If the Hellenistic sense of the dramatic emerges clearly in the Temple of Apollo at Didyma, its finest urban expression comes in the layout of Pergamon, one of the leading cities of western
Asia Minor during Hellenistic and Roman times. The siting of the city was spectacular, on a hilltop that rises at the back of a small coastal plain. The fortified summit, or acropolis, contained the palace and certain key public and religious buildings. The city continued down the gentler south slope (the other sides are steep), eventually spreading by Roman times onto the plain, now occupied by the modern town, Bergama (Figure 18.3). In its very layout, with palaces and temples raised high, Pergamon reminds us that this was the capital of a kingdom, not a democracy — in striking contrast with Priene, where the agora and bouleuterion lie in the center of the city, with the Temple of Athena benevolently looking down from one corner. The correspondence at Pergamon between the natural topography and hierarchical society cannot be said to characterize Hellenistic cities — Alexandria, for example, lies on flat ground — but must be considered nonetheless a fortuitous and instructive coincidence.
Although inhabited from prehistoric times, this hilltop location was developed as a major city only from ca. 300 BC. Lysimachos, one of the generals succeeding Alexander the Great, entrusted a large part of his fortune to his officer Philetairos to guard at Pergamon. In 281 BC Lysimachos was killed in battle. When no one contested the treasure, Philetairos used this money, 9000 talents (estimated by George Bean in 1966 as the equivalent of ?10 million) to entrench himself on Pergamon’s hilltop. By adopting his nephew Eumenes as his son, he founded a dynasty that would last until 133 BC. The Attalid kingdom soon expanded; at its height, after the territorial gains that followed its victory (with the Romans) over Antiochus III at Magnesia in 190 BC, it
Controlled most of western Asia Minor — roughly the equivalent of the Lydian kingdom of the sixth century BC. The Pergamenian kings viewed their capital as the cultural center of the Greek world, the Athens of its day; following the Athenian model, Pergamon became a major center for the visual arts. During the Roman period, the city continued in importance, its population swelling to ca. 150,000 in the second century AD.
World History
