Mithridates VI Eupator

Mithridates or Mithradates VI Eupator (

Mithridates is the

Mithridates was born in the Pontic city of Sinope,^[9] on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia, and was raised in the Kingdom of Pontus. He was the first son among the children born to Laodice VI and Mithridates V Euergetes (reigned 150–120 BC). His father, Mithridates V, was a prince and the son of the former Pontic monarchs Pharnaces I of Pontus and his cousin-wife Nysa. His mother, Laodice VI, was a Seleucid princess and the daughter of the Seleucid monarchs Antiochus IV Epiphanes and his sister-wife Laodice IV.^{[citation needed]}

Mithridates V was assassinated in about 120 BC in Sinope, poisoned by unknown persons at a lavish banquet which he held.^[10] He left the kingdom to the joint rule of his widow Laodice VI, and their elder son Mithridates VI, and younger son Mithridates Chrestus. Neither Mithridates VI nor his younger brother were of age, and their mother retained all power as regent for the time being.^[11] Laodice VI's regency over Pontus was from 120 BC to 116 BC (even perhaps up to 113 BC) and favored Mithridates Chrestus over Mithridates. During his mother's regency, Mithridates escaped from his mother's plots against him and went into hiding.^{[citation needed]}

Mithridates emerged from hiding and returned to Pontus between 116 and 113 BC and was hailed as king. By this time he had grown to become a man of considerable stature and physical strength.^[12] He could combine extraordinary energy and determination with a considerable talent for politics, organization and strategy.^[12] Mithridates removed his mother and brother from the throne, imprisoning both, becoming the sole ruler of Pontus.^[13] Laodice VI died in prison, ostensibly of natural causes. Mithridates Chrestus may have died in prison also, or may have been tried for treason and executed.^[13] Mithridates gave both royal funerals.^[14] Mithridates took his younger sister Laodice, aged 16, as his first wife.^[15] His goals in doing so were to preserve the purity of their bloodline, to solidify his claim to the throne, to co-rule over Pontus, and to ensure the succession to his legitimate children.^{[citation needed]}

Early reign

Mithridates entertained ambitions of making his state the dominant power on the

Yet it soon became clear to Mithridates that Nicomedes was steering his country into an anti-Pontic alliance with the expanding Roman Republic. When Mithridates fell out with Nicomedes over control of Cappadocia, and defeated him in a series of battles, the latter was constrained to openly enlist the assistance of Rome. The Romans twice interfered in the conflict on behalf of Nicomedes (95–92 BC), leaving Mithridates, should he wish to continue the expansion of his kingdom, with little choice other than to engage in a future Roman-Pontic war. By this time Mithridates had resolved to expel the Romans from Asia.^[12]

Mithridatic Wars

The next ruler of

The Romans responded to the massacre of 88 BC by organising a large invasion force to defeat Mithridates and remove him from power. The

When Rome attempted to annex Bithynia (bequested to Rome by its last king) nearly a decade later, Mithridates attacked with an even larger army, leading to the Third Mithridatic War from 73 BC to 63 BC. Lucullus was sent against Mithridates and the Romans routed the Pontic forces at the Battle of Cabira in 72 BC, driving Mithridates into exile in Tigranes' Armenia. While Lucullus was preoccupied fighting the Armenians, Mithridates surged back to retake Pontus by crushing four Roman legions under Valerius Triarius and killing 7,000 Roman soldiers at the Battle of Zela in 67 BC. He was routed by Pompey's legions at the Battle of the Lycus in 66 BC.

After this defeat, Mithridates fled with a small army to Colchis and then over the Caucasus Mountains to

After Pompey defeated him in Pontus, Mithridates VI fled to the lands north of the Black Sea in the winter of 66 BC in the hope that he could raise a new army and carry on the war through invading Italy by way of the Danube.[12] His preparations proved to be too harsh on the local nobles and populace, and they rebelled against his rule. He reportedly attempted suicide by poison, which failed because of his immunity to the substance.^[20] According to Appian's Roman History, he then requested his Gallic bodyguard and friend, Bituitus, to kill him by the sword:

Mithridates then took out some poison that he always carried next to his sword, and mixed it. There two of his daughters, who were still girls growing up together, named Mithridates and Nysa, who had been betrothed to the kings of [Ptolemaic] Egypt and of Cyprus, asked him to let them have some of the poison first, and insisted strenuously and prevented him from drinking it until they had taken some and swallowed it. The drug took effect on them at once; but upon Mithridates, although he walked around rapidly to hasten its action, it had no effect, because he had accustomed himself to other drugs by continually trying them as a means of protection against poisoners. These are still called the Mithridatic drugs. Seeing a certain Bituitus there, an officer of the Gauls, he said to him, "I have profited much from your right arm against my enemies. I shall profit from it most of all if you will kill me, and save from the danger of being led in a Roman triumph one who has been an autocrat so many years, and the ruler of so great a kingdom, but who is now unable to die by poison because, like a fool, he has fortified himself against the poison of others. Although I have kept watch and ward against all the poisons that one takes with his food, I have not provided against that domestic poison, always the most dangerous to kings, the treachery of army, children, and friends." Bituitus, thus appealed to, rendered the king the service that he desired.^[21]

