ANDRISCUS, a man of mean extraction, who, pretending to be the natural son of Perseus, last king of Macedonia, assumed the name of Philip, for which reason he was called Pseudo-PhUippus, the False Phihp. Escaping from Rome, where he was imprisoned for his pretensions, he found a sufficient number of partisans in Thrace to encourage him to assert his claim to the throne of Macedonia, and enable him to defeat the Roman praetor Juventius, who had been sent against him. His brief reign was marked by great cruelty and extortion. In 148 b.c. he was completely defeated, and was carried captive to Rome by Q. Caecilius Metellus, for whom this triumph gained the name of Macedonicus. The victory placed Macedonia once more in the hands of the Romans, though at a cost of 25,000 men. Andriscus was put to death by order of the senate.
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