of the koinon of Athena Ilias, a regional association of cities in the Troad which held an annual festival at Ilion. The inscription records a series of honorific decrees passed by the koinon which praise a prominent and wealthy citizen, Malousios of Gargara, for providing interest free loans to finance the annual festival. Hellenistic The local antiquarian writer Demetrius of Scepsis (ca. 205-130 BCE) relates that Gargara received an influx of settlers who were forcibly moved from their home in Mysia, Miletoupolis, by 'the kings' (presumably those of Bithynia) in the late 3rd or early 2nd century BCE. Miletoupolis was a semi-Greek settlement, and so Demetrius relates that as a result of this influx of immigrants there are hardly any Aeolians left in Gargara. This episode should perhaps be connected with the invasion of this region by Prusias II of Bithynia in 156 - 154 BCE. Elsewhere in the Hellenistic period, citizens of Gargara are found serving as proxenoi at Chios and as mercenaries at Athens, participating in a private association of resident foreigners on Rhodes, making dedications to Ptolemy III Euergetes and his family in Egypt, receiving honours at Ilion, and making dedications on Delos. In the 230s or 220s BCE Gargara was one of the places at which Theorodokoi of Delphi were received, and in the 120s BCE it is attested as a port at which customs dues was being paid soon after Attalus III had bequeathed the Asia to Rome in 133 BCE. Roman While Gargara continued to exist in the Roman period, we hear about it primarily in the context of Latin literature, since it became a by-word for agricultural prosperity in Latin poetry following Virgil's reference to it in the Georgics: humida solstitia atque hiemes orate serenas, agricolae; hiberno laetissima pulvere farra,laetus ager: nullo tantum se Mysia cultu iactat et ipsa suas mirantur Gargara messis. Pray for wet summer, farmers, and for clear skies in winter (since after winter dust most joyous is the corn and joyous the fields); never else than after such seasons does Mysia take such pride in its tillage, and Gargara itself marvel so at its harvests. Gargara is likewise used as an expression of proverbial fertility in Ovid's Ars Amatoria, Seneca's tragedy The Phoenician Women, and as late as the 5th century CE in the odes of Sidonius Apollinaris. Macrobius in his Saturnalia (early 5th century CE) devoted a chapter