Prusias
- a king of Bithynia, who hospitably received Hannibal, but afterwards betrayed him to the Romans, Cic. Div. 2, 24, 52; Nep. Hann. 10, 1; Just. 32, 4, 2; Liv. 37, 25; Val. Max. 3, 7, 6 ext.—Form Prusia, Liv. 29, 12, 14.—Hence,
- A Prūsĭăcus, a, um, adj., of or belonging to Prusias, Prusiacan: orae, i.e. his kingdom, Sil. 13, 888.—
- B Prūsĭădes, ae, m., a male descendant of (an older) Prusias, a Prusiade, applied to king Prusias himself, Varr. ap. Non. 345, 23.
(Προυσίας, Prusias).
1. From a passage of Strabo (xii. p.564) it would appear that there was a Prusias, king of Bithynia, as early as the time of Croesus, who was the founder of the city of Prusa, at the foot of Mount Olympus, but the reading, though confirmed by Stephanus Byzantinus (s. v. Προῦσα) is probably corrupt. (See Groskurd, ad Strab. l.c.; Forbiger, Hand. d. ait. Geogr. p. 386; Droysen, Hellenism. vol. ii. p. 655.)
2. A son of Prusias II., surnamed Μονόδους, because all the teeth in his upper jaw were united into one solid mass. He probably died early, as nothing more is known of him. (Liv. Epit. 1. ; V. Max. 1.8. ext. 12; Plin. Nat. 7.16 ; Tzetz. Chil. 3.953, has confounded hini with his father.) [E.H.B]
(Προυσίας), king of Bithynia, was the son of Zielas, whom he succeeded on the throne, and grandson of Nicomedes I. The date of his accession is unknown, but it appears that it preceded the death of Antiochus Hierax, and may therefore be placed at least as early as B. C. 228, (Trog. Pomp. Prol. xxvii.; Clinton, F. H. vol. iii. pp. 413, 414; Niebuhr, Kl. Schrift. p. 287.) The first event of his reign, which is recorded to us, is a war with the Byzantines, in which we find him engaging in B. C. 220, in conjunction with the Rhodians. The latter were at first supported by Attalus, king of Pergamus, as well as by Achaeus, who had lately assumed the sovereignty of Asia Minor, and they endeavoured also to set up Tiboetes, the uncle of Prusias, as a competitor for the throne of Bithynia. Their efforts were, however, unsuccessful: Prusias conquered all the possessions of the Byzantines in Asia, while the Thracians pressed them closely on the European side, and they were soon compelled to submit to a peace on disadvantageous terms. (Plb. 4.47_52.) Shortly after this, in B. C. 217, Prusias is mentioned among the princes who sent costly presents to the Rhodians after the great calamity they had suffered by an earthquake: and the following year (216) he obtained great distinction by defeating and cutting to pieces a formidable army of Gauls, who had been invited into Asia by Attalus, and had become the terror of the adjoining countries. (Id. 5.90, 111.) On the breaking out of the war between the Romans and Philip, king of Macedon, Prusias lent his assistance to the latter ; and besides supplying him with an auxiliary squadron of ships, rendered him a more important service by invading the territories of his own neighbour and rival Attalus, whom he thus recalled from Greece to the defence of his own kingdom, B. C. 207. (Liv. 27.30, 28.7.) The name of the Bithynian monarch was, in consequence, included in the treaty of peace between Philip and the Romans in B. C. 205 (Liv. 29.12), and we subsequently find the two kings uniting their forces to besiege Cius in Bithynia, which, after it had fallen into their hands, was sacked by order of Philip, the inhabitants sold as slaves, and the city itself given up to Prusias. (Plb. 15.21, 17.5; Liv. 32.34; Strab. xii. p.563.)
It does not appear that the latter, though he was connected by marriage with the Macedonian king, took any part in the decisive struggle of Philip with the Roman power (B. C. 200-196): but in B. C. 190, when Antiochus was, in his turn, preparing to contend with the republic, he made repeated attempts to obtain the alliance of Prusias, who was at first disposed to listen to his overtures, but yielded to the arguments of the two Scipios, and concluded an alliance with Rome, though he appears to have, in fact, taken no part in the war that followed. (Plb. 21.9; Liv. 37.25 ; Appian. Syr. 23.) After the termination of that war, however, Prusias became involved in hostilities with Eumenes, king of Pergamus, by which he gave umbrage to the Romans, and he soon after greatly increased this offence by affording a shelter to their implacable enemy, the fugitive Hannibal. The exiled general rendered important services to the king in his contest with Eumenes, but, notwithstanding these obligations, Prusias was unwilling to brave the anger of Rome, and when Flamininus was deputed by the senate to demand the surrender of Hannibal, the king basely gave his consent, and the Carthaginian general only escaped falling into the hands of his enemies by a voluntary death. (Plb. 23.18, 24.1; Liv. 39.51; Justin, 32.4; Plut. Flam. 20 ; Corn. Nep. Hann. 10-12; App. Syr. 11; Eutrop. 4.5; Oros. 4.20; Strab. xii. p.563.)
