Mithradates VI Eupator

“ Mithradates V was king of Pontus, a state of Asia Minor. He is one of the most striking characters of Roman history. Possessed of a large and powerful frame, he was endowed also with a mind of great strength and alertness, indomitable courage, and consuming ambition. ”

“ He collected all his available forces, and invaded Bithynia. With his fleets he sailed through the Dardanelles into the Archipelago. The extortions of the Roman governors had been so great, that Ionia, Lydia, and Caria, with all the islands near Asia Minor, gladly revolted from Rome, and accepted his protection. All the Roman residents with their families were massacred on a single day. It is said that 80,000 persons perished. Mithradátes himself next crossed the Bosphorus, and marched into Northern Greece, which received him with open arms. ”

“ These two authors agree then in fixing in Asia Minor the origin of this Persian religion that later spread over the Occident, and in fact various indications direct us to that country. The frequency of the name Mithradates, for instance, in the dynasties of Pontus, Cappadocia, Armenia and Commagene, connected with the Achemenides by fictitious genealogies, shows the devotion of those kings to Mithra. ”

“ The time suited Mithradates very well, for it found Rome in a very helpless condition. What is called the Social War, i.e., the revolt of the Italian allies against Rome, was still in progress, and there was positively no army available to meet the huge host, nearly 300,000 in all, which the King brought into the field. All that the Roman officers in Lesser Asia could do was to shut themselves up in such fortified towns as they could hope to hold against the King. ”

“ So perished the greatest enemy that the Romans had to encounter in Asia Minor. His body was sent to Pompey, who buried it in the royal sepulchre at Sinope.
Ancient authorities have invested Mithradates with a halo of romance. His courage, his bodily strength and size, his skill in the use of weapons, in riding, and in the chase, his speed of foot, his capacity for eating and drinking, his penetrating intellect and his mastery of 22 languages are celebrated to a degree which is almost incredible. ”

“ Eodan greeted Mithradates and the nobles as always, and reclined himself stiffly. The king helped himself to fruit from a crystal bowl. "Never before has this place known such an assembly of the great," he declared with sardonic sententiousness. "And yet our chief guest has not been summoned."
"Who might that be, Lord of the World?" asked a Pontine.
"It is not our custom that women dine with men," said Mithradates. "We feel it a corruption of older and manlier ways." ”

“ It is rather the head of a philosopher than an administrator or conqueror. Far different are the features of a more famous eastern king, the great Mithradates, for so his name is spelt on his coins, whose portrait is one of the most remarkable that antiquity affords. ”

“ In the religion of the people, these divinities always survived; and the popularity of Mithras is evinced by the numerous Aryan proper names thence derived (Mithradates, &c.) . The educated community who had embraced the pure doctrine in its completeness scarcely recognized them, and the inscriptions of Darius ignore them. Only once he speaks of “the gods of the clans,” and once of “the other gods which there are.” Not till the time of Artaxerxes II. were Mithra and Anaitis received into the official religion of the Persian kings. ”

“ And inasmuch as this period of revolution was also the age of the best and purest bloom of Latin literature, I must find space for a few words about Cicero, Lucretius, and Catullus.
I said in the last chapter that there was a very dangerous enemy threatening the eastern or Greek part of the Empire. This was Mithradates, king of Pontus, that part of Asia Minor which borders on the Euxine (Black Sea) eastwards: a man of genius and 163 ambition, and by no means to be reckoned a barbarian. ”

“ The Romans restored the legitimate kings, and, while apparently acquiescing, Mithradates made preparations for war. He had long hated the Romans, who had taken Phrygia during his minority, and he aimed at driving them from Asia Minor. The cause of rupture was the attack on Pontic territory by Nicomedes at the instigation of the Romans. Mithradates, unable to obtain satisfaction, declared war (88 B.C.) . He rapidly overran Galatia, Phrygia and Asia, defeated the Roman armies, and ordered a general massacre of the Romans in Asia. ”

