Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/347

Rh to piratical vessels. In the East for a long time the Romans did nothing, but their responsibilities were accumulating and could not be neglected.

The next great change in the status of a large district in the Hellenic world occurred in B.C. 133, when Attalus III.—the last sovereign of Pergamus—died after a brief and not very distinguished reign, leaving a will in which he bequeathed, as Roman writers put it briefly, his kingdom to the Romans. It is a natural reflection that a sovereign has no such power of transferring a people to another ruler. He cannot, except in special circumstances, even name his successor. Yet it is not more outrageous than the transference of whole nations from one sovereign to another by treaty without the people so transferred being consulted, as has often happened in modern Europe. We must remember, however, that the larger part of the kingdom of Pergamus had been taken by the Romans bodily from King Antiochus and annexed to Pergamus, equally without any regard to national sentiment. To most of the cities, which were administered by their own laws, it meant little more than a change of the exchequers into which their taxes were to be paid, and the occasional obligation of serving in a Roman rather than a Pergamene army. There would also be from time to time appeals to a Roman tribunal instead of to the Royal Court at Pergamus. But this would little affect the bulk of the people. An inscription found on the site of Pergamus, however, puts a somewhat different complexion upon this will. What Attalus did leave to the Romans was his personal