claims being true, but generally agrees that he was a pretender; his main advantage in his claims was his close resemblance to Perseus. Around 154/153 BC, he left Pergamon for Syria, where he declared his claim to be the illegitimate son of Perseus by a concubine. According to his own account, it was due to his mother (or foster mother) urging him to leave Pergamon to avoid the wrath of the pro-Roman Eumenes II. Claiming the throne In Syria He first staked his claim in Syria. Livy and Cassius Dio write that he simply went from Pergamon to Syria and directly staked his claim before the Seleucid monarch, Demetrius I Soter. Diodorus Siculus offers a different account. According to him, Andriscus was already a mercenary in Demetrius' army. Due to his resemblance to the former Macedonian king, his comrades started jokingly calling him "son of Perseus"; these jokes soon began becoming serious suspicions, and at one point, Andriscus himself decided to seize the opportunity and claimed that he was indeed the son of Perseus. Niese attempts to reconcile both accounts, suggesting that he might have travelled to Syria and then enlisted as a mercenary before staking his claim. He appealed to the king to help him win back his "ancestral" throne, and found great popular support among the Seleucid populace, to the extent that there were riots in the capital, Antioch. Large segments of the Seleucid population were of Macedonian descent, nurturing strong anti-Roman sentiment since the Roman conquest of Macedon in the Third Macedonian War; they were eager to help the claimant. They proceeded to such an extent that there were even calls for deposing the king if he did not help the pretender. Unmoved, or perhaps frightened, Demetrius had Andriscus arrested and sent to Rome. In Rome In Rome, he was brought before the Senate, where Dio writes that he stood "in general contempt" due to what was perceived to be his ordinary nature and transparently false claim. The Romans believed his claim to be fake, because the real Philip had died at Alba Fucens two years after his father Perseus. Considering him harmless, they simply exiled him to an Italian city, but he managed to escape; fleeing Italy, he went to the Greek world, to the city of Miletus. Gaining support In Miletus, he tried to advance his claims further, attracting significant attention and sympathy. When the