ABSTRACT
The Roman Republic’s headlong rush towards empire meant that the city on the Tiber-not just Julius Caesar-bestrode the world like a colossus. In 139 BCE, Attalus II, king of Pergamos, a wealthy kingdom in Asia Minor, willed his realm to the senate and people of Rome, a transaction littleremarked upon by some historians. Yet the implications for the business of empire and the empire’s business were monumental.
