4.18-19

During the same period, in which the government of Syria was passing from hand to hand among its new sovereigns, King Attalus in Asia polluted a most flourishing kingdom, which he inherited from his uncle Eumenes, by murders of his friends and executions of his relatives, pretending sometimes that his old mother, and sometimes his wife Berenice, had been destroyed by their wicked contrivances. After this atrocious outburst of rage, he assumed a mean dress, let his beard and hair grow like those of persons under legal prosecution, never went abroad or showed himself to the people, held no feasts in his palace, and behaved in no respect, indeed, like a man in his senses; so that he seemed to be paying penalty for his crimes to the manes of those whom he had murdered. Abandoning the government of his kingdom, too, he employed himself in digging and sowing in his garden, mixing noxious herbs with harmless ones, and sending them all indiscriminately, moistened with poisonous juices, as special presents to his friends. From this employment he turned to that of working in brass, and amused himself with modelling in wax, and casting and hammering out brazen figures. He then proceeded to make a monument for his mother, but while he was busy about the work, he contracted a disorder from the heat of the sun, and died on the seventh day afterwards. By his will the Roman people was appointed his heir.

Once Hispania was conquered in the West, the Roman people went about pacifying the East. They brought this about not only with warfare, but also with an unusual and unheard-of windfall: several kingdoms came under their control, bequeathed to them in the testament of several kings. Attalus, the King of Pergamon, son of King Eumenes, our ally and comrade-in-arms, left the following in his will: "Let the Roman people be my heir of my personal property; this includes my royal estate." This territory increased the Roman state; the Roman people added a province to their lands without war or weapons, but rather through a more advantageous way: inheriting it legally through a will (Epit. 1.35.1–10; Trans. Kristin Masters).