Road station

Hadrianuteba

Balıkesir

Hadrianuteba is a garbled Hadrianou Therai, Hadrian's Hunt, now Balıkesir in Turkey. The emperor founded the town in Mysia in the early 130s AD at a spot where, so his Roman biography tells, he had hunted with success and once killed a she-bear. Somewhere in the copying the R of the name became a B, perhaps under the spell of famous Thebes, yet the Greek ending of Hadrian's name survived. The town may have been the home of the orator Aelius Aristides, and it had a bishop by 451. The map wrongly runs its road on to Pergamon; the main road really led to Thyateira.

Find Hadrianuteba on the interactive Roman map →

Auf Deutsch anhören · All place stories · More places in Turkey