Mithridates the Great (34 page)

But abandoning the siege would have been totally contrary to the stubbornness which was ingrained into Mithridates’ character. Mithridates never gave up. At Cyzicus this was a fatal failing, but without his indomitable
will, he would not have been Mithridates, and he would not have been great.

As for Pontus, Pompey was only really interested in the seaboard between Heraclea and Amisus. This was annexed to Bithynia to become the province of Bithynia et Pontus, though by and large the Romans referred to the entire province simply as ‘Pontus’. A
lex Pompeia
provided a basic constitution by which the province was governed, and this, lasting for centuries, proved more durable than another of Pompey’s city foundations. This was called Neapolis, which shortly afterwards vanished without trace from history. Presumably the new city was in a district called Pompeopolis in coastal Paphlagonia, which was also made part of the new combined province. The founding of new cities, and the raising of towns or even villages to city status was needed to create new administrative districts in the Roman style. The devolved form of government favoured by the Romans contrasted sharply with the former centralization of power by the Mithridatid kings and was probably the main difference which the local people discovered in the change to Roman rule.

Deiotarus of Galatia gratefully received back those parts of his people’s former lands which Mithridates had annexed. Cappadocia, so long a victim of Pontic expansionism was also able to expand somewhat at Pontus’ expense. Ariobarzanes enjoyed his fifth and final restoration to the Cappadocian throne in 63 BC. Thereafter Cappadocia maintained a precarious independence by constantly switching sides to whoever looked as though he might come out on top in the next bout of Rome’s civil wars. Eventually Cappadocia was subsumed into the Roman empire in AD 17. Much of the remainder of what had been Pontus was lumped into an autonomous area called Pontus Galaticus, which was finally absorbed into the Roman empire when Galatia too became a province in 2 BC.

Nevertheless, to a large extent these changes in borders were purely nominal. Rome was now the unchallenged hegemonic power in the entire region, whether its rule was direct or indirect. Furthermore, for majority of the people of Mithridates’ kingdom life continued as it had before, under the rule of local dynasts, and changed little because these dynasts answered to a different authority.
¹

As for Pharnarces, he remained quietly in his Bosporan realm. As soon as he decided that the Romans were sufficiently distracted by their increasing political strife, he overran and reabsorbed Phanagoria into his domains. After a reign of sixteen years, he eventually proved too much a son of Mithridates to sit quietly in the north while his ancestral kingdom remained under Roman control just across the Black Sea. During the great Roman civil war of 49-45
BC he pushed his luck further and took control of Colchis and Armenia Minor. The latter was now part of the kingdom of Deiotarus, and the Galatian king appealed to the local Roman authority, a Caesarian general called Domitius Calvinus. Mithridatid and Roman armies met once again in 48 BC, near Nicopolis, where Pompey had driven Mithridates from his kingdom. This time the result went the other way, not least because the Galatian forces fled after a mere show of resistance. On the strength of this victory Pharnarces was able to reconquer all of Pontus at least as far as his father’s former capital of Amisus.

This brought none other than Julius Caesar himself to the region where he had last campaigned as a callow ex-student who had gleefully dropped his scrolls to help organise the defence of Asia against the second attack of Mithridates in 74 BC. The final confrontation came on 2 August 47 BC. Pharnarces was distracted by rebellion in his new conquests and had Caesar approaching with his usual disconcerting speed from the south. In an effort to outstrip even Caesar’s alacrity, Pharnarces launched an all-out attack on the Romans as they were entrenching their camp. This unexpected manoeuvre might have worked with the unskilled levies of Calvinus, but the startled veterans of Caesar’s army simply closed ranks and began to drive the Pontic army from the disadvantageous position on the hillside in which their attack had left them.

The Pontic army collapsed and dissolved, leaving Pharnarces to struggle back to the Bosporus. Like his father, Pharnarces was killed when even that last refuge revolted against him. Caesar disparagingly remarked that Pompey had been lucky to make his reputation by fighting against such poor stuff, and reported his victory to Rome with the famously laconic quote ‘veni, vidi, vici’ (I came, I saw, I conquered).
²

It took over a century for the region to recover from the devastation of the Mithridatic wars and the exactions of the Roman taxmen. Even after the final Roman conquest, Roman aristocrats continued to bleed the eastern provinces dry to support their massive expenses. Relief only came when the Republican
publicani
were replaced in their tax-gathering by more responsible imperial officials. We have a comprehensive report of Pontus as a province of Rome’s empire at its peak. This comes from Pliny the Younger, who corresponded frequently with the Emperor Trajan whilst he was governor from AD 109-111. Pliny was sent to sort out a financial crisis, but his letters show that much of his time was spent in the un-dramatic minutiae of civil administration. Ironically, the complete integration of his former kingdom into the Roman empire shows
the fatal flaw in Mithridates’ assumption about the nature of Roman power. Rome did not just rule her conquests, but made them Roman, and the edifice of Rome’s empire was far more stable than Mithridates imagined.

On his death, Mithridates passed into legend. The Romans remembered him for his indomitable stubbornness but also for his pharmaceutical skills. These became exaggerated with the passing centuries until, by the Middle Ages, there was a whole catalogue of potions allegedly drawn from his pharmacological researches.

