Mithridates VI of Pontus

“ Even then the east remained under the direct government of the local princes, to whom the Roman Senate entrusted their frontier. At the beginning of the first century B.C. the disaffection of Mithridates, king of Pontus, a state bordering the Black Sea, and his efforts to win for himself a kingdom in Cappadocia and Bithynia, was one of the last fitful traces of the old native power, and called up more serious efforts on the part of Rome. ”

“ Some of the early preparations used in pharmacy were as elaborate as they were mysterious. The Treacle of Andromachus the elder, a recipe of great antiquity, contained sixty-three ingredients; and the celebrated Mithridate of Damocratis contained forty-eight.
The origin of the formula for “Mithridates” is ascribed to Mithridates, King of Pontus, whose recipe Pompey brought to Rome, where Damocratis sang its praises and proclaimed its virtues. It was considered by the ancients a panacea for every ill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the far East the great Mithridates, king of Pontus, had defeated the Romans, murdered in cold blood eighty thousand Roman citizens whom he had found in Asia Minor, and was preparing to invade Greece, which was only too ready to rise and aid in the overthrow of the hated and oppressive Roman rule. ”

“ If, in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without absurdity, be represented, in the catastrophe, as happening in Pontus; we know that there is neither war, nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us. The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions ”

“ Mithridates, flying in the same manner, left in Pontus the whole of the vast quantity of gold and silver, and of beautiful things which he had inherited from his ancestors, and which he himself had collected and brought into his own kingdom, having obtained them by plunder in the former war from all Asia. While our men were diligently occupied in collecting all this, the king himself escaped out of their hands. ”

“ When Mithridates began to reign in 111 B.C., he knew that no one save the Romans would be strong enough to keep him from adding to his kingdom.
The king proved himself so strong and so good a general that the Greek towns in Asia Minor resolved to throw aside the friendship of Rome and ally themselves with the King of Pontus. It was this revolt that Sulla, with his five legions, went to Greece to subdue. ”

“ The motive for this war was the very justest on the side of Mithridates, the wrong done by the Romans being too glaring. Mithridates had sprung from a Persian family, which even as early as under the Persian kings had its satrapy in Pontus: the first whom we know of it, in all likelihood was Ariobarzanes, governor of those countries under Ochus. Perhaps it was one of the seven noble families which alone had freedom, being in some sort sacrosancti, and invested with the hereditary dignity of governors of those parts. The nation consisted of Syrians and Assyrians ”

“ Anab. ii. 5, 35; iii. 3, 1–10; iii. 4, 1–5) , and is the ancestor of the kings of Pontus. The most important are three kings of Parthia of the Arsacid dynasty, and six (or four) kings of Pontus. There were also two kings of Commagene, two of the Bosporus and one of Armenia (A.D. 35–51) .
Mithradates I. (Arsaces VI.) , successor of his brother, Phraates I., came to the Parthian throne about 175 B.C. The first event of his reign was a war with Eucratides of Bactria, who tried to create a great Greek empire in the East. ”

“ That monarch left his dominions by will to the Roman people, and Bithynia was accordingly declared a Roman province; but Mithridates asserted that the late king had left a legitimate son by his wife Nysa, whose pretensions he immediately prepared to support by his arms.
The forces with which Mithridates was now prepared to take the field were such as might inspire him with no unreasonable confidence of victory. He had assembled an army of 120,000 foot-soldiers, armed and disciplined in the Roman manner, and 16,000 horse, besides a hundred scythed chariots. ”

“ The next move among the master spirits led to the still greater advancement of Pompey. His supporters at Rome managed to have him appointed to carry on a war in the East. In the year 74, when other enemies of the republic seized the opportunity to rise against Rome, Mithridates, never fully conquered, entered upon a new war. Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who had gained fame in the former struggle with Mithridates, was sent again to protect Roman interests in Pontus. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is strange that the two notable exceptions to this barrenness of eminent linguists which characterizes the classic times, Mithridates and Cleopatra, should both have been of royal rank. The former, the celebrated king of Pontus, long one of the most formidable enemies of the Roman name, is alleged to have spoken fluently the languages of all the subjects of his empire; an empire so vast, and comprising so many different nationalities as to throw an air of improbability over the story. ”

“ No less than 12 days were appointed for public thanksgivings to the immortal gods, and Pompey, who had sent the first intelligence of his death to Rome, and who had partly hastened his fall, was rewarded with the most uncommon honours. See: Ampia lex. It is said that Mithridates conquered 24 nations, whose different languages he knew, and spoke with the same ease and fluency as his own. As a man of letters he also deserves attention. He was acquainted with the Greek language, and even wrote in that dialect a treatise on botany. ”

“ Their kinsman garlic bring, the poor man’s mithridate.
Drayton, Polyolbion, xx. (1622) .
Mithridate (3 syl.) , a tragedy by Racine, (1673) . “Monime” (2 syl.) , in this drama, was one of Mdlle. Rachel’s great characters.
Mithrida ́tes (4 syl.) , surnamed “the Great.” Being conquered by the Romans, he tried to poison himself, but poison had no effect on him, and he was slain by a Gaul. Mithridatês was active, intrepid, indefatigable, and fruitful in resources; but he had to oppose such generals as Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey. His ferocity was unbounded, his perfidy was even grand. ”

