the building MODERN USAGE

JAMES A. FARLEY BUILDING

To this day, the U. S. P. S. uses a relay-like system to deliver hundreds of billions of pieces of mail each year They do not operate in all weather conditions, but only shutdown in the most extreme of conditions The general misunderstanding that this is not the U. S. P. S. motto actually leads to a large amount of negative feedback to the U. S. P. S. every year MODERN USAGE (CONT. )

[1]. http: //mentalfloss. com/article/87770/neither-snow-nor-rain-isnt-uspsmotto [2]. https: //books. google. com/books? id=3 ORAea 3 uv 5 YC&pg=PA 220&lpg= PA 220&dq=angereion&source=bl&ots=RQpk. PKa 3 OA&sig=ACf. U 3 U 1 ki Gej. REQy. NZr 3 csmo. M 1 k. Tk. IJ_v. A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2 ah. UKEwj. C_8 Gl 6 b 7 h. Ah. VMHqw. KHS 4 t. CRUQ 6 AEw. BHo. ECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=anger eion&f=false [3]. https: //uspsblog. com/how-is-new-york-city-related-to-famous-postalquote/ SOURCES