Description
Pergamon was a rich and powerful city, capital of the Kingdom of Pergamon under the Attalid dynasty of kings. It was famed for its impressive monuments and library, the greatest in the Greek World after Alexandria. The Upper Acropolis, modeled on that of Athens, featured ‘The Great Altar of Pergamon’ which was excavated, relocated and reconstructed in its own museum in Berlin in 1901. When the last king of the Attalid dynasty, Attalus III (138-133 BC), died without an heir in 133 BCE, he bequeathed the whole of Pergamon to Rome in order to prevent a civil war.