Felicem diem natalem, Hadriane! FOLLOWING HADRIAN

Comfortable 1948th birthday, Hadrian!

This 12 months, I made a decision to prepare dinner Cato the Elder’s recipe for Libum (candy cheesecake) as Hadrian’s birthday cake.

Libum (unique recipe from LacusCurtius):

Bray 2 kilos of cheese totally in a mortar; when it’s totally macerated, add 1 pound of wheat flour, or, if you want the cake to be extra dainty, ½ pound of high-quality flour, and blend totally with the cheese. Add 1 egg, and work the entire effectively. Pat out a loaf, place on leaves, and bake slowly on a heat fireside underneath a crock.

Trendy recipe (serves 2)

• 180-200g plain, all-purpose flour
• 225g ricotta cheese
• 1 egg, crushed
• bay leaves
• 1/2 cup clear honey

Sift the flour right into a bowl. Beat the cheese till it’s mushy and stir it into the flour together with the egg.  Type a mushy dough and divide into 4. Mould every one right into a bun and place them on a greased baking tray with a recent bay leaf beneath. Warmth the oven to 190°C/380°F and bake for 35-40 minutes till golden brown. Heat the honey and place the nice and cozy muffins in it in order that they soak up it. Permit to face half-hour earlier than serving.

In celebration of Hadrian’s birthday, I additionally opened a bottle of Conditum Paradoxum. As we speak, this spiced and candy Roman wine is produced in Germany (you should purchase it from der-Roemer-shop here) and is made based on a recipe from Apicius. Conditum was so prized by the Romans that it’s the very first recipe in Apicius’s cookbook ‘De re coquinaria’.

One thousand 9 hundred years in the past, Hadrian in all probability celebrated his forty eighth birthday in Nicomedia (Bithynia). After crusing alongside the southern Black Coastline, probably visiting the Pontic cities of Amisus, Sinope and Amastris (learn here), Hadrian is assumed to have spent the winter of AD 123/4 in Nicomedia earlier than touring Asia Minor. Throughout his keep within the Bithynian province, the Emperor in all probability visited a number of main cities, together with Heraclea Pontica, Claudiopolis (former Bythinium), Prusias advert Hypium and Nicaea. Throughout one among these visits, Hadrian met Antinous. He was to take the younger Greek boy with him on his many travels as a cherished lover and companion (most probably from AD 128).

Nicomedia and Nicaea have been solely simply recovering from the injury brought on by a catastrophic earthquake. Hadrian took particular care of the Bithynian province. He contributed to the reconstruction of each cities, as recommended by the brand new set of cash celebrating Hadrian as Restitutor Nicomediae (restorer of Nicomedia) and the lengthy dedications above the jap and northern metropolis gates of Nicaea.

“To the emperor king Trajan Hadrian Augustus, son of the god Trajan Particus, grandson of the god Nerva, he who bears upon himself the authority of the individuals’s sovereignty, Nikaia, descended from the road of Dionysos and Herakles, the primary (metropolis) of Bithynia and Pontus, metropolis by the decrees of the emperors and the sacred Roman senate, affords essentially the most pious Neokoros of the Augusti”. (IK Iznik 29)

The #Hadrian1900 weblog submit about Hadrian’s keep in Bithynia in early AD 124 will likely be revealed quickly!