Attalus I

Attalus I inherited Pergamon from his adoptive father Eumenes I in 241 BC, ruling a Greek city-state wedged between empires. Around 240-235 BC he won the Battle of the Caecus River against the Galatians - migratory Celts who had been raiding and extorting tribute across Asia Minor for a generation - and commemorated the triumph with monuments including The Dying Gaul. The victory earned him the surname Soter and the audacity to assume the title of king, the first Attalid to do so. He aligned Pergamon with Rome during the first and second Macedonian Wars against Philip V, contributing modest forces but gaining the islands of Aegina and Andros while twice narrowly escaping Philip's capture. His reign also brought recurring clashes with the Seleucid Empire to the east, wins and losses both. He styled himself protector of Greek freedoms and bankrolled art across cities he courted as allies. In 197 BC, at seventy-two, he suffered an apparent stroke while addressing a Boeotian war council and died shortly after, just before the second war ended; his son Eumenes II took the throne.