As this event was very important to the city as well as kingdom of Pergamus, we may, with propriety, enter a little into the character of the prince, who made so extraordinary a bequeathment. Historians relate, that he was scarcely on the throne before he stained it with the blood of his nearest relatives. He caused almost all those, who had served his father and his uncle with extreme fidelity, to have their throats cut; under pretence that some of them had killed his mother, who died of a disease in a very advanced age, and others his wife, who died of an incurable distemper. He caused the destruction also of wives, children, and whole families. Having committed all these enormities, he appeared no more in the city, and ate no longer in public. He put on old clothes, let his beard grow, and did every thing which persons, accused of capital crimes, used to do in those days; as if he intended thereby to acknowledge the extent of his own atrocity. From hence he proceeded to other species of folly and iniquity. He renounced the cares of state, and retired into his garden, and applied to digging the ground himself, and sowing all sorts of poisonous as well as wholesome herbs; then poisoning the good with the juice of the bad, he sent them in that manner as presents to his friends. At length he took it into his head to practise the trade of a brass-founder; and formed the model of a monument of brass to be erected to his mother. As he was casting the metal for this purpose, one hot summer’s day, he was seized with a fever, which in a few days carried him off. The principal clause in his will was expressed in these terms:—“Let the people of Rome inherit all my fortunes.” This will having been carried to Rome, the city and kingdom of Pergamus, as we have already stated, passed into a Roman province.