Mithradates VI Eupator
(120 - 63 BC)
Byname MITHRADATES THE GREAT, king of Pontus in northern Anatolia (120-63 BC).
Under his energetic leadership, Pontus expanded to absorb several of its small neighbours
and, briefly, contested Rome's hegemony in Asia Minor.
Life
Mithradates the Great was the sixth - and last - Pontic ruler by that name. Mithradates
(often misspelled Mithridates and meaning "gift of [the god] Mithra") was a
common name among Anatolian rulers of the age. When Mithradates VI succeeded his father,
Mithradates Euergetes, in 120 BC, he was then only a boy, and for a few years his mother
ruled in his place. About 115 BC, she was deposed and thrown into prison by her son, who
thereafter ruled alone. Mithradates began his long career of conquest by dispatching
successful expeditions to the Crimea and to Colchis (on the eastern shore of the Black
Sea). Both districts were added to the Pontic kingdom. To the Greeks of the Tauric
Chersonese and the Cimmerian Bosporus (Crimea and Straits of Kerch), Mithradates was a
deliverer from their Scythian enemies, and they gladly surrendered their independence in
return for the protection given to them by his armies. In Anatolia, however, the royal
dominions had been considerably diminished after the death of Mithradates V: Paphlagonia
had freed itself, and Phrygia (c. 116 BC) had been linked to the Roman province of Asia.
Mithradates' first move there was to partition Paphlagonia and Galatia between himself and
Nicomedes III of Bithynia, but next he quarreled with Nicomedes over Cappadocia. Successful at first on two occasions, he was on
both deprived of his advantage by Roman intervention (c. 95 and 92). While appearing to
acquiesce, he resolved to expel the Romans from Asia. A first attempt to depose Nicomedes
IV of Bithynia, who was completely subservient to the Romans, was frustrated (c. 90). Then
Nicomedes, instigated by Rome, attacked Pontic territory, and Mithradates, after
protesting in vain to the Romans, finally declared war (88).
Nicomedes and the Roman armies were defeated and flung back to the coasts of the
Propontis and the Aegean. The Roman province of Asia was occupied, and most of the Greek
cities in western Asia Minor allied themselves with Mithradates, though a few held out
against him, such as Rhodes, which he besieged unsuccessfully. He also sent large armies
into Greece, where Athens and other cities took his side. But the Roman generals, Sulla in
Greece and Fimbria in Asia, defeated his forces in several battles during 86 and 85. In 88
he had arranged a general massacre of the Roman and Italian residents in Asia (80,000 are
said to have perished), in order that the Greek cities, as his accessories in the crime,
should feel irrevocably committed to the struggle against Rome. As the war turned against
him, his former leniency toward the Greeks changed to severity; every kind of intimidation
was resorted to - deportations, murders, freeing of slaves. But this reign of terror could
not prevent the cities from deserting to the victorious side. In 85, when the war was
clearly lost, he made peace with Sulla in the Treaty of Dardanus, abandoning his
conquests, surrendering his fleet, and paying a large fine.
In what is called the Second Mithradatic War, the Roman general Lucius Licinius Murena
invaded Pontus without provocation in 83 but was defeated in 82. Hostilities were
suspended, but disputes constantly occurred, and in 74 a general war broke out.
Mithradates defeated Marius Aurelius Cotta, the Roman consul, at Chalcedon, but Lucullus
worsted him outside Cyzicus (73) and drove him, in 72, to take refuge in Armenia with his
son-in-law Tigranes. After scoring two great victories at Tigranocerta (69) and Artaxata
(68), Lucullus was disconcerted by the defeat of his lieutenants and by mutiny among his
troops. In 66 Lucullus was superseded by Pompey, who completely defeated both Mithradates
and Tigranes.
Mithradates then established himself in 64 at Panticapaeum (Kerch) on the Cimmerian
Bosporus and was planning an invasion of Italy by way of the Danube when his own troops,
led by his son Pharnaces II, revolted against him. After failing in an attempt to poison
himself, Mithradates ordered a Gallic mercenary to kill him. His body was sent to Pompey,
who buried it in the royal sepulchre at Sinope, the Pontic capital.
Assessment
Mithradates was a man of great stature and physical strength, a brave fighter, and a
keen hunter. He also had some of the worst traits often associated with the Oriental
despot - cruelty and sensuality, in particular. But it cannot be denied that Mithradates
was a ruler of astonishing energy and determination, or that he possessed political skill
of a high order. That he was one of the few men to offer a serious challenge to the Roman
Republic is sufficient testimony to his ability. He organized the forces at his disposal
very effectively, and he had a good grasp of strategy. He was unlucky in having to face
three exceptionally brilliant Roman generals; unlucky, too, in coming to power at a time
when the Hellenistic world was in the final stage of its collapse. It is quite conceivable
that had he been born a century earlier he could have constructed an enduring
Greco-Asiatic empire. A cunning, brutal tyrant, he concerned himself solely with
maintaining and strengthening his own power. He posed as the champion of Hellenism, but
this was mainly to further his political ambitions; it is no proof that he was deeply
imbued with Greek culture or that he felt a mission to promote its extension within his
domains. Hellenism made advances in Pontus during his reign, as it had under his
predecessors, but this was a natural process. He treated all alike; Greek, Roman, and
Asiatic were welcome at his court provided that they could be of use to him (his military
subordinates were mostly Greeks, though in later years he employed several Roman
renegades), but he trusted no one. Just as it is impossible to speak of his favouring one
religion or culture above another, so it is impossible to believe that he had any notion
of bringing Greeks and Asiatics closer together in a new kind of political and social
system. His posing as a liberator of the Greeks from Roman oppression and, later, his
encouragement of social revolution in the Greek cities of the province of Asia can only be
interpreted, in both cases, as the actions of an opportunist seeking immediate political
advantages.
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