Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 2.djvu/409

 B. xni. c. iv. 3. PERGAMUM. 401 ings and a library, and by his care raised the city of Perga- mum to its present magnificence. After he had reigned forty-nine years he left the kingdom to Attalus, his son by Stratonice, daughter of Ariarathus, king of Cappadocia. He appointed as guardian of his son, who was very young, 1 and as regent of the kingdom, his brother Attalus, who died an old man after a reign of twenty years, having performed many glorious actions. He assisted Demetrius, the son of Seleucus, in the war against Alexander, the son of Antiochus, and was the ally of the Romans in the war against the Pseudo-Philip. In an expedition into Thrace he defeated and took prisoner Diegylis, king of the Caeni. 2 He destroyed Prusias by exciting his son Nicomedes to rebel against his father. He left the kingdom to Attalus his ward. His cognomen was Philometor. He reigned five years, and died a natural death. He left the Romans his heirs. 3 They made the country a province, and called it Asia by the name of the continent. The Cai'cus flows past Pergamum through the plain of Cai'cus, as it is called, and traverses a very fertile country, in- deed almost the best soil in Mysia. 3. The celebrated men in our times, natives of Pergamum, were Mithridates, the son of Menodotus and the daughter of Adobogion ; he was of the family of the Tetrarchs of Galatia. Adobogion, it is said, had been the concubine of Mithridates the king ; the relatives therefore gave to the child the name of Mithridates, pretending that he was the king's son. This prince became so great a friend of divus Caesar, that he was promoted to the honour of Tetrarch (of Galatia) ; out of regard also to his mother's family, he was appointed king of Bosporus and of other places. He was overthrown by Asander, who put to death Pharnaces the king and obtained devastated a second time by Prusias, king of Bithynia, which Strabo notices hereafter. 1 The circumstances are differently narrated by Plutarch " On brother- ly love," and by Livy, xlii. c. 15 and 16. 2 Diegylis, king of the Casni, a Thracian people, was the father-in-law of Prusias. 3 Aristonicus, brother of Attalus, and a natural son of Eumenes, for some time contended with the Romans for the possession of this inherit- ance ; but finally he was vanquished and made prisoner by the consul Perperna, carried to Rome, and there died in prison. B. xiv. c. i. 38. VOL. n. 2 D