End of October AD 117 – Hadrian reaches Ancyra in Galatia (#Hadrian1900)

At the end of October 117, Hadrian arrived in Ancyra (modern Ankara, Turkey), the chief city of the province of Galatia. The Emperor was travelling back to Rome via the Danube region. He probably reached the Galatian capital by the end of October, as suggested by the itinerary inscription found in Rome (see previous posts here).

At Ancyra, the Emperor was received at the expense of Latinius Alexander, a leading citizen of Ancyra and a descendant of the Galatian kings. Alexander provided supplies to the citizens and donated to the city the funds needed to accommodate the “greatest emperor Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus on his visit, and of his sacred armies.” His generosity was recorded on the statue base set up in honour of his daughter, Latinia Cleopatra (IGR 3.208).

Located in the highlands of central Anatolia, Ancyra has a long history dating back to the Bronze Age. The oldest settlements in the area of modern Ankara belong to the Hatti civilisation, which the Hittites succeeded in the 2nd millennium BC. Ancyra became a major centre during the Phrygian period in the 9th and 8th centuries BC and underwent significant expansion following the mass migration from Gordion (the capital of Phrygia). According to the Greek traveller and writer Pausanias, the mythical founder of Ancyra was King Midas. Midas found an anchor on the spot and subsequently named the town after it (the city’s Greek name was Ankyra, meaning “anchor”).

Ancyra, a city of the Phrygians, was founded by Midas son of Gordius. And the anchor, which Midas found, was even as late as my time in the sanctuary of Zeus, as well as a spring called the Spring of Midas, water from which they say Midas mixed with wine to capture Silenus. Pausanias, Guide to Greece 1.4.5, trans. W.H. S. Jones, Loeb Library

The Phrygians were later succeeded by the Lydians, Persians, Macedonians, and even Gauls from the Tectosages tribe. The latter, who had come from what is now southern France, gave the province its name. Ancyra was later incorporated into the Roman Empire by Augustus in 25 BC when the Galatian king Amyntas died during a campaign against the Homanadenses. The new province of Galatia was created, with Ancyra as its capital.

The location of Ancyra made it a place of great trade, for it stood on a major network centre, on the road from Byzantium to Tavium and Armenia going East, and on the road from Byzantium to Antioch in Syria going South. On the Tabula Peutingeriana (Peutinger Table), the importance of Ancyra (although its name is not written) is emphasised by its representation as a walled city with six large towers (like Aquileia, Ravenna, Thessalonica, Nicaea and Nicomedia). The road on which Hadrian marched with his armies from Tyana in Cappadocia to Ancyra is clearly marked on the Peutinger Table.

The anchor associated with the legendary founding of Ancyra became the city’s symbol, and most of its coins featured an anchor on the obverse. During the imperial period, the city minted coins of Nero, Nerva, Trajan, Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verus, Commodus and Caracalla, while one of the city’s magistrates, a certain Julius Saturninus, minted coins to honour Antinous.

Like many cities of the Eastern Roman Empire, Ancyra enjoyed a period of considerable prosperity under Hadrian. It also became a major military base, for it lay on the route of emperors and their armies as they marched between the western provinces and Syria. The first known emperor to pass through Ancyra was Trajan, who embarked on his Parthian campaign in AD 113. He was soon followed by Hadrian, just after he became emperor.

At the time of Hadrian’s visit, the chief monument of Ancyra was the Temple of Augustus and Roma with its famous inscriptions, the Latin and Greek versions of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (The Works of the Divine Augustus) and two lists of priests with details of their benefactions. The Latin text of the Res Gestae was engraved on the pronaos’ inner walls, and the translation into Greek was inscribed on the exterior walls of the cella. The temple was originally surrounded by eight columns at the front and back, and fifteen along the north and south sides. It was erected using the Corinthian order and was about 36 meters wide and almost 55 meters long. Today, only the core of the building still stands, preserved through its later use as a church when the opisthodomos was converted into an apse.

Another monument of importance at the time of Hadrian’s visit was the theatre located southeast of the Temple of Augustus and Roma. It was discovered by chance on the western slopes of Ankara Castle and subsequently excavated in the 1980s. According to Julian Bennett, the theatre is likely to have been among the buildings constructed in the initial stages of the Roman urbanisation of Ancyra in the 1st century AD (Flavian period). Its remains consist of the foundations of the cavea, the orchestra and part of its floor pavement, the lower part of the scaenae frons, and two vaulted parados. There were at least 20 tiers of seats, suggesting a seating capacity of about 10,000, with four separate access stairways.

