Pontic Empire – Mithridates the Great vs. Rome

HISTORY

From 8th Century B.C.E. Greek settlement to Roman Rival: Pontus through the ages

Mithridates VI

Mithridates the Great, Enemy of Rome

Mithridates VI Eupator was born in the Pontic city of Sinope. He was the eldest son of Mithridates V (King of Pontus from 150 B.C.E. – 120 B.C.E.) and Laodice VI (daughter of King Antiochus IV of the Seleucid Empire and his sister-Queen). In 120 B.C.E., when Mithridates was 14 or 15, his father was fatally poisoned by his ambitious mother. Young Mithridates and his brother were each declared King, per his father's will, but Laodice VI maintained power as regent. Fearing that his mother would eventually poison him as well, Mithridates started drinking a poison-based concoction each morning to give him immunity to all known poisons. This also left other means of filicide open, so fearing for his life he eventually went into hiding with a group of close friends These friends later grew up to be his generals. When Mithridates was old enough to claim the throne, in 116 B.C.E., he returned to Sinope and was hailed as king by the populace, and he managed to put his mother and brother in prison.

Mithridates VI was known for both his great physical size and strength, in addition to his intellect, which included being fluent in 22 languages. He appears to have been greatly influenced by two supposed ancestors, Cyrus the Great of Persia, and Alexander the Great of Macedonia, and like them, Mithridates soon began expanding his kingdom. After the conquest of the Crimea and the adjacent coastline, he controlled the whole of the Black Sea. This gave him access to a great deal of material and conscript wealth. With an army of Greek and Germanic mercenaries, Skythian, Taurian, Maeotian, and Pontic conscripts, and military alliances with the King of Armenia and the pirates who ruled the Black Sea, he soon had the remaining rulers of Asia Minor pleading for help from their Roman overlords.

For the first 30 years of Mithridates' reign, little is done by the Romans to stop him, mainly due to Roman wars against Jugurtha (King of Numibia in Africa), continuing social disorder, and invasions by the Cimbri and Teutons (German tribes). Before long, Mithridates had conquered the rest of Anatolia (Turkey) and Greece was welcoming him as a liberator from Roman rule. But in 87 B.C.E., the Romans finally declare war on the Pontic Empire.

January 2016

Generals of Rome

Over the next 40 years, four of Rome's greatest Generals will be successively sent out to destroy the Pontic Empire

Lucius Cornelius Sulla

Sulla defeated the Pontic armies in Greece, which included the Roman siege and occupation of Athens. Defeat for the combined forces of the Pontics and their allies at the Battle of Chaeornea in 86 B.C.E. against Sulla causes Mithridates to begin to suspect one of their closest allies, the Galatians (from mid-Anatolia) of treachery. This increasing paranoia culminated in the Galatian leaders being massacred at a banquet held by Mithridates. This leads to a swift and brutal backlash against the Pontics. The Galatians manage to drive Mithradates and his garrisons out of Galatia. Pontic garrisons in neighboring Phrygia and Cilica are also attacked by Galatia. Sulla had been on the verge of suspending the war due to a lack of supplies for the Roman army, but Galatia and their 30,000 soldiers switch sides forcing Mithridates to surrender all of his conquests in Asia Minor and retire to Pontus in 85 B.C.E.

(139 B.C.E. – 78 B.C.E.) Sulla twice held the position of Consul (the highest elected office in Rome), and was later appointed Dictator of Rome by the Senate in 81 B.C.E. in an effort for the Senate to maintain power over the populace. He also twice marched his army into Rome to fight other Roman soldiers over these political disputes. He is generally considered to be one of the most important generals and politicians in Roman history.

Lucius Licinius Murena

Soon afterward, Murena, as Sulla’s legate, was stationed in Asia as commander of two legions. Claiming that Mithridates was preparing to reunite his fallen empire, Murena went on to invade Pontus (in what is known as the second Mithradatic War) despite not having gained permission from the Senate or orders from Sulla. After several inconclusive skirmishes, Mithridates repelled the Roman invasion and forced their withdrawal from Pontus. Instead of seeking redress from the Roman Senate, Mithridates decides to actually prepare his kingdom to regain his empire.

