The Attalid Kingdom: Artisans, Markets and Learning

Work in the Attalid capital ranged from building terraces and carving sculpture to making vessels and selling goods. Markets connected specialists with customers, while writing helped officials maintain the city and manage funds. Learning occupied several settings, from the gymnasium to paid teachers and scholars working with royal collections.

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Building a city on steep ground

Pergamon’s growth was shaped by its terrain. Streets climbed the acropolis in turns, and new building areas required terraces and retaining structures cut into or built against the hillside. Under Eumenes II and Attalus II, the city expanded beyond its earlier core: new walls enclosed a larger area, and public buildings, a market and a gymnasium were added. These projects created sustained demand for people who could plan, cut and assemble stonework.

Builders used local volcanic stone alongside imported marble. Cutting blocks, moving them up the hill and fitting them into terraces or colonnades required coordinated skills. A stoa, or roofed colonnade, provided shade and shelter around a public space. Its columns, roof and rear rooms combined craftsmanship with practical accommodation for visitors and commercial activity.

Skilled practitioners could travel on royal assignments. In 140/139 BCE, Delphi honoured three painters from Pergamon sent by King Attalos. The damaged decree probably concerns work on existing paintings. It praises their conduct and grants civic privileges, placing their skill within a commission carried out beyond the capital.

Markets, shops and regional money

Pergamon’s agoras, or market squares, were built into the city’s changing layout. The Upper Agora developed a stronger commercial role over time. Halls constructed under Eumenes II had rear rooms that may have served as shops, while a chamber on the western side has been interpreted as a possible market-administration space. The Lower Agora, also built under Eumenes II, extended across two levels to accommodate the slope. Its central columned hall included small shop spaces and other rooms.

Shops and warehouses beside the main uphill route linked storage with the movement of goods and customers. Rooms at the agoras placed retail space beside sheltered public areas. Traders needed access for deliveries as well as a place to display or hand over goods; the arrangement of streets and rooms helped organise those tasks.

Money helped link markets across the Attalid realm. In the mid-second century BCE, probably around 170–160 BCE, the kingdom introduced the silver cistophorus; the precise date remains debated. It was valued at four drachmas but weighed about as much as three Attic drachmas, or roughly 12.5 grams. Its distinctive designs included a sacred chest associated with Dionysus on one side and a bow case on the other. Unlike many Hellenistic royal coins, it did not display a reigning king’s portrait.

Cistophori were issued for Pergamon and other centres, with marks identifying cities, officials or issues. Their main circulation lay within the region, but other silver remained in use, including coins on the Attic standard. The cistophorus supplied a familiar regional unit alongside forms of money useful in wider exchange.

Materials and specialist production

Pergamon became a centre for making parchment, a writing material prepared from animal skin. The material was used for scrolls, including manuscripts collected by the royal library. Parchment was not invented in Pergamon: prepared skins had been used for writing in Anatolia and elsewhere long before the Attalid kingdom. The city’s association with it reflects production and use, not an origin story.

Pottery manufacture offers a particularly clear example of workshop skill. Pergamon’s Hellenistic relief bowls were made with decorated moulds. Pressing clay against a mould transferred its leaves, figures and borders to the vessel’s outer surface. Reusing and combining stamps allowed potters to vary decoration while repeating successful designs. Imported bowls found in the city also brought products from other centres into the same market.

Records, gymnasia and royal learning

Writing served practical civic purposes. The Astynomoi Law survives in a Roman-period copy generally understood to preserve an Attalid regulation. It required urban officials to register private cisterns and report to senior officers. Keeping a list, checking a tank and storing an official record were related administrative tasks, linking written information with the maintenance of the water supply.

Pergamon’s second-century BCE gymnasium was a large complex arranged on three terraces. The lowest was identified as a boys’ gymnasium; the upper terrace included a courtyard complex identified as a palaestra, an exercise ground. These features show that the institution had substantial space for organized activity. A theatre-shaped lecture hall in the complex is probably Roman, however, so it cannot establish what teaching facilities were available during Attalid rule.

At Delphi around 160/159 BCE, Attalos provided 18,000 silver drachmas for teaching and a further 3,000 for honours and sacrifices. The capital was lent on adequate security, and interest was assigned to the stated expenses. The city elected managers, recorded borrowers and their pledged property and kept copies of the records. Teachers’ salaries therefore depended on an organised endowment rather than a new royal payment every year.

The royal library at Pergamon represents a more elite form of learning. Its exact location is uncertain: it has often been associated with rooms beside the sanctuary of Athena, while inscriptions mentioning a library in the gymnasium may refer to a separate collection. Ancient reports describe scholars studying literary works there. The grammarian and philologist Crates of Mallus is associated with Pergamene scholarship, while a report naming an employee called Artemon gives a rare glimpse of library personnel. Plutarch later attributed 200,000 scrolls to the collection, but no surviving catalogue allows that figure or the library’s full holdings to be checked.

The endowment joined education to a continuing cycle of loans, interest payments, salaries and public accounts. Its managers had to protect the capital so that future income remained available. Royal generosity became a local institution whose operation depended on the city’s decisions and record keeping.

For the wider setting, see Life in the Attalid Kingdom: City, Household and Countryside.