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Updated: June 18, 2025
The hearty welcome of Prusias gave Hannibal a feeling of pleasure and rest that he had not known for long; but he was never destined to be at peace, and soon after a Roman envoy arrived at the palace of Prusias and demanded that the enemy of Rome should instantly be given up.
Under these circumstances, they, in conjunction with Prusias, king of Bythinia, declared war against the Byzantines; and while their ally took Hieron, which seems to have been a great mart of the Byzantines, and the resort of most of the merchants trading to these parts, the Rhodians, with a powerful fleet, ravaged their coasts, and seized all their ships trading to the Euxine.
Hannibal was never reduced to so contemptible a state as Caius Marius; he had the friendship of a king, and the free exercise of his faculties, employment and charge in the navy, and over the horse and foot, of Prusias; whereas those who but now were laughing to hear of Marius wandering about Africa, destitute and begging, in no long time after were seen entreating his mercy in Rome, with his rods at their backs, and his axes at their necks.
He was forced to give up all his Asiatic possessions as far as the Taurus mountains. The territory thus obtained, the Romans divided among their allies, Pergamon and Rhodes. About seven years later , Hannibal, who had taken refuge at the court of Prusias, king of Bithynia, finding that he was to be betrayed, took poison and died.
As he mistrusted the weakness of Prusias and feared the Romans, he had previously to this arranged seven ways of escape leading from his own room into different subterranean passages, all of which led into the open air by concealed apertures.
Antiochus had been obliged to bind himself in the treaty of peace to deliver up Hannibal; but the latter had escaped, first to Crete, then to Bithynia, and now lived at the court of Prusias king of Bithynia, employed in aiding the latter in his wars with Eumenes, and victorious as ever by sea and by land.
The Asiatic Celts also, who for a time with the permission of the Romans had yielded allegiance to Pergamus, revolted from Eumenes and, in concert with Prusias king of Bithynia the hereditary enemy of the Attalids, suddenly began war against him about 587.
Ever true to his hatred of Rome, however, he continued to plot for her downfall even in his exile. He went to Tyre and then to Ephesus, and tried to lead the Syrian monarch Antiochus to make successful inroads upon his old enemy. Obliged to flee in turn from Ephesus, he sought an asylum at the court of Prusias, King of Bithynia.
Prusias, king of Bithynia, retained his territory as it stood, and so did the Celts; but they were obliged to promise that they would no longer send armed bands beyond their bounds, and the disgraceful payments of tribute by the cities of Asia Minor came to an end.
When Hannibal wandered all those years in Asia at the Court of silly Antiochus this or stupid Prusias the other, and knew that Carthage was falling to ruin while he alone might have saved her if only she had allowed him, would he have rejoiced to hear that someone else was succeeding better than himself had traversed the Alps with a bigger army, had won a second Cannae, and even at Zama snatched a decisive victory?
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