Attalus III: The King Who Left His Kingdom to Rome
He spent his days not in court, but dissecting snakes and brewing poisons in his garden.
Unknown — "Gold earrings with disk and boat-shaped pendant" (ca. 300 BCE), public domain
King in the Garden, Not the Palace
Attalus III ruled Pergamon, but preferred solitude. He hid from state business, tending poisonous plants and experimenting with animal dissections. His court whispered that a king who talked to his plants would doom them all.
Science Over Thrones
While Pergamon's rivals schemed, Attalus dissected cobras in search of new toxins. He left politics to rot, ignored his council, and wrote treatises on medicine. No Greek king ever seemed less interested in keeping a kingdom.
A Kingdom Signed Away
On his deathbed in 133 BCE, Attalus left Pergamon not to an heir, but to the Roman people. That signature changed everything—a scientific king’s quiet obsession handed Rome the richest prize in Asia Minor.
Attalus III of Pergamon, scion of a dynasty of warrior-kings, turned his back on politics. He let his kingdom rot while he obsessed over chemistry and anatomy—then shocked everyone by gifting it, in his will, to the Roman Republic.
