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Whether it was the insane rancour against his subjects which had tormented the last Attalid during life that now suggested to him the thought of bequeathing his kingdom by will to the Romans, or whether his doing so was merely a further recognition of the practical supremacy of Rome, cannot be determined.
The Attalid kings, the founders of Pergamon, cared only for splendid buildings splendidly adorned. If their abrupt hill-side forbade the straight and broad processional avenues of some other Greek cities, they crowned their summits instead with a crescent of temples and palaces which had not its like on the shores of the Aegean. P. Schatzmann, Athen. Mitteil. xxxv. 385; Archãol. Anzeiger , p. 541.
Whether it was the insane rancour against his subjects which had tormented the last Attalid during life that now suggested to him the thought of bequeathing his kingdom by will to the Romans, or whether his doing so was merely a further recognition of the practical supremacy of Rome, cannot be determined.
The story about corruption was as certainly a fable as any newspaper canard of the present day; for that the rich, cunning, and consistent Attalid, who had primarily occasioned the breach between Rome and Macedonia by his journey in 582 and had been on that account wellnigh assassinated by the banditti of Perseus, should at the moment when the real difficulties of a war, of whose final issue, moreover, he could never have had any serious doubt, were overcome have sold to the instigator of the murder his share in the spoil for a few talents, and should have perilled the work of long years for so pitiful a consideration, may be set down not merely as a fabrication, but as a very silly one.
It is only on this hypothesis that we can explain how Mithradates, ostensibly for his brave deeds in the war against Aristonicus, but in reality for considerable sums paid to the Roman general, could receive Great Phrygia from the latter after the dissolution of the Attalid kingdom.
Even Caria, which had been declared free after the war with Perseus, seems to have again fallen under the sway of the Attalid kings. The monarchy also included the Thracian Chersonese and most of the Aegean islands. But the whole of this territory was not included in the new province of Asia.
Attalus himself, the Lorenzo de' Medici of antiquity, remained throughout life a wealthy burgher; and the family life of the Attalid house, from which harmony and cordiality were not banished by the royal title, formed a striking contrast to the dissolute and scandalous behaviour of more aristocratic dynasties. Greece Epirots, Acarnanians, Boeotians
It grew both populous and splendid in the third and second centuries B.C. under the Attalid kings; later builders, Augustus or Trajan or other, added little either to its general design or to its architectural glory. The dominant idea was that of a semi-circle of great edifices, crowning the crest and inner slopes of a high crescent-shaped ridge.
Adroit, able, pliant, a genuine Attalid, he had the art to convince the suspicious senate that the apprehensions which it had formerly cherished were baseless.
It is possible that he contemplated the application of the future revenues of the kingdom of Pergamon to this or some similar purpose; and it was perhaps partly for this reason, partly in answer to the objection that the treasure could not be appropriated without a senatorial decree, that he announced the novel doctrine that it was no business of the senate to decide the fate of the cities which had belonged to the Attalid monarchy, and that he himself would prepare for the people a measure dealing with this question.
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