Cassius Dio's Roman History records a different account:

Mithridates had tried to make away with himself, and after first removing his wives and remaining children by poison, he had swallowed all that was left; yet neither by that means nor by the sword was he able to perish by his own hands. For the poison, although deadly, did not prevail over him, since he had inured his constitution to it, taking precautionary antidotes in large doses every day; and the force of the sword blow was lessened on account of the weakness of his hand, caused by his age and present misfortunes, and as a result of taking the poison, whatever it was. When, therefore, he failed to take his life through his own efforts and seemed to linger beyond the proper time, those whom he had sent against his son fell upon him and hastened his end with their swords and spears. Thus Mithridates, who had experienced the most varied and remarkable fortune, had not even an ordinary end to his life. For he desired to die, albeit unwillingly, and though eager to kill himself was unable to do so; but partly by poison and partly by the sword he was at once self-slain and murdered by his foes.^[22]

At the behest of Pompey, Mithridates' body was later buried alongside his ancestors (in either Sinope or Amaseia).^[23] Mount Mithridat in the central Kerch and the town of Yevpatoria in Crimea commemorate his name.^{[citation needed]}

Rulership

Where his ancestors pursued

Certainly influenced by Alexander the Great, Mithridates VI extended his propaganda from "defender" of Greece to the "great liberator" of the Greek world as war with the Roman Republic became inevitable. The Romans were easily translated into "barbarians", in the same sense as the Persian Empire during the war with Persia in the first half of the 5th century BC and during Alexander's campaign. How many Greeks genuinely agreed with this claim will never be known. It served its purpose; at least partially because of it, Mithridates VI was able to fight the First War with Rome on Greek soil, and maintain the allegiance of Greece.^[28] His campaign for the allegiance of the Greeks was aided in no small part by his enemy Sulla, who allowed his troops to sack the city of Delphi and plunder many of the city's most famous treasures to help finance his military expenses.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life

Immunity to poison

In his youth, after the assassination of his father Mithridates V in 120 BC, Mithridates is said to have lived in the wilderness for seven years, inuring himself to hardship. While there and after his accession, he cultivated an immunity to poisons by regularly ingesting sub-lethal doses of poisons, particularly the

Mithridates VI had a number of wives and mistresses, by whom he had several children. The names he gave his children are a representation of his Persian and Greek heritage and ancestry.^[citation needed]

His first wife was

His second wife was a Greek Macedonian noblewoman, Monime. They were married from about 89/88 BC until 72/71 BC and had a daughter, Athenais, who married King Ariobarzanes II of Cappadocia. His next two wives were also Greek: he was married to his third wife Berenice of Chios, from 86 to 72/71 BC, and to his fourth wife Stratonice of Pontus, from sometime after 86 to 63 BC. Stratonice bore Mithridates a son Xiphares. His fifth wife is unknown. His sixth wife was Hypsicratea.

One of his mistresses was the Galatian Celtic princess

His sons born from his concubines were Cyrus, Xerxes, Darius, Ariarathes IX of Cappadocia, Artaphernes, Oxathres, Phoenix (Mithridates' son by a mistress of Syrian descent), and Exipodras, named after kings of the Persian Empire, which he claimed ancestry from. His daughters born from his concubines were Nysa, Eupatra, Cleopatra the Younger, Mithridatis and Orsabaris. Nysa and Mithridatis, were engaged to the Egyptian Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy XII Auletes and his brother Ptolemy of Cyprus.^{[citation needed]}

In 63 BC, when the Kingdom of Pontus was annexed by the Roman general Pompey, the remaining sisters, wives, mistresses and children of Mithridates VI in Pontus were put to death. Plutarch, writing in his Lives, states that Mithridates' sister and five of his children took part in Pompey's triumphal procession on his return to Rome in 61 BC.^[59]

The Cappadocian Greek nobleman and high priest of the temple-state of Comana, Cappadocia, Archelaus was descended from Mithridates VI.^[60] He claimed to be a son of Mithridates VI;^[61] but the chronology suggests that Archelaus may actually have been a maternal grandson of the Pontic king, and the son of Mithridates VI's favourite general, who may have married one of the daughters of Mithridates VI.^[62]

Cultural depictions

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• The demise of Mithridates VI is detailed in the 1673 play
  Mozart's earliest, known most commonly by its Italian name, Mitridate, re di Ponto
  (1770).
• Mithridates is the subject of the opera Mitridate Eupatore (1707) by Alessandro Scarlatti.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson included his "Mithridates" in his 1847 Poems.
• Alexandre Dumas's novel The Count of Monte Cristo refers to the potential of a mithridate
  as an instrument both of defense and offence.
• William Wordsworth, amidst casting about for poetic themes in The Prelude (Bk i vv 186 ff):