A summer in Asia

Early in 124 it was time to leave Thrace and cross back to Asia, this time to the Roman province of that name. The first goal should have been Cyzicus. Hadrian will have seen first the island of Proconessus and behind it the peak of Cyzicus’ peninsula, on which stood the great temple of Zeus. The ‘noble city’, as Florus called it, with its citadel and harbour, its walls and marble towers, was the glory of Asia’. Cyzicus had long exerted a special appeal for Romans. A senatorial friend of the poet Propertius stayed there for many years; it had been the home of a princess from Polemo’s family, Antonia Tryphaena, daughter of the King of Pontus; and the pleasure-loving Licinius Mucianus seems to have gone to Cyzicus when out of favour with Claudius – he was especially fond of Cyzicene oysters. But, like Nicaea and Nicomedia, Cyzicus had been ravaged in the recent earthquake. Help was needed: the Cyzicenes had no doubt already appealed to the Emperor. ¹