Origins and Early Settlement
The urban settlement of Pergamum occupied an imposing, precipitous hill rising over 300 meters above the surrounding plain between the Selinus and Cetius tributaries of the Caicus River in northwestern Asia Minor. Classical myth attributed its foundation to Pergamos, the son of Neoptolemus and Andromache, who allegedly slew the local ruler Areios in single combat and gave his name to the city, while another prominent civic myth linked its origins to the Arcadian hero Telephos, son of Heracles. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that the hill was settled as early as the Archaic period, with ceramic deposits dating to the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Pergamum enters the historical record at the beginning of the fourth century BC through Xenophon's Anabasis. When Xenophon and the remnants of the Ten Thousand reached Mysia in 399 BC, they were sheltered in Pergamum by Hellas, the widow of Gongylos of Eretria. Gongylos had been granted the city and surrounding lands by the Persian Great King Xerxes I around 470 BC as a reward for medizing during the Persian invasion of Greece. His descendants governed the hilltop citadel as local dynasts under Persian overlordship, minting small issues of late Archaic and Classical coinage bearing the city name.
Political and Civic History
During the fourth century BC, Pergamum shifted allegiance among competing satraps and conquerors. In 362 BC, the rebellious satrap Orontes made the acropolis a principal stronghold before yielding back to Achaemenid control. Alexander the Great expelled Persian authority in 334 BC, after which Pergamum fell into the sphere of his Successors. During the wars of the Diadochi, King Lysimachus of Thrace recognized the defensive strength of the acropolis and deposited his vast war treasury of nine thousand talents there, placing it under the custody of the officer Philetaerus. In 282 BC, amid court intrigue, Philetaerus shifted his loyalty to Seleucus I Nicator. Following Seleucus' death in 281 BC, Philetaerus operated as a de facto independent dynast, initiating the Attalid dynasty while astutely managing diplomatic ties with neighboring powers. Under Attalus I, who ruled from 241 BC to 197 BC, the city achieved great geopolitical prestige. After crushing the invading Galatian Celts at the headwaters of the Caicus River around 238 BC, Attalus assumed the royal title of basileus and aligned his state with the Roman Republic against Philip V of Macedon. His successor, Eumenes II, solidified this alliance during the Roman war against Antiochus III the Great. The resulting Peace of Apamea in 188 BC transferred broad swaths of western and central Anatolia to Pergamene rule, propelling Pergamum from a regional stronghold to the capital of a great Mediterranean power. Eumenes II and Attalus II undertook sweeping building programs, creating the monumental terraced acropolis. When Attalus III died in 133 BC without a direct heir, his will bequeathed the kingdom to the Roman people, while declaring Pergamum itself a free and autonomous polis. A popular rebellion led by Aristonicus (Eumenes III) resisted the transfer, prompting Roman military intervention. Consular armies crushed the revolt by 129 BC, incorporating the realm into the province of Asia. Pergamum retained its status as a free civitas, but suffered severe exactions during the First Mithridatic War and the Roman civil wars, enduring financial confiscations by Sulla and Mark Antony. Political stabilization under the Principate restored civic prosperity. The emperors Trajan, Hadrian, and Caracalla granted the city three imperial temple wardenships (neocorates). In the mid-third century AD, the city suffered damage from earthquakes and Gothic incursions. During Late Antiquity, Pergamum served as a Christian bishopric, but seventh-century Arab raids, notably an assault led by Maslama in AD 716 to AD 717, devastated the lower city, forcing the remaining population to retreat to the fortified hilltop fortress.
Territory and Urban Topography
The core territory of the polis of Pergamum encompassed the fertile lower valley of the Caicus (modern Bakırçay) River, an expanse estimated at well over two hundred square kilometers. While the Attalid kingdom grew to encompass Lydia, Mysia, Hellespontine Phrygia, and parts of Pisidia and Pamphylia, scholars emphasize the vital legal and territorial distinction between the royal domains (chora basilikē) and the civic land of the polis proper (politike chora). Pergamum sat inland, approximately twenty-six kilometers from the Aegean shore, requiring a secure maritime outlet. The coastal city of Elaea served as Pergamum's official port and naval station, connected to the capital by a paved highway. The urban footprint of Pergamum was dictated by the dramatic incline of its acropolis. Rather than conforming to a rigid Hippodamian grid, architects utilized monumental retaining walls to carve out descending semicircular terraces. The uppermost terrace held the royal palaces and the arsenal; lower terraces accommodated the Sanctuary of Athena Polias, the Great Library, the Great Altar of Zeus and Athena, and a precipitously pitched theater with eighty rows of stone seating. Below the acropolis, an intermediate terrace accommodated the sprawling Gymnasium complex and the Upper and Lower Agoras. Under Roman administration, the urban perimeter extended westward across the Selinus into the plain, encompassing an amphitheater, a Roman circus, the vast Red Basilica (Serapeum), and the Asclepieion sanctuary.
