Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/348

318 property, including domain lands, factories, and slaves. This legacy was of immense value, because it seems that nearly all manufactories were in the king's hands. As for the people of Pergamus itself, he not only regarded it as remaining free, but left it the territories which he had won from hostile peoples. The object seems to have been to induce the Roman government in return to respect the liberty of the demos of Pergamus. This the Romans at first did, but they assumed that the tribute paid by the districts which they had annexed to Pergamus would now be paid to them and they collected it at once, though on a lower scale than had been paid to the King of Pergamus. And this arrangement would probably have gone on, and the Greek cities would have enjoyed internal independence, while paying a tax to the Roman exchequer. But the appearance of a pretender in the person of Aristonicus (a natural son of Attalus), who claimed the whole inheritance, upset this arrangement. He held out for three years and inflicted more than one defeat upon Roman commanders. When at length he was suppressed, the whole of the Pergamene territory, as well as the annexed districts of Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria, were formed into one province of “Asia.” Thus a large number of Greek cities, each with a local history and constitution of its own, were placed in a position like that of the cities of European Greece. Some of them were made liberae civitates for special reasons, but the greater part were like cities in other provinces with local institutions, but subject to a