ABSTRACT
An emperor’s letter to the city of Heraclea Lyncestis in Macedonia, written at Dyrrachium (Dürres in Albania) on 20 May of an unknown year, has been plausibly attributed to Hadrian and taken to indicate that he was on his way back to Italy at this time in 125. The subject of the letter was the cost of road-building and the writer, assumed to be an emperor, tells the Lyncestae that ‘I have set forth in a general edict how the roads are to be paved.’ They are given precise instructions on the apportionment of costs. The general edict’ had no doubt prompted an enquiry. For the Lyncestae, through whose territory the great military trunk-road the Via Egnatia ran, the matter was serious. Hadrian could well have issued such an edict during his stay in Greece. His personal attention to the Megara-Corinth road was registered by Pausanias, and milestones from northern Greece of 124 and 125 may reflect a more general road-building programme. 1
