<head>IV. Affairs of Asia</head><head>Pharnaces, King of Pontus</head>Pharnaces surpassed all previous kings in his contempt for laws.
Walbank Commentary
Overview
27.17.0 - 27.17.0
<p rend="Plain Text">Pharnaces' contempt for the law</p>
<p rend="Plain Text">
On Pharnaces I of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Pontus&groupId=910&placeId=1634">Pontus</a> see iii. 3. 6, xxiii. 9. 1–3, xxiv. 1. 1–3, 5. 1, 14–15, xxv. 2. This brief excerpt from de uirt. et uit. belongs to res Asiae of Ol. 152, 2 = 171/0 (see p. 24). Its context cannot be recovered. It cannot be from a passage commemorating Pharnaces' death in this olympiad year (so Meyer, Pontos, 81; cf. Diehl, RE, 'Pharnakes (1)', cols. 1848–51; Will, ii. 392), since he and his newly married wife, <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Nysa&groupId=959&placeId=283">Nysa</a> (probably the daughter of Antiochus III; cf. Mrkholm, 54), were the recipients of honours from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Athens&groupId=379&placeId=715">Athens</a> in the archonship of Tychandros; cf. OGIS, 771, where the archon's name can be confidently restored since the secretary is Sosigenes of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Marathon&groupId=732&placeId=1340">Marathon</a>: cf. IG, ii
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. 953. It is now agreed that Tychandros' archonship was in 160/59; cf. S. Dow, Hesperia, 1935, 91; W. S. Ferguson, Athenian tribal cycles (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), 145; W. K. Pritchett and B. D. Meritt, The Chronology of Hellenistic <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Athens&groupId=379&placeId=715">Athens</a> (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), xxix. Hence Pharnaces' death and the succession of his brother, Mithridates IV, must fall between 160/59 and 156; cf. xxxiii. 12. 1 n.
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Walbank Commentary