Besides General, Murena held a few other political offices including praetor (a rank just below Consul) and made himself popular by the magnificence of the games provided by him. After his Praetorship, he served as administrator of Transalpine Gaul (Roman Province in Southern France). In this office he gained the goodwill of both provincials and Romans by his impartiality, which helped him to get elected as Consul in 62 B.C.E.

Lucius Licinius Lucullus

In 74 B.C.E., the Romans split their army into a land force to attack the Pontics while the other portion mustered their navy in an effort to engage Pontus’ pirate allies. Mithridates led a sneak attack on the preparing naval forces by land destroying or capturing 64 Roman ships, but then fled to Armenia (ally of Pontus) before the other Roman army could arrive. At this point, Lucullus arrives from Rome to lead the re-united Roman army into Armenia. The Romans, despite being out-numbered 2-1, defeated the Armenian army and captured their capital. A second Armenian army was raised the next year and this time defeated the occupying Romans.

(106 B.C.E. – 48 B.C.E.) Lucullus gained much renown for his generalship against the Armenians in the third Mithridatic war as well as during the Social Wars (Roman Civil War), serving under Sulla. He was elected Quaestor (supervisor of financial affairs) in 88 B.C.E during the same elections in which Sulla was returned as Consul. He returned to Rome with a shocking amount of war booty, which he used for large building and cultural projects.

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus

In 67 B.C.E. Pompey the Great was sent to take over for Lucullus, whose soldiers were beginning to mutiny. Mithridates again tried to retreat into the protection of Armenia, but this time the King of Armenia (Mithridates’ son-in- law) refused to protect him against the Romans. Pompey led the Roman army into Armenia to finally crush the lost Pontic Army. Amenia, not wanting another battle against Rome, became an allied client state of Rome, and Mithridates fled through the Caucasus Mountains to Crimea and attempted to raise yet another army to take on the Romans, but ultimately failed to do so. Mithridates’ first born son, Machares (whose mother was also his father’s sister) was King of Cimmerian Bosporus had made a deal with Rome and refused to take in his father, so Mithridates killed him and took control of the kingdom.

(106 B.C.E. – 48 B.C.E.) Known as Pompey the Great, as a young man he gained fame in the Roman Civil War by having great military success against fellow Romans in Sicily, Africa, Gaul, and Spain. He was three times elected as Consul and three times granted a Triumph (the ability to parade through the city of Rome with his army) by the Senate.

The End of the Pontic Empire

72 year old Mithridates VI, pursued by Pompey, now having regained a small portion of his empire was still ready to turn and fight the Romans one more time. His remaining soldiers, though, had had enough. They enlisted Mithridates' favorite son, Pharnaces II, in a plot to remove his father from power. The plot was found out before the plot was executed, but Mithridates, distraught by the betrayal of his son and a majority of his soldiers, decided to take his own life in 63 B.C.E.

“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.”

– Appian of Alexandria

Roman History

“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.”

– Cassius Dio

Roman History

At this time, Pharnaces II quickly sent an embassy to Pompey with offers of submission, hostages, and the body of his father. Pining for a return to Rome and the political power he should now be able to wield, Pompey readily accepted these overtures. He also granted Pharnaces rule over the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus, the rest of the Pontic Empire already having been subsumed by Rome.

But, like father like son, as upon hearing of the increasing power struggles between the Romans over the next few years, and with an eye to recreating the kingdom of his father, he attacked and subjugated the free Greek city of Phanagoria. He also made himself the ruler of Colchis and Lesser Armenia.

Roman forces under the command of Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus finally met him in battle, and lost. The kingdom of Pontus was now under his control.

At this time Julius Caesar took personal command of the war against Pharnaces’ surging forces, and completely routed the Pontic army. Writing to a friend back in Rome, Caesar described the battle against Pharnaces as:

“Veni, Vidi, Vici”
(“I came, I saw, I conquered.”)

Gaius Julius Caesar

Dictator of Rome

Learn More

Check out the books, movies, and shows that have been made about this time in history

The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor

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KING MITHRIDATES AND THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST ROMAN INFLUENCE IN ASIA MINOR

HISTORY

Achaemenid Empire

Macedonian Empire

Seleucid Empire

Kingdom of Pontus

Mithridates VI

Mithridates the Great, Enemy of Rome

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