“ The people, profoundly dissatisfied with the policy that had made such brilliant victories unproductive, put the supreme power into the hands of a man whom it could trust. In 67 B.C. Pompey cleared the Mediterranean of the pirates, and two years later he brought to an end the long struggle with Mithradates. Tigranes had made his submission to Rome, and, while surrendering all his conquests, had been permitted to retain his hereditary kingdom of Armenia. Mithradates was driven to take refuge in a remote region at the eastern end of the Black Sea. ”

“ His widely extended empire undoubtedly forced Mithradates to delegate extraordinary powers to his subordinates and gave greater opportunities than ever for self-aggrandizement. The satrap of satraps, Gotarzes, who appears on a relief cut by Mithradates in the great rock at Behistun, must by that time already have embarked on a career which eventually brought him into open revolt against his sovereign. ”

“ Gotarzes, the former satrap of satraps, had now set himself up as an independent ruler in Babylonia; [77] but, as we shall see, there is evidence which leads us to believe that Mithradates still retained control of Iran and northern Mesopotamia, a district always more closely united with the plateau and with Syria than with Babylonia. [78]
Shortly before his death Mithradates received as a prisoner the Seleucid king Demetrius III, nicknamed Eucaerus, brother of Philippus Epiphanes Philadelphus, the ruler of northern Syria, who had established his capital at Damascus. ”

“ However, when Roman agents encouraged the King of Bithynia to raid his territory and refused him satisfaction he decided to challenge the Roman arms, seeing that Rome was now involved in the war with her Italian allies. War began late in 89 B. C.
The conquests of Mithradates in Asia, 89–88 B. C. Mithradates was well prepared; he had a trained army and a fleet of three hundred ships. He experienced no difficulty in defeating the local levies raised by the Roman governor of Asia, and speedily overran Bithynia and most of the Roman province. Meanwhile his fleet swept the Aegean Sea. ”

“ Mithrida ́tes First, king of Pontus. He was tributary to the crown of Persia: his attempts to make himself independent of that fealty proved fruitless, being defeated in a battle which he had provoked, and having to sue for peace.
Mithrida ́tes, surnamed “Eupator” and “The Great,” succeeded to the throne of Pontus when eleven years of age. The beginning of his reign was marked by ambition and cruelty. At an early age he inured himself to hardships by devoting himself to manly exercises, and sleeping in the open air on the bare earth. ”

“ Mithradates was with his son-in-law, and strongly advised him not to risk a battle. "Use your cavalry to cut off his supplies," was his advice, for the old King knew what [Pg 290] Roman soldiers were when they were led by such a general as Lucullus. Tigranes laughed to scorn this prudent counsel. He could not conceive that the handful of men which were all that the Romans had to oppose to him, could possibly stand up against an army which was nearly twenty times as numerous. ”

“ He was the real founder of the Parthian empire, which was of very limited extent until the final decay of the Seleucid empire, occasioned by the Roman intrigues after the death of Antiochus IV. Epiphanes (165 B.C.) , enabled Mithradates I. and his successors to conquer Media and Babylonia. Tiridates adopted the name of his brother Arsaces, and after him all the other Parthian kings (who by the historians are generally called by their proper names) , amounting to the number of about thirty, officially wear only the name Arsaces. ”

“ The Romans recruited their auxiliary soldiers from Pontus, Cappadocia, Commagene, and Lesser Armenia, where the cult was popular, and these soldiers widely diffused it in Rome. The slaves in the Roman families were also instrumental in spreading Mithra worship. Mithra rapidly conquered vast dominions for his cult in Europe, and brought a large multitude of votaries from distant lands to his feet. His fame reached the borders of the Aegean Sea. He came to be worshipped between India and Pontus Euxinus. He was the only Iranian divinity who won popularity for himself in Greece. ”

“ His two daughters, both named Laodice, were married, one to Antiochus the Great, the other to his cousin Achaeus, a dynast of Asia Minor. He unsuccessfully attacked Sinope, which was taken by his successor Pharnaces, the brother (not the son) of Mithradates III. (169–121) , surnamed Philopator, Philadelphus, and Euergetes. According to Meyer, however, there were two kings (Mithradates IV. Philopator and V. Euergetes) . He was the first king of Pontus to recognize the suzerainty of the Romans, of whom he was a loyal ally. ”