Mithridates, who had loved music, found fame almost two millennia after his birth in an opera,
Mithridate
, written in 1770 by the young Austrian musical prodigy, Mozart. Undoubtedly, Mithridates would have been delighted so see himself on stage (sung by a tenor) and defeating the scheming Roman tribune Marzio (tenor). He might have winced slightly as his character tries to poison his fiancée Aspasia (soprano) and at his final theatrical reconciliation with his son Farnace, though he would have been grimly delighted that the latter’s role was written for
alto castrato
. Something about the combination of warrior king and poison specialist has constantly intrigued later generations, and it is somehow appropriate that the legend of Mithridates, like the man himself, refuses to die quietly.

He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.

I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

A E Houseman (1896)

Finis

.

Notes and References

Chapter 1

1. Bosworth, Wheatley, ‘The Origins of the Pontic House’, in
The Journal of Hellenic Studies
, vol 118 (1998), pp 155-164.

2. Diodorus Siculus, 20.111.4.

3. Plutarch,
Life of Demetrius
, 4.

4. Polybios,
Histories
, 5.43

5. Strabo,
Geography
, 12.3.11

6. This theory (still controversial) is mentioned in Francois Hinard, Sylla (Paris, 1985), pp 21-22 and discussed by John A Madden & Arthur Keaveney in ‘Sulla Père and Mithridates (Notes and Discussions)’, in
Classical Philology
, vol 88, No 2 (1993), pp 138-141.

7. Pliny,
Natural History
, 23.149 and Celsus,
De Medicina
, 5.23.3; cf ‘Mithridates’ Antidote - A Pharmacological Ghost’, in
Early Science and Medicine
, Issue Volume 9, Number 1 (2004).

8. Justin,
Epitome
, 37.1.2.

9. Ibid, 38.4.7.

10. Strabo, 12.3.32; cf Deniz Burcu Erciyas, ‘Comana Pontica: A City or a Sanctuary?’, widen in
The Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Black Sea Studies
, University of Aarhus.

Chapter 2

1. Eva Matthews, ‘Roman Avarice in Asia’, in
Sanford Journal of Near Eastern Studies
(1950), gives a detailed account of Roman financial activity with regard to Asia and Pontus in this period.

2. Eutropius,
Epitome
, 4.5.

3. Cf. Saprykin Sergey, ‘The Policy of Mithridates Eupator and the North Coast of the Black Sea’, in
Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Black Sea Studies
, University of Aarhus.

4. Strabo,
Geography
, 7.4.3.

5. Justin,
Epitome
, 37.3.4ff.

6. Ibid, 38.1.1ff.

7. Strabo,
Geography
, 12.5.2.

8. Diodorus Siculus, 36.15.1.

9. Justin,
Epitome
, 38.1; Memnon, FgrH434 (22).

10. Plutarch,
Life of Marius
, 31.

11. Justin,
Epitome
, 38.3.1-4.

Chapter 3

1. Plutarch,
Life of Sulla
, 5.

2. Cf. Brian C McGing,
The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus
(Leiden, 1986), pp 84-85 for references to many of these.

3. An overview of Roman policy to date is to be found in A N Sherwin-White, ‘Roman Involvement in Anatolia, 167-88 B.C.’, in
The Journal of Roman Studies
, (1977).

4. Appian,
Mithridatica
, 3.17, is clear that at this point Aquillius was not following orders from the senate but making up policy as he went along. We should also note that later Roman historiography was probably influenced by the anti-Marian, and therefore anti-Aquillius, historian Rutilius Rufus, who was living in Asia at that time.

5. Ibid, 2.14.

6. Dio, fr 97.2, is certainly wrong to state the Mithridates was dealing directly with the senate at this time. Cf Cicero, pro Flacco, 98, for Aquillius’ greed.

7. Troop numbers are largely based on Appian,
Mithridatica
, 3.17.

8. Ibid, 3.18.

9. J Munro, ‘Roads in Pontus, Royal and Roman’, in
The Journal of Hellenic Studies
, (1901), remains one of the best sources for the contemporary geography.

10. Kenan T Erim and Joyce Reynolds,
Aphrodisias and Rome: Documents from the Excavation of the Theatre at Aphrodisias Conducted by Professor Kenan T. Erim, together with Some Related Texts by Joyce Reynolds
, published by the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies (London, 1982).

11. R K Sherk,
Roman Documents from the Greek East
(RDGE), 260, no 48.

12. Pliny,
Natural History
, 33.14.

Chapter 4

1. Appian,
Mithridatica
, 22.

2. The exact date of the deed is uncertain. The best guide is Cicero,
De imp. Pomp
, 7, which says it was twenty-three years before 66 BC, so early 88 BC or thereabouts, at the time when Mithridates was awaiting the Roman onslaught which never came.

3. Appian,
Mithridatica
, 23ff, for the gory details.

4. Ibid, 25.

5. This siege merits almost a small bibliography of its own, of which the most informative and entertaining works are: L Sprague de Camp, ‘Master Gunner Apollonios’ , in
Technology and Culture
, (1961); William Ledyard Rodgers,
Greek and Roman Naval Warfare
(Annapolis, 1984); and Duncan B Campbell,
Ancient Siege Warfare
(Oxford, 2005).

6. Sporting tries at disentangling Athenian politics of the period include: Glenn Richard Bugh, ‘Athenion and Aristion of Athens’, in
Phoenix
, (1992); and Sterling Dow, ‘A Leader of the Anti-Roman Party in Athens in 88 B.C’, in
Classical
Philology
, (1942).