This is the last circumstance which can be referred with certainty to the elder Prusias: the period of his death, and of the accession of his son, is not mentioned by any ancient writer, but Mr. Clinton regards the Prusias mentioned in the treaty of B. C. 179, between Eumenes and Pharnaces, as the second king of this name: and this supposition, though not admitting of proof, appears at least a very probable one. (Clinton, F. H. vol. ii. p. 417.) In this case we must place his death between 183 and 179 B. C. It was apparently during the latter part of his reign that Prusias, who had already made himself master of Cierus, Tieios, and other dependencies of Heracleia, laid siege to that city itself; but while pressing the attack with vigour, he himself received a severe wound from a stone, which not only compelled him for a time to abandon the enterprise, but left him with a lameness for the remainder of his life. On this account he is sometimes distinguished by the epithet of the Lame (ὁ χωλος) (Memnon. 100.27, ed. Orell.)
Prusias appears to have been a monarch of vigour and ability, and raised his kingdom of Bithynia to a much higher pitch of power and prosperity than it had previously attained. Like many of his contemporary princes, he sought distinction by the foundation or new settlement of cities, among the most conspicuous of which were Cius and Myrleia on the Propontis, which he repeopled and restored after their ruin by Philip, bestowing on the one his own name, while he called the other after his wife, Apameia. In addition to this, he gave the name of Prusias also to the small city of Cierus, which he had wrested from the Heracleians. (Strab. xii. p.563; Steph. Byz. s. v. Προῦσα and Ἀπάμεια, Memnon. 100.41. 47.) The foundation of Prusa, at the foot of Mount Olympus, is also ascribed to him by some authors. (Plin. Nat. 5.43. See on this point Droysen, Hellenism. vol. ii. p. 655.) Before the close of his reign, however, his power received a severe blow by the loss of the Hellespontine Phrygia, which he was compelled to cede to the kings of Pergamus; probably by the treaty which terminated the war already alluded to. (Strab. l.c.) [E.H.B]
(Προυσίας), king of Bithynia, was the son and successor of the preceding. No mention is found in any extant author of the period of his accession, and we only know that it must have been subsequent to B. C. 183, as Strabo distinctly tells us (xii. p. 563), that the Prusias who received Hannibal at his court, was the son of Zielas. In B. C. 179, we find the name of Prusias associated with Eumenes in the treaty concluded by that monarch with Pharnaces, king of Pontus (Plb. 26.6), and this is supposed by Clinton to be the younger Prusias. It is certain, at least, that he was already on the throne before the breaking out of the war between the Romans and Perseus, B. C. 171. Prusias had previously sued for and obtained in marriage a sister of the Macedonian king, but notwithstanding this alliance he determined to keep aloof from the impending contest, and await the result with a view to make his peace with whichever party should prove victorious. (Liv. 42.12, 29; Appian, App. Mith. 2.) In B. C. 169, however, he ventured to send an embassy to Rome, to interpose his good offices in favour of Perseus, and endeavour to prevail upon the senate to grant him a peace upon favourable terms. His intervention, however, was haughtily rejected, and fortune having the next year decided in favour of the Romans, Prusias sought to avert any offence he might have given by this ill-judged step, by the most abject and sordid flatteries. He received the Roman deputies who were sent to his court, in the garb which was characteristic of an emancipated slave, and styled himself the freedman of the Roman people: and the following year, B. C. 167, he himself repaired to Rome, where he sought to conciliate the favour of the senate by similar acts of slavish adulation. By this meanness he disarmed the resentment of the Romans, and obtained a renewal of the league between him and the republic, accompanied even with an extension of territory. (Plb. 30.16 ; Liv. 45.44; Diod. xxxi. Exc. Vat. p. 83, Exc. Legat. p. 565; Appian. Mithr. 2; Eutrop. 4.8 ; Zonar. 9.24.)