The theatre later became the venue for the agones mystikoi, an arts festival dedicated to Dionysus and Hadrian, possibly established in the emperor’s presence in AD 117. As later recorded in a decree of the association of artists who performed at the festival (IGR 3.209), Hadrian was included in the ceremonies as ‘neos Dionysos’ alongside the god. This was probably the first time Hadrian allowed himself to be called a god, but it was not the last.

The recent excavations revealed several sculptural pieces that once adorned the theatre’s stage building, including fragments of a cuirassed statue of Hadrian. The erection of such a statue in the theatre of Ancyra may have had links to the Dionysus festival.

A total of 26 fragments were discovered, including a fragment of the top of the head that helped identify the statue due to its hairstyle. The statue depicted Hadrian in an elaborate cuirass, or breastplate, of a military general.

Forehead and upper parts of hair of a cuirassed statue of Hadrian

Fragments of a cuirassed statue of Hadrian.

Hadrian would also appoint the first agonothetes (superintendent) of the mystic festival, Ulpius Aelius Pompeianus, a prominent and wealthy Ancyran citizen honoured with a gilded shield-mounted portrait (imago clipeata) erected in a civic building in Ancyra. This rare bronze tondo was excavated in the Ulus area of Ankara in 1947 and has often been identified as a portrait of Trajan.

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The study of the inscriptions from Ancyra attests to the existence of a gymnasion and a stadion in the city at the time of Hadrian’s visit. Some inscriptions in the ‘Priest List’, dating to the 1st century AD and inscribed on the pronaos of the Temple of Augustus and Roma, refer to activities and contests organised for the imperial cult. These events included athletic games as well as gladiatorial and venationes spectacles. One such show was organised in AD 30/31 by Pylaemenes, son of king Amyntas, and included ‘gladiatorial spectacles … bullfighting; bull wrestling; 50 pairs of gladiators … (and a) wild-beast fight’.

The gladiatorial games remained popular at Ancyra during Hadrian’s reign and into the early 3rd century AD. An epitaph found in Ankara for a summa rudis (senior referee) named Publius Aelius, dedicated by his wife Aelia, can be dated to the middle or late 2nd century AD. Their names show that either Aelius or one of his forefathers received citizenship under Hadrian. Another epitaph for a murmillo called Chrisampelos, displayed in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, is dated to the 2nd century AD.

Some archaeological finds related to the stadion of ancient Ancyra, including a group of andesite seats, are displayed today in the Roman Baths Museum in Ankara. The open-air museum also displays many other architectural elements of Roman Ancyra, as well as numerous funerary inscriptions and milestones found along the ancient roads around the city.

The Çankırı Kapı large bath complex, uncovered by excavations carried out in 1937-1944 and subsequently opened to the public as an open-air museum, has generally been dated to the 3rd century AD. While these great baths were not yet built at the time of Hadrian’s visit, the remains of smaller baths located to the southwest of the Çankırı Kapı bath complex have been dated to the Hadrianic period based on tiles used in their construction.

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As suggested by Anthony R. Birley in his biography of Hadrian, the emperor probably stayed in Ancyra for some days to recuperate a little and to deal with incoming dispatches. Hadrian would later continue his westward journey towards Nicaea, Byzantium, and Dacia.

Epigraphic evidence indicates that Hadrian reached Juliopolis, just inside Bithynia, on 11th November. From there, he would address a missive to Pergamon, a formal letter of thanks to an association of Pergamene young men (Synod of neoi) who had sent him a letter of congratulations on his accession to the throne and who preserved a letter of reply of white marble in their gymnasium.

Juliopolis was a journey of approximately five days west of Ancyra. Therefore, Hadrian likely left the Galatian metropolis around November 6th, as messages arrived from every part of the empire.

Sources & references:

• Bennett, J. (2006). The political and physical topography of early imperial Graeco-Roman Ancyra. Anatolica, 32, 189–227.
• Bennett, J. (2009). Gladiators at Ancyra. Anatolica, 35, 1–13.
• Birley, A. (1997). Hadrian: The restless emperor. London & New York: Routledge.
• Coşkun, A. (n.d.). Romanisierung und keltisches Substrat im hadrianischen Ankyra im Spiegel der Gedenkinschrift für Lateinia Kleopatra (Bosch 117 = Mitchell/French, I.Ankara I 81). Unpublished manuscript.
• Kadıoğlu, M., Görkay, K., & Mitchell, S. (2011). Roman Ancyra. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları.
• Mitchell, S. (2014). The Trajanic tondo from Roman Ankara: In search of the identity of a Roman masterpiece. Ankara Araştırmaları Dergisi – Journal of Ankara Studies, 2(1), 1–16. (read pdf here)
• Mitchell, S., & French, D. (2012). The Greek and Latin inscriptions of Ankara (Ancyra), Vol. 1: From Augustus to the end of the third century AD. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck.