The Servile War had not yet ceased, when Attalus, the King of Pergamus, died, and left no sign; for there was no succeeding king's head for the crown of Pergamus to rest upon. It was fortunate, perhaps, that Attalus left no heir; for had there been any inheritor of his qualities as well as his title, the perpetuation of a nuisance would have been the deplorable consequence. The man was so thoroughly wicked that it is charity to pronounce him mad, and we accordingly set him down as a lunatic, though we feel scarcely justified in acquitting him of his many crimes on the single ground of insanity. He is said to have been so much addicted to the practice of poisoning his relations, that he found it cheaper to grow his own plants; and he cultivated the hemlock, or the night-shade, as others grew their own faba or cicer, their beans and chickweed. Death lurked at the root of everything his garden contained, and it is probable that he sent many a present of putative mushrooms to his unsuspecting kindred. So odious had he become, that it is said he would have been murdered, if he had not died a little too soon for the arrangements of the assassins to be completed. Having been in the habit of expressing his will very briefly in his lifetime, it is not surprising that he should have left at his death a will, so short, that it purported to say in four letters all he desired. His last testament was comprised in the characters P. R. H. E.; and all his property was supposed to be represented in this small collection of capitals. The Romans affecting to be initiated in the meaning of these initials, declared them to signify, _Populus Romanus hæres est_, Let the Roman people be the heirs of my property. Regarding these letters as letters of administration, the Romans possessed themselves of all the effects of Attalus; but the will was disputed by the next of kin, one Aristonicus, a natural brother, whose claim to succeed, as a member of the testator's line, was stifled by a rope, with which the unfortunate claimant was cruelly strangled. [Illustration: Arrest of Eunus.] Pergamus became a Roman province under the name of Asia Proper--a species of appropriation which there was nothing to justify. Rome was now in the position of a man who had outgrown his strength, or rather of an adult still wearing the clothes of its infancy. Its measures had been adapted to a social body which had since spread itself in all directions, while the constitution, with which it was clothed, had not been extended to the new growth; and the extreme points of the Republic were therefore reduced to all sorts of extremities. The people at large had become so miserably poor, that they were easily bribed to become the tools of their own further abasement; and they were not only ready to sell themselves for a mere nothing, but to lend themselves to almost anything.