Stratius Sent to Attalus
While Attalus was engaged on this intrigue, Eumenes,
note
fearing what would happen, sent his physician
Stratius to Rome, putting him in possession of
the facts, and charging him to employ every means
to prevent Attalus from following the advice
of those who wished to ruin their kingdom. On arriving at
Rome and getting Attalus by himself, he used a great variety
of arguments to him (and he was a man of great sense
and powers of persuasion), and at length, with much trouble,
succeeded in his object, and in recalling him from his
mad project. He represented to him that "he was already
practically joint-king with his brother, and only differed from
him in the fact that he wore no diadem, and was not called
king, though in everything else he possessed an equal and
identical authority: that in the future he was the acknowledged
heir to the crown, and with no very distant prospect of possession;
as the king, from the weak state of his health, was in constant expectation of his departure, and being childless could
not, even if he wished it, leave the crown to any one else."
(For in fact that natural son of his, who afterwards succeeded
to the crown, had not as yet been acknowledged.) "Above all,
he was surprised at the hindrance Attalus was thus interposing
to the measures necessary at that particular crisis. For they
ought to thank heaven exceedingly if they proved able, even
with hearty co-operation and unanimity, to repel the threatened
attack of the Gauls; but if he should at such a time quarrel
with and oppose his brother, it was quite clear that he would
ruin the kingdom, and deprive himself both of his present
power and his future expectations, and his other brothers also
of the kingdom and the power they possessed in it." By these
and similar arguments Stratius dissuaded Attalus from taking
any revolutionary steps.
