Ahve, and welcome to Emperor of Rome, a podcast about the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always is Dr.

Rianna Evans, a lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe University.

This is episode L-I-V, there and back again, an emperor's tale.

When we last left Hadrian, he had taken the title of Prince Keps, whether the Senate liked it

or not.

Now safely secure in his new position, he sets about doing what

he's always wanted to do. Touring the provinces and taking a ridiculously long gap year.

For the next four years, Hadrian will be living his life on the road, and he leaves his mark on every bit of the empire that he can find.

Here's Rianna Evans.

Hadrian starts his first imperial tour in 121 CE, so he's been emperor for four years,

but as we know it took him a long time to get back home, so he's already had a little tour on the way back. But this time he kind of goes out with a will to see a lot of the empire.

And he's going to be away for four years. And he goes all over the place. He goes to the Gallic provinces, so in the northwest.

He spends a long time there and 1-2. He also goes over and this is still conceptually a big thing for the Romans, goes over to Britannia,

so crosses the English channel and then comes back down south, back into the Gaelic provinces and into modern Spain,

terra can aces. So he's kind of doing the Western strip

than Britannia Gaul, Hispania in 1-2 and in 1-23 he moves over, straight over to the east to Syria in order to

neutralise a threat that seems to be coming from Parthia.

So he's got to negotiate a kind of keeping of the peace over in Syria.

And then he's in the East, so he stays in what we think of as modern Turkey again, travels around the Romans have

you know three or four provinces in that area and then he starts to go where he really wants to be I think all along which is he moves into the Greek world but remember the Greek world is really Western Turkey.

Yeah. It's part of that world in Antiquity and he moves into what we think of as Greece proper,

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