hypothesis that other great capitalists had done something similar in other cities. If Protogenes did not turn his position into a political tyranny, that would be no proof that others did not do so: and the fact remains that the assumption that Protogenes was not on the way to become a tyrant, or indeed that he did not actually become one, if not precisely wild[1452] is purely hypothetical. The records of Protogenes illustrate the sort of way in which the financial magnate might win the supreme place in his city. The whole group of facts associated with his name and with those of Euboulos, Hermias, Euaion, Timaeus, Philetairos, and Attalus shows once again that at least there is nothing improbable in the theory that the power of the seventh and sixth century tyrants was built up on a similar financial or industrial basis, the more so considering the evidence adduced already for believing that conditions in the earlier period were uniquely favourable for the establishment of a money power. We have seen why the financial despots of the age of Plato and Aristotle should not have helped to preserve the memory of earlier money powers. It is no less easy to see why the same should have been the case with the rulers of Pergamum. An exceptional circumstance saved the house of Philetairos from being reproached with its mercenary basis, and curiously enough that circumstance was one which illustrates how very mercenary that basis was. When Attalus III, the last of his house, died in 133 B.C., he made the Roman people his heirs[1453]. His fortune was used by the Gracchan revolutionaries to equip the impoverished Romans whom they were restoring to the land by their agrarian laws. The dynasty too, with its clear eye for the main chance, had always consistently sought the friendship of Rome[1454]. Though most of our authorities for the history of the Attalids are Greek, the Greeks in question were all pro-Roman, with the result that we see the Attalids essentially from the Roman point of view. They stood in much the same relationship to the Romans as the house of Gyges did to the Greeks; and the Romans to whom Attalus III had left all his treasure and possessions were as little inclined to think harshly of their benefactor as were the Greeks whom Croesus had so largely benefited inclined to be critical of his “hospitable virtue[1455].” In both cases the man of business was known only as the patron of deserving charities. We have to go to rulers like the Tarquins and Peisistratids, whose history we owe ultimately to their own subjects and employees, to hear the money-power described as it really was and given its true name of tyranny. Chapter XI. _Conclusion_ ἀγαθὸν δὲ ὄντα διαφερόντως καὶ πλούσιον εἶναι διαφερόντως ἀδύνατον. PLATO, _Laws_, V. 743_a_.