Civic Administration and Royal Oversight
Throughout both the Hellenistic and Roman eras, Pergamum preserved the institutional framework of an autonomous Greek polis. Epigraphic decrees demonstrate the continued operation of the sovereign civic assembly (demos) and the council (boule), which passed laws, ratified treaties of isopolity with neighboring communities, and granted civic honors. The principal executive magistracy was a collegiate board of five strategoi. During the Attalid monarchy, the relationship between the king and the polis was legally articulated through royal supervision: the five strategoi were not elected by the popular assembly, but appointed annually by the reigning monarch. The strategoi drafted civic decrees, coordinated public business, and served as the primary intermediary between the monarch and the citizenry. The day-to-day administration of urban life is uniquely documented by the surviving fragments of the Pergamene Astynomic Law, a set of royal and civic regulations originally enacted under the later Attalids and re-inscribed during the Roman Empire. The law outlines the jurisdiction of the astynomoi, civic officials responsible for the maintenance of roads, building safety, drainage channels, garbage removal, and public fountains. The astynomoi possessed judicial authority to inspect private structures, fine citizens who polluted shared cisterns or encroached upon public ways, and enforce proper building codes on the city's steep hillside terraces. Other civic magistrates included the agoranomoi, who regulated commercial exchange and commodity prices in the agoras, and gymnasiarchs, who managed education and physical training across the lower, middle, and upper gymnasia. Under Roman rule, Pergamum was governed as a civitas libera, retaining its local magistrates and council while hosting the assizes of a Roman judicial conventus.
Society, Religion, and Intellectual Life
The citizen body of Pergamum was divided into traditional civic tribes (phylai), which grew in number during the Hellenistic expansion. Civic society was strictly stratified, consisting of full citizens, resident aliens (metics), freedmen, royal mercenaries, royal slaves, and privately owned enslaved laborers. A celebrated decree passed in 133 BC, amidst the political crisis following the death of Attalus III, illustrates this social stratification: the assembly granted full citizenship to resident aliens, military settlers, and allied mercenaries, and elevated royal freedmen to metic status in an effort to maintain social cohesion against internal disruption. Religious life was deeply interwoven with political identity. The civic patron was Athena Polias Nikephoros ('Bringer of Victory'), whose sanctuary crowned the upper acropolis. Dionysus Kathegemon ('the Leader') served as the patron deity of the ruling dynasty and the local guild of Dionysiac artists. In the southwestern plain lay the Asclepieion, a sanctuary dedicated to the healing god Asclepius that developed into one of the most prominent medical centers of antiquity, drawing patients from across the Mediterranean for incubation therapy and medical diagnosis. Pergamum was also the home of the second-century AD physician and anatomist Galen, whose intellectual foundation was formed within the city's intellectual circles. Pergamum rivaled Alexandria as an intellectual powerhouse of the Hellenistic Mediterranean. King Eumenes II established the famous Library of Pergamum, which according to ancient tradition amassed some two hundred thousand scrolls. The library patronized eminent Stoic philosophers and grammarians, notably Crates of Mallus, who developed Pergamene textual criticism in deliberate competition with the Aristarchan school of Alexandria. Cultural propaganda emphasized Pergamum as a 'New Athens', a bastion of Hellenic civilization against barbarian inroads.
Economy, Trade, and Production
The economic foundations of Pergamum rested upon the exceptional agricultural productivity of the Caicus plain, which yielded substantial surpluses of grain, olive oil, wine, and livestock. In addition, the Attalid monarchs and civic authorities exploited timber resources and silver, copper, and iron mines in Mount Ida and the Atarneus district. Urban workshops achieved renown across the Mediterranean for specialized craft production, particularly Pergamene textiles, gold-embroidered fabrics (attalica), and fine ceramics, including Pergamene relief pottery and Eastern Sigillata C. According to ancient tradition preserved by Pliny the Elder, when the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt embargoed the export of papyrus to curb the growth of the Pergamene Library, Pergamum innovated the widespread industrial manufacture and refinement of animal skins into parchment, known etymologically as charta pergamena. Although processed animal skins had been used earlier in the Near East, Pergamene craft workshops perfected its preparation, turning the city into the chief export center for the material. Pergamum was an active monetary power. Beginning in the early second century BC, the Attalids introduced the cistophorus, a silver coin equivalent in value to three Attic drachms. Marked with the mystic cista of Dionysus and an entwined serpent, the cistophoric currency system operated as a closed regional monetary zone throughout western Asia Minor, continuing under Roman republican and early imperial administration.
Decline, Rediscovery, and Architectural Legacy
During Late Antiquity, Pergamum's prominence shifted from pagan intellectualism to Christian administration. The city is cited in the New Testament Book of Revelation as the seat of one of the Seven Churches of Asia, famously described as the place 'where Satan has his throne', widely interpreted as a reference to the monumental Great Altar or the pervasive imperial cult. Under the Byzantine Empire, Pergamum formed part of the Theme of the Opsikion and later the Thracesion Theme. Following widespread destruction during Arab incursions in the early eighth century AD, the sprawling classical city shrank into a compact, fortified hilltop kastro. Although the town experienced modest revival under the Komnenian dynasty and the Empire of Nicaea in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD, it fell to the Turkish Karesid beylic around 1300 AD and was absorbed by the Ottoman Empire around 1336 AD, becoming the Turkish town of Bergama. The rediscovery of ancient Pergamum began in the late nineteenth century. In 1878, the German civil engineer and archaeologist Carl Humann initiated systematic excavations sponsored by the Royal Museums of Berlin. The excavation uncovered the astonishing Hellenistic terraces and secured the sculpted friezes of the Great Altar, depicting the Gigantomachy and the story of Telephos, which were subsequently transported to Berlin and housed in the specially constructed Pergamonmuseum. In 2014, UNESCO inscribed 'Pergamon and its Multi-Layered Cultural Landscape' on the World Heritage List, honoring its monumental urban planning, dynamic baroque sculpture, and unique synthesis of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine civic heritage.
References
- An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis. Entry 828, pp. 828-830
- The Attalid Kingdom: A Constitutional History. pp. 74-135
- A History of Pergamum: Beyond Hellenistic Kingship. pp. 11-45, 120-155
- Pergamum. History and Archaeological Remains
- Pergamon and its Multi-Layered Cultural Landscape. Criteria (i)(ii)(iii)(iv)(vi)