Towards the end of the sixth century, the Romans began to attack the Gauls in the Alps; and soon after the war with Perseus, they took the Massaliote colonies of Antibes and Nizza from the Ligurians. It now was their object to bring the coast as far as Spain under their own rule (601). About the same time, they also tried on the other side of the Adriatic to subdue the Dalmatians, from Zara to about as far as Ragusa. They compelled them to acknowledge their supremacy, though not for long. In Corsica likewise, they made some progress. The two kings, Prusias and Eumenes, were each of them compromised, yet in a different way; the former, owing to his connexion by marriage with Perseus, the latter by his breach of faith. Prusias disgusted his contemporaries by his abject baseness. In Roman attire, with his head shaved, and wearing the cap of a slave made free, he came humbly to Rome, prostrated himself in the senate, and declared himself a freedman of the Romans. He attained his end so far, that the Romans did not curtail his territory: he had to give his son Nicomedes as an hostage, by whom he was afterwards to be overthrown. Eumenes was forbidden to come to Rome, when his brother Attalus implored for him the mercy of the Romans. At the same time, Antiochus Epiphanes waged war against the two infant princes of Egypt, Ptolemy Philometor and Euergetes II. (Physcon), and their sister Cleopatra: Cœlesyria was lost; they still possessed only Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene. All these likewise, Antiochus made successful attempts to conquer; he had advanced as far as Memphis, and, as the Egyptian towns were nearly all of them open places, he was all but sure of victory: Alexandria alone could have withstood him. But the Romans did not wish to let him grow powerful; they sent the celebrated embassy of M. Popillius, who with his staff drew a circle round the king, within which he forced him to decide upon evacuating Egypt. The Romans now mediated between the two princes, giving to Physcon, the younger of the two, Cyrene, and afterwards Cyprus also, on which he made up, and then again quarrelled with his brother, who had all the rest. The details do not belong to Roman history. In the meanwhile, the Parthians had begun to spread. They had taken the country east of the desert, and ancient Hyrcania which bordered on the Caspian sea; nor did the Syrian kings keep Media, Susiana, and Persia long (until 620). The great Parthian empire was then founded, and in the year 630, the Parthians had already taken Babylon.