Athens and the Attalids in the Second Century B. C.

URING THE EARLY HELLENISTIC AGE, from the death of Alexander the Great to the outbreak of the war against Philip V of Macedon (323-200 B.C.), the major monarchies had, for longer or shorter periods, all come into close contact with the city of Athens. These were the monarchies founded by Antigonos, Kassandros, Lysimachos, Ptolemy, and Seleukos. By 280 B.C., the dynasties of Kassandros and Lysimachos had vanished. Macedon had always been Athens' closest and therefore, no matter which dynasty ruled there, most dangerous neighbor. It continued in this role once the Antigonids established themselves there for good in 277 B.C. Athens was more than once under Macedonian rule, while Ptolemaic Egypt, traditionally Macedon's rival, repeatedly played the role of Athens' protector, even if not always successfully. When the Ptolemaic empire began its rapid decline in the last years of the 3rd century, its usefulness to the city declined accordingly. The Seleucids, with their distant empire, were hardly ever in a position to exert strong political influence on the city's affairs, except for Seleukos I, who for some time was active in the Aegaeis and who restored the island of Lemnos to Athens after defeating King Lysimachos in 281 B.C. 1 While in the course of the 3rd century some major realms collapsed and others declined, a modest principality slowly gained power and prestige, to become, by the end of the century, a major factor in Athenian politics. This was the dynasty founded in 281 B.C. by Philetairos of Pergamon and tranformed by his second successor, Attalos I, into a kingdom: the house of the Attalids. Relations between Athens and the Attalids had begun in the cultural sphere. The principal agent seems to have been a former subject of the second dynast, Eumenes I (263-241 B.C.), who lived in Athens and there had become famous. He was Arkesilaos, born in 316/5 B.C. in Pitane, a city very close to, and dependent on, Pergamon. Arkesilaos had come to Athens to study philosophy with Theophrastos. He then joined