ABSTRACT
The ward and eventually the successor of the emperor *Trajan, Hadrian was a conscientious emperor whose reign allowed the consolidation and development of the Roman Empire.
He travelled more extensively than any previous emperor and in AD 130, he spent several months in the Roman province of Egypt. There he participated in a great lion-hunt in the desert region west of the Delta, and held discussions with the scholars at the Museum in Alexandria. Accompanied by his wife Sabina and a large retinue, he also spent several days at the famed Colossi of Memnon at Thebes, to hear the ‘singing statue’. Greek verses inscribed on the legs of the northern statue, composed by the Court-poetess Balbilla, tell how the statue sang in greeting for Hadrian on the second day of his visit. While he was in Egypt, Hadrian also suffered a personal tragedy when *Antinous, his friend and lover, was drowned in the Nile. The Emperor preserved the memory of *Antinous by founding a city, Antinoupolis, at the place where the young man died.
