Samsat itself represents the ancient Samosata, the capital of the Seleucid kings of Commagene (Kuinukh of the Assyrian inscriptions), and here the Persian Royal Road from Sardis to Susa is supposed to have crossed the river.
In short, it became only too evident that there was no royal road to national prosperity, and that Russia, like other nations, must be content to advance slowly and laboriously along the rough path of painful experience.
The royal road followed a route so difficult and circuitous that it is quite unintelligible as the direct path from any centre in Persia, Assyria or Syria to the west of Asia Minor.
Like so many of his predecessors he had risen from the lower middle classes, through the royal road of the church; he had served Henry VII.s old councillor Foxe, bishop of Winchester, as secretary, and from his household had passed into that of his master.
