Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
On the mainland of Asia Minor Seleucus had in the meanwhile begun the siege of Pergamus, while Antiochus with his chief army ravaged the Pergamene territory and the possessions of the Mytilenaeans on the mainland; they hoped to crush the hated Attalids, before Roman aid appeared.
The call to freedom met with an eager response, and the Pergamene prince was soon marching to the coast at the head of "the citizens of the City of the Sun," the ideal polity which these remnants of nationalities, without countries and without homes, seem to have made their own. His success was instantaneous. First the inland towns of Northern Lydia, Thyatira, and Apollonis, fell into his hands.
Perseus subdued king Genthius, chastised the Dardani, and, by means of Cotys, expelled from Thrace the Thracians friendly to Rome and the Pergamene troops. On the other hand the western Roman army took some Illyrian towns, and the consul busied himself in clearing Thessaly of the Macedonian garrisons and making sure of the turbulent Aetolians and Acarnanians by occupying Ambracia.
The fleet, which had again been joined by the Rhodian and Pergamene ships, had hitherto been employed in the capture and pillage of two of the smaller towns in Euboea, Eretria and Carystus; both however, as well as Oreus, were thereafter abandoned, and reoccupied by Philocles the Macedonian commandant of Chalcis.
Just at that time the kingdom and wealth of the Attalids had fallen to the Romans by the testament of the last king of Pergamus; Gracchus proposed to the people that the Pergamene treasure should be distributed among the new landholders for the procuring of the requisite implements and stock, and vindicated generally, in opposition to the existing practice, the right of the burgesses to decide definitively as to the new province.
We shall find that motives of maritime security soon forced Rome to create a province of Cilicia, and it seems that for this purpose a portion of the gift which had been just made to the kings of Cappadocia was subsequently resumed by Rome. The old Pergamene possessions in Western Cilicia were probably joined to some towns of Pamphylia to form the kernel of the new province.
At length a stronger Roman army under Quintus Caecilius Metellus appeared on the scene of conflict, and, supported by the Pergamene fleet, advanced into Macedonia.
In reward for the fidelity to Rome, which had cost this prince his life in the struggle with the Pergamene pretender, his youthful heir Ariarathes VI was not only protected by the Romans against the usurpation attempted by the king of Pontus, but received also the south-eastern part of the kingdom of the Attalids, Lycaonia, along with the district bordering on it to the eastward reckoned in earlier times as part of Cilicia.
The fleet, which had again been joined by the Rhodian and Pergamene ships, had hitherto been employed in the capture and pillage of two of the smaller towns in Euboea, Eretria and Carystus; both however, as well as Oreus, were thereafter abandoned, and reoccupied by Philocles the Macedonian commandant of Chalcis.
That no proof was found either in the papers of Perseus or elsewhere, is sufficiently certain; for even the Romans did not venture to express those suspicions aloud, But they gained their object. Their wishes appeared in the behaviour of the Roman grandees towards Attalus, the brother of Eumenes, who had commanded the Pergamene auxiliary troops in Greece.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking