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In the same year that the desperate resistance of the Numantians was overcome, Attalus III., king of Pergamon, an ally of Rome, whose sovereignty extended over the greater part of Asia Minor, left his kingdom and all his treasures, by will, to the Roman people. There was a feeble struggle on the part of the expectant heir, but the Romans formed the larger part of the kingdom into a province.
Between the third century and the fall of Constantinople there was a continuous series of Byzantine physicians whose inspiration was largely derived from the old Greek sources. The most distinguished of these was Oribasius, a voluminous compiler, a native of Pergamon and so close a follower of his great townsman that he has been called "Galen's ape."
Its interest for us is connected with the greatest name, after Hippocrates, in Greek medicine, that of Galen, born at Pergamon A. D. 130, in whom was united as never before and indeed one may say, never since the treble combination of observer, experimenter and philosopher.
He was forced to be contented with this shadow of a splendid prize, for he was destined never to exercise the high functions of his office in the city. He seems never to have left Asia and, after a restless change of residence, he died near the city of Pergamon.
These views on the vital and animal spirits held unquestioned sway until well into the eighteenth century, and we still, in a measure, express the views of the great Alexandrian when we speak of "high" or "low" spirits. PERGAMON has become little more than a name associated in our memory with the fulminations of St.
This lowest city is covered by a swarm of modern houses and hovels, and has not been very fully explored. Yet even Pergamon had its building-laws and by-laws for the protection of common life. A Pergamene inscription contains part of a 'Royal Law' which apparently dates from one of the Attalid rulers. It is imperfect. But we can recognize some of the items for which it provided.
The columns of Ephesus, the sculpture of the altar of Pergamon, brilliant as they were in technical accomplishment, were the first hint of that decline which was in time to undermine the whole fabric of the Arts. Architecture was deposed from its high intellectual dominance.
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.
The forces which he could dispose of seem to have been sufficiently engaged in holding their southern conquests; there is no trace of his controlling the country north of Phocaea or of his even attempting an attack on Pergamon the capital of his kingdom. His army, however, must have been increasing in dimensions as well as in experience.
Under him Syria lost the eastern part of Asia Minor through the invading Gauls, who converted northern Phrygia into Galatia, while north-western Lydia became the kingdom of Pergamon. The Parthian and Bactrian kingdoms began under his reign. They gradually acquired civilization from contact with Greek culture, especially after they established the trading-city of Ctesiphon.
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