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Mithridates VI or Mithradates VI (/ˌmɪθrɪˈdeɪtiːz/ or /ˌmɪθrəˈdeɪtiːz/; Greek: Μιθραδάτης, Μιθριδάτης, from Old Persian Miθradāta, "gift of Mithra") (​–63 BC), also known as Mithradates the Great (Megas) Mithridates V was assassinated in about BC in Sinope, poisoned by unknown persons at a lavish.
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Mithridates was born in the Pontic city of Sinope , [8] and was raised in the Kingdom of Pontus. Mithridates V was assassinated in about BC in Sinope, poisoned by unknown persons at a lavish banquet which he held. Neither Mithridates nor his younger brother were of age, and their mother retained all power as regent for the time being.

Mithridates emerged from hiding, returning to Pontus between BC and BC and was hailed as king. By this time he had grown to become a man of considerable stature and physical strength. Mithridates Chrestus may have died in prison also, or may have been tried for treason and executed. Mithridates entertained ambitions of making his state the dominant power in the Black Sea and Anatolia. He first subjugated Colchis , a region east of the Black Sea, and prior to BC, an independent kingdom.

The Poison King The Life and Legend of Mithradates Audiobook Part 1

He then clashed for supremacy on the Pontic steppe with the Scythian King Palacus. The most important centres of Crimea , Tauric Chersonesus and the Bosporan Kingdom readily surrendered their independence in return for Mithridates' promises to protect them against the Scythians, their ancient enemies. The young king then turned his attention to Anatolia, where Roman power was on the rise.

It was probably on the occasion of the Paphlagonian invasion of BC that Mithridates adopted the Bithynian era for use on his coins in honour of the alliance. It was certainly in use in Pontus by 96 BC at the latest. 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 Mithradates had resolved to expel the Romans from Asia. Mithridates plotted to overthrow him, but his attempts failed and Nicomedes IV, instigated by his Roman advisors, declared war on Pontus.

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Rome itself was involved in the Social War , a civil war with its Italian allies. Thus, in all of Roman Asia Province there were only two legions present in Macedonia. Mithridates won a decisive victory, scattering the Roman-led forces.


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His victorious forces were welcomed throughout Anatolia. The following year, 88 BC, Mithridates orchestrated a massacre of Roman and Italian settlers remaining in several Anatolian cities, essentially wiping out the Roman presence in the region. The royal family moved the capital from Amasya to the Greek city of Sinope. Whenever the gap between the rulers and their Anatolian subjects became greater, they would put emphasis on their Persian origins. They would support each other in the coming conflict with Rome. The Romans responded by organising a large invasion force to defeat him and remove him from power.

After victory in several battles, Sulla received news of trouble back in Rome posed by his enemy Gaius Marius and hurriedly concluded peace talks with Mithridates. The lenient peace treaty, which was never ratified by the Senate, allowed Mithridates VI to restore his forces. Mithridates defeated Murena's two green legions at the Battle of Halys in 82 BC before peace was again declared by treaty.

While Lucullus was preoccupied fighting the Armenians, Mithridates surged back to retake his kingdom of Pontus by crushing four Roman legions under Valerius Triarius and killing 7, Roman soldiers at the Battle of Zela in 67 BC. After this defeat, Mithridates VI fled with a small army to Colchis modern Georgia and then over the Caucasus Mountains to Crimea and made plans to raise yet another army to take on the Romans. His eldest living son, Machares , viceroy of Cimmerian Bosporus, was unwilling to aid his father.


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Mithridates had Machares killed, and Mithridates took the throne of the Bosporan Kingdom. Mithridates then ordered conscription and preparations for war. Mithridates withdrew to the citadel in Panticapaeum , where he committed suicide. Pompey buried Mithridates in the rock-cut tombs of his ancestors in Amasya, the old capital of Pontus. During the time of the First Mithridatic War, a group of Mithridates' friends plotted to kill him. Asclepiodotus changed his mind and became an informant.

He arranged to have Mithridates hide under a couch to hear the plot against him. The other conspirators were tortured and executed. Mithridates also killed all of the plotters' families and friends. Where his ancestors pursued philhellenism as a means of attaining respectability and prestige among the Hellenistic kingdoms, Mithridates VI made use of Hellenism as a political tool.

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 bought into this claim will never be known.

Mithradates VI Eupator | Biography, Reign, & Facts | Britannica

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. 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.

He reportedly attempted suicide by poison. This attempt failed because of his immunity to the poison. 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. 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. 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.

Mithridates VI of Pontus

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 Asian 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 Asians 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.

Mithradates VI Eupator. Article Media. Info Print Print. Table Of Contents. Submit Feedback. Thank you for your feedback. Mithradates VI Eupator king of Pontus. Written By: Roger Henry Simpson. See Article History. Life Mithradates the Great was the sixth—and last—Pontic ruler by that name.


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