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The titles of the bematists’ geographies were all apparently Stathmoi (Stations), indicating that they organized their data according to the stopping points along an itinerary. This had its basis in the practical needs of travelers, who needed to know how to schedule their journeys and arrange where to stay overnight. This was made possible by the many stathmoi, quite literally “stops,” way-stations, and caravanserais which dotted the old routes of the Persian Empire, spaced approximately a day’s travel apart and serving as watering holes, camp-sites, and courier depots. The bematists took measurements using the stadion (or stade) and stathmos, though the parasang and schoinos were also employed when dealing with pre-existing Persian distances. The stade was a well-known unit, used throughout Greece, and the stathmos came into use in the Hellenistic period when long overland journeys became more common. Neither unit was a fixed or exact measurement but varied according to region of use and topography of the route being measured. A stade is typically estimated as around 184 meters, for purposes of rough conversions into modern measurement units (except for Egyptian stades, which were shorter, like the Egyptian schoinos). A stathmos not only denoted the stopping point on a route, but also the distance traveled between two stops, hence it measured one day’s travel, variable depending on how heavily laden the travelers and their pack animals were. Herodotus (5.53) reports 111 stations on the Persian royal road from Sardis to Susa, which measured 13,500 stades, and, reckoning that a day’s journey was 150 stades, he reports that the total travel time along the road was 90 days.