From this time we find Prusias repeatedly sending embassies to Rome to prefer complaints against Eumenes, which, however, led to no results (Plb. 31.6, 9, 32.3, 5), until, at length, in B. C. 156, after the death of Eumenes, the disputes between his successor Attalus and the Bithynian king broke out into open hostilities. In these Prusias was at first successful, defeated Attalus in a great battle, and compelled him to take refuge in Pergamus, to which he laid siege, but without effect. Meanwhile, Attalus had sent to Rome to complain of the aggression of the Bithynian king, and an embassy was sent by the senate, to order Prusias to desist: but he treated this command with contempt, and attacking Attalus a second time, again drove him within the walls of Pergamus. But the following year the arms of Attalus were more successful, and a fresh embassy from the senate at length compelled Prusias to make peace, B. C. 154. (Plb. 32.25, 26, xxxiii. l, 10, 11; Appian. Mithr. 3; Diod. xxxi. Exc. Vales. p. 589.) Meanwhile, the Bithynian monarch had alienated the minds of his subjects by his vices and cruelties, and his son Nicomedes had become the object of the popular favour and admiration. This aroused the jealousy and suspicion of the old king, who, in order to remove his son from the eyes of his countrymen, sent him to Rome: and subsequently, as his apprehensions still increased, gave secret instructions to his ambassador Menas to remove the young prince by assassination. Menas, however, finding how high Nicomedes stood in the favour of the Roman senate, attached himself to the cause of the prince, and united with Andronicus the ambassador of Attalus in an attempt to establish Nicomedes on the throne of Bithynia. Prusias was unable to make head against the disaffection of his own subjects, supported by the arms of Attalus, and after an ineffectual appeal to the intervention of the Romans, who secretly favoured Nicomedes, shut himself up within the walls of Nicomedia. The gates were, however, opened by the inhabitants, and Prusias himsell was slain in a temple, to which he had fled for refuge. His death took place in B. C. 149. (Appian. Mithr. 4-7; Just. 34.4; Liv. Epit. l.; Diod. xxxii. Exc. Phot. p. 523; Zonar. 9.28.)
Prusias II. is described to us as a man in whom personal deformity was combined with a character the most vicious and degraded, and all ancient authors concur in representing him as the slave of every vice that was contemptible in a snan, or odious in a king. His passion for the chase is attested by the epithet of the "Huntsman" (Κυνηγός), by which he is sometimes designated. (Plb. 30.16, 37.2; Diod. xxxii. Exc. Vales. p. 591; Appian. Mithr. 2, 4; Liv. Epit. l.; Athen. 11.496. d.)
The chronology of the reigns of the two kings who bore the name of Prusias is very obscure : the earlier writers, such as Reinerus and Sigonius, even confounded the two, and supposed that there was only one king of Bithynia of this name. Valesius (ad Polyb. 37.2) was the first to point out this error : and the subject has since been fully investigated by Mr. Clinton (F. H. vol. iii. pp. 413, 418.) If we adopt the view of the last author, we may assign to the elder Prusias a reign of about 48 years (B. C. 228-180), and of 31 years to the younger (180-149). But of these dates the only one that can be fixed with certainty is that of the death of Prusias II.
[E.H.B]
(Προυσίας). (1) I. King of Bithynia from about B.C. 228 to 180, though the date neither of his accession nor of his death is exactly known. He was the son of Zielas, whom he succeeded. He appears to have been a monarch of vigour and ability, and raised his kingdom of Bithynia to a much higher pitch of power and prosperity than it had previously attained. It was at his court that Hannibal took refuge; and when the Romans demanded the surrender of the Carthaginian general, the king basely gave his consent, and Hannibal only escaped falling into the hands of his enemies by a voluntary death.
(2) II. King of Bithynia, son and successor of the preceding, reigned from about B.C. 180 to 149. He courted assiduously the alliance of the Romans. He carried on war with Attalus, king of Pergamus, with whom, however, he was compelled by the Romans to conclude peace in 154. He was slain in 149 by order of his son Nicomedes, as is related in the life of the latter. (See Nicomedes II.) Prusias is described to us as a man in whom personal deformity was combined with a character the most vicious and degraded. His passion for the chase is attested by the epithet of the “Huntsman” (Κυνηγός) given to him (Polyb. xxiv. 1).
- refuses to receive Hannibal: Paus. 8.11.11