It’s not every day that a eunuch rises from relative administrative obscurity to found a massively successful dynasty, but that is exactly what Philetairos managed.
By all accounts, he must have been a wily one (and a very lucky one), switching loyalties with some perspicacity. Born to a Macedonian father and local mother on the Black Sea coast, Philetairos entered the employ of Lysimachos, and was installed by that powerful Successor of Alexander as the watchdog of his considerable treasury at Pergamon.
A sealstone with the engraved portrait of Philhetairos. Hellenistic, 3rd cent. B.C. Chalcedony, Jasper, H. 2.8 cm.
Likely produced in Pergamon.
© The Trustees of the British Museum
So ensconced (conveniently with 9,000 talents of silver) in the city of Pergamon – that andesite massif in Western Asia Minor, so strategically important with its perilously steep slope and advantageous viewpoints over the plains of Mysia – Philhetairos defected, switching allegiance to Lysimachos’ rival general Seleukos. Both his former masters would be dead within a year, leaving Philhetairos fabulously wealthy (or as legendary archaeologist Volker Kästner put it, “with a considerable sum of ‘start-up’ capital”) and operating from a position of considerable strength. He went on to shore up his power, fortify and monumentalise the craggy citadel of Pergamon, and found (through adoption) the Attalid dynasty (named for his father).
In his portraiture on coinage and in the round (with the best known example from the Herculaneum’s Villa dei Papyri), the new dynast is shown bull-necked, fleshy faced, with jutting chin and a certain intensity of gaze. As if he could fashion his own destiny which, of course, is exactly what he did.
This gem in the British Museum tellingly (like the Herculaneum bust) has no divine attributes or royal diadem, meaning it was likely commissioned before Philehairos was deified by his heir Eumenes I. It is an extraordinary work, showing all of these powerful physiognomic and psychological characteristics, carved into the most extraordinary chalcedony oval, the fiery golden jasper veins giving the darker surround an almost opalescent lustre. A most unusual and unlikely stone for a most intriguing character.
