<head>Prusias at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a>; Eumenes not received</head>At the same time King Prusias also came to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> to congratulate the senate and the generals on what had happened.
This Prusias was a man by no means worthy of the royal dignity, as may easily be understood from the following facts.
In the first place when some Roman legates had come to his court, he went to meet them with his head shorn, and wearing a white hat and toga and shoes, exactly the costume worn at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> by slaves recently manumitted or "liberti" as the Romans call them.
"In me," he said, "you see your libertus who wishes to endear to himself and imitate everything Roman"; a phrase as humiliating as one can conceive.
And now, on entering the senate-house he stood in the doorway facing the members and putting both his kind on the ground bowed his head owing to the ground in adoration of the threshold and the seated senators, with the words, "Hail, ye saviour god," making it impossible for anyone after him to surpass him in unmanliness, womanishness, and servility.
And on entering he conducted himself during his interview in a similar manner, doing things that it were unbecoming even to mention.
As he showed himself to be utterly contemptible, he received a kind answer for this very reason.
Walbank Commentary