(2) _Pergamum_, the modern Bergama, lay in the valley of the Caicus in Mysia, about fifteen miles from the sea. The city was built on a hill about three miles north of the river. It was apparently a place of some importance at a comparatively early date, but its chief importance began with the reign of Philetærus, who made it an independent kingdom and ruled it from 284-263 B. C. Philetærus had been a trusted servant of Lysimachus, King of Thrace, one of the trusted generals of Alexander the Great. Under the dynasty founded by Philetærus, Pergamum became one of the chief seats of Hellenic culture. Eumenes I (263-241 B. C.) endeavored to make Pergamum a rival of Alexandria as a literary center, and when the king of Egypt forbade the exportation of papyrus in order to check the literary aspirations of Pergamum, the servants of Eumenes invented a prepared kind of skin on which to write. It was called _pergamena_, but time has corrupted it to “parchment.” In the course of the second century before Christ the kingdom of Pergamum included all of western Asia Minor north of the Taurus. When in 133 B. C. Attalus III, the last of the kings of Pergamum, died, he left his kingdom by will to the Roman republic, with which Pergamum had long been in alliance. Rome thus came into possession of her Province of Asia, the first of her Oriental provinces. Pergamum was its capital, certainly until the reign of Claudius, and probably until the second century A. D. The Romans regarded themselves as the patrons of Hellenic culture in the East and for centuries kept Pergamum the beautiful city which the Pergamene kings had made it. Bergama, the squalid modern Turkish city, lies apart from the splendid ruins of the ancient town; (see Fig. 283). More than thirty years ago the Germans began to explore and to excavate at Pergamum,[330] and the Museum at Berlin is enriched with many beautiful objects found there. The visitor to Pergamum may still see, however, the great gymnasium with many graceful columns still standing. Above it, on a higher slope, are the sites of theaters and temples, and the great altar of Zeus. Farther up the hill stood the temple of Athenæ Polias, which was also a library, and above this the temple of Rome and of Augustus.