v57_0143 - MYSIA - PERGAMENE KINGDOM - Tétradrachme

MYSIA - PERGAMENE KINGDOM -

(282-263 BC)

Philetarian (343-263 BC). -VS. ), a eunuch first served Antigonus the One-eyed before switching sides to Lysimachus shortly before the Battle of Ipsos. It had become under the reign of Lysimachus (323-281 BC. -VS. ) the guardian of the royal treasury at Pergamon which is said to have contained more than 9. 000 talents, more than 230 tons of metal. Shortly before the Battle of Couropedion, Philetary betrayed Lysimachus to Seleucus I Nicator (312-280 BC).. -VS. ). Philetaire was confirmed in his office. After the assassination of Seleucus I by Ptolemy Keraunos in 280 BC. -VS. He bought the remains of the Seleucid king to offer it to his son, Antiochus I. Philetary considered himself released from his oath to the Seleucid monarchs and gradually emancipated himself from the tutelage of Antiochus I Soter. He appropriated the treasure of which he was the guardian and finally proclaimed himself independent, becoming the irreducible enemy of the Seleucids.. But he did not take the royal title and maintained the fiction of a Seleucid domination. He repelled the Galatians in 276 BC. -VS. When he died in 263 BC. -VS. Eumenes, his nephew and adopted son succeeded him opening a conflict with the Seleucid kings which was to last more than a century. Philetary is the founder of the Attalid dynasty which reigned over Pergamum until 133 BC.. -VS.