Annexation of Cyprus

[M. Porcius Cato]

How did Rome come to annex Cyprus? How did the whole thing get started?

 

Elsewhere it has been claimed that a lex Julia had named Ptolemy Auletes 'an ally and friend of the Roman people'. Bevan (1929) would also have it so:

 

In 59 B.C. Julius Caesar, the leader of the democratic party, was one of the consuls. It was believed that the annexation of Egypt was part of his own political programme. Yet Ptolemy contrived, by an enormous payment of 6000 talents, to buy Caesar's support. Caesar carried a law, in spite of the opposition of the nobles, by which Ptolemy Auletes was recognized at last as king of Egypt, and, by a new treaty, "ally and friend of the Roman People." But the treaty said nothing about Cyprus, where the other Ptolemy, the brother of Auletes, had been reigning since 80 B.C. as king. In 58 B.C. the tribune Clodius, a partisan of Caesar's, carried a law by which Cyprus was constituted a Roman province, and Marcus Cato was commissioned to go to Cyprus and induce the king to make over ship island kingdom to Rome. The only accusation against the king of Cyprus which Rome could find to justify this act of high-handed spoliation was that he was very rich and had not been sufficiently free-handed with his riches. Cato offered the king, in exchange for his kingdom, to have him installed by the authority of Rome, as high priest in the temple of Aphrodite at Paphos. But Ptolemy of Cyprus preferred to commit suicide. His treasures