“ Now, whatever be the case with regard to these,—whether the Persians and those who conduct the mysteries of Mithras give false or true accounts regarding them,—why did he select these for quotation, rather than some of the other mysteries, with the explanation of them? For the mysteries of Mithras do not appear to be more famous among the Greeks than those of Eleusis, or than those in Ægina, where individuals are initiated in the rites of Hecate. ”

“ Eodan sat up. "My Lord," he said raggedly, "give weapons to us two, or our bare hands, and watch who heaven favors!"
Mithradates murmured thoughtfully: "I have heard you speak of yourself, Eodan, as a man whom the gods hate."
"For once he spoke truth, Your Majesty," said Flavius. "It would be an impiety if—if I, at least, suffered him to live."
"Would you meet him in single combat, then?" asked Mithradates.
"It is an uncouth German custom, Your Majesty," said Flavius. "It is not worthy of a civilized man." ”

“ Their successful resistance to the blockade of the royal fleet did something towards saving the situation. For the movement was not confined to Asia. Athens—which had been distinguished by Roman favour, and had been allowed to retain some of its island empire—had yet been for some time past looking to Mithradates as a possible restorer of Hellenic independence. ”

“ When they were about a mile beyond, Mithradates crossed after them with a thousand horsemen and four thousand archers and slingers. No sooner had he come within range than a bugle rang out and the special troops rushed to close quarters. The enemy did not await the charge, but fled back to the ravine pursued by a small body of mounted men for whom Xenophon had somehow collected horses. It was a brilliant little victory, stained by the infamy of some, who mutilated the dead—a thing so startlingly un-Greek that I cannot remember another historical instance. ”

“ The Persian cult owed much of its success to imperial and aristocratic favour. The last pagan emperor of the West, the last generation of the pagan aristocracy, were devotees of the Sun-god. It is a curious thing that even under the early Empire Mithraism seems never to have suffered from the suspicion and persecution with which other alien worships had to contend.3168 Its close league with the cult of the Great Mother, which, since the second century B.C., had been an established institution, may have saved Mithra from official mistrust. ”

“ But for no one had the dice of fate turned up the highest gains and the greatest losses more frequently and more capriciously than for the old sultan of Sinope; and the fortunes of men change rapidly and incalculably in the east. Well might Mithradates now in the evening of his life accept each new vicissitude with the thought that it too was only in its turn paving the way for a fresh revolution, and that the only thing constant was the perpetual change of fortune. ”

“ They had employed exactly the same policy against Carthage; they allowed the victim to be set upon by the Roman hounds and forbade its defending itself against them. Mithradates reckoned himself lost, just as the Carthaginians had done; but, while the Phoenicians yielded from despair, the king of Sinope did the very opposite and assembled his troops and ships. "Does not even he who must succumb," he is reported to have said, "defend himself against the robber?" ”

“ The appearance of the fleet collected by Lucullus then enabled Sulla (who declined to be superseded) to negotiate with Mithradates, who, by the treaty of Delium (B.C. 84) , agreed to evacuate Roman Asia and to restore the inhabitants whom he had removed from Chios and Macedonia.
The results to Asiatic Greece were deplorable. Sulla treated the province with great severity, especially, of course, those states which had been prominent in joining Mithradates. Some few were rewarded for loyalty by being granted “freedom”—such as Ilium, Chios, Lycia, Salonike, Magnesia ad Sipylum, and Rhodes. ”

“ This powerful prince is the ally and son-in-law of Mithridates. Do you think, when he has him in his palaces, as a suppliant, that he will abandon himself, and not make war against us? Hence, in hastening to drive away Mithridates, we shall be in great danger of drawing Tigranes upon our hands, who has long sought pretexts for declaring against us, and who can never find one more specious, legitimate, and honourable, than that of assisting his father-in-law, and a king, reduced to the last extremity. Why, therefore, should we serve Mithridates against ourselves ”