Attalids

Religion and ideology

One notable example of religious art in Pergamon is the frieze in the interior of the Pergamon Altar depicting the life of Telephus, son of the demigod Herakles. The ruling dynasty associated Telephus with its city and claimed him as its legendary forefather and the ancestor of the Attalids. Pergamon, having entered the Greek world much later than its counterparts to the west, could not boast the same divine heritage as older city-states and so had to cultivate its place in Greek mythology retroactively. The frieze on the exterior of the altar, showing the gods defeating the giants in the Gigantomachy, was likely an allegory to the Attalid defeat of the Galatians and Gauls. Aligning themselves with the Olympian gods was a further way to legitimise their dynasty. Similarly, the Attalids implausibly claimed a link to Alexander the Great via Pergamus, a very marginal figure who was a son of Andromache and Neoptolemus. According to the Attalids, Pergamus had founded the city of Pergamon and named it after himself, while they claimed Andromache was a distant ancestor of Olympias, Alexander's mother.