“ He ruled Rome for four years, and he died quietly in his bed, having spent the last year of his life tenderly raising his cabbages, as was the custom of so many Romans who had spent a lifetime killing their fellow-men.
But conditions did not grow better. On the contrary, they grew worse. Another general, Gnæus Pompeius, or Pompey, a close friend of Sulla, went east to renew the war against the ever troublesome Mithridates. He drove that energetic potentate into the mountains where Mithridates took poison and killed himself, well knowing what fate awaited him as a Roman captive. ”

“ So extensive powers had never before been committed to a Roman. He drove Mithridates out of Pontus into Armenia. Tigranes laid his crown at the feet of the Roman general, and was permitted to retain Armenia. Mithridates fled beyond the Caucasus, and, in 63 B.C., committed suicide. Pompeius overthrew the Syrian kingdom of the Seleucidae. He entered Judaea, captured Jerusalem from Aristobulus the reigning prince, and placed his brother Hyrcanus on the throne, who became tributary to Rome. ”

“ In the time of Demosthenes, in the fourth century before the Christian æra, the Athenians imported annually a large quantity of corn from the Bosporus. This was the country that now belonged to Mithridates. (Penny Cyclopædia, article "Bosporus.")
[204] Kaltwasser conjectures that the son who is first mentioned was Mithridates, and he remarks that Appian (Mithridatic War, c. 64) calls him also Mithridates. But in place of the name Ariarathes, he reads Aciarathes, whom he makes to be the same as the Arcathias of Appian (c. 35) . Ariarathes however was a son of Mithridates (Mithridatic War, 15) ”

“ 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. ”

“ Barbarian kings, who found Roman senators ready to take bribes from them, believed, not unnaturally, that the days of Roman dominion were numbered. When the news of the Social war reached Mithridates, he thought it needless to temporize longer, and he stretched out his hand to seize the prize of the dominion of the East. The Armenians, who were at his disposition, broke into Cappadocia and again overthrew the government, which was in dependence upon Rome. Mithridates himself invaded Bithynia, and replied to the remonstrances of the Roman authorities by a declaration of open war. ”

“ But Pompey did not linger long on the hill, for he was eager to follow Mithridates, and soon after this the king found his camp besieged so closely by the Romans that it was impossible to get supplies for his army. It was plain that he and his soldiers must either starve or escape.
So one night Mithridates ordered the sick and wounded to be killed, for they would have hampered the army in its flight. The king did not hesitate to give such a cruel order, for he and his followers had not been taught to pity the weak and helpless. ”

“ But Mithridates, having marched from thence to Cyzicus, that, after capturing that city, he might overrun all Asia, Lucullus, the other consul, met him; and, whilst Mithridates was detained at the siege of Cyzicus, besieged him in the rear, exhausted him with famine, defeated him in several battles, and at last pursued him to Byzantium, now called Constantinople. Lucullus also vanquished his commanders in a sea-fight. Thus, in a single winter and summer, almost a hundred thousand men on the king's side were cut off by Lucullus. ”

“ XVI In the six hundred and ninetieth year from the building of the city, in the consulate of Decimus Junius Silanus and Lucius Muraena, Metellus triumphed on account of Crete, Pompey for the Piratic and Mithridatic wars. No triumphal procession was ever equal to this; the sons of Mithridates, the son of Tigranes, and Aristobulus, king of the Jews, were led before his car; a vast sum of money, an immense mass of gold and silver, was carried in front. At this time there was no war of any importance throughout the world. ”

“ Pharnaces embalmed his body and sent it to Pompey as a proof of what had been done, and surrendered himself and his dominions. The Roman showed Mithridates no indignity, on the contrary commanding that he be buried among the graves of his ancestors; for, feeling that his hostility had been extinguished with his life, he indulged in no vain anger against the dead body. The kingdom of Bosporus, however, he granted to Pharnaces as the wages of his bloody deed, and enrolled him among his friends and allies. ”

“ Mithridates had there two hundred rowing-ships, twenty thousand heavy-armed soldiers, six thousand horsemen, and many of his scythe-bearing chariots: Sulla had four cohorts and two hundred horsemen. Mithridates advanced to meet Sulla and held out his hand, on which Sulla asked him if he would put an end to the war on the terms agreed to by Archelaus. As the king made no reply, Sulla said, "Well, those who sue must speak first; conquerors may remain silent." Mithridates began an apology, in which he partly imputed the origin of the war to the deities, and partly threw the blame on the Romans ”

“ Tiberius, i. 78 Pompeii, Isium at, when founded, i. 53 Pompey the Great, suppression of Cilician pirates by, ii. 229 Pontus, birthplace of Marcion, ii. 9, 204; and of Mithridates, ii. 204; Tertullian’s rhetorical exaggeration as to, ii. 204 n. 3; its kings claim descent from Persian heroes, ii. 225 n. 1 Porphyry, the neo-Platonist, says Egyptian magicians threaten gods, i. 104 n. 3; his account of Essenes copied from Josephus, i. 155; describes books on Mithras worship, ii. 236; says Mithraic cave represents universe, ii. 247, 249; says Mithraists teach metempsychosis, 257 ”