The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy

by Adrienne Mayor

  MODERN VIEWS OF MITHRADATES AND HIS BLACK SEA EMPIRE

  Despite his extraordinary achievements and role in the downfall of the Roman Republic, Mithradates has received remarkably little scholarly or popular attention. Théodore Reinach’s magisterial Mithridate Eupator, roi du Pont, in French (1890) and German (1895), remains a great authority on Mithradates, despite its Belle Epoch outlook. Since Reinach, a great deal of new material—scientific studies, historical analyses, and archaeological evidence—has come to light to explain Mithradates’ toxicological research, his rich afterlife, his Black Sea context, and his ambitions and accomplishments. The Poison King is the first full-scale biography of Mithradates, from birth to death and beyond, in well over a century.

  The first work exclusively about Mithradates in English was a popular biography by the historical novelist Alfred Duggan: He Died Old: Mithradates Eupator, King of Pontus (1958). Duggan’s references to “cringing Asiatics” and “red Indians” date the book drastically. A stereotyped image of Mithradates as a cruel, decadent “oriental sultan,” an “Asiatic” enemy of culture and civilization, originated in the 1850s with the great Roman historian Theodor Mommsen. Lâtife Summerer’s survey of Mithradates’ reception in Europe draws attention to the racist assumptions of Mommsen, who compared Mithradates to Ottoman despots, and of Hermann Bengston, writing a century later, who declared that the massacre of 88 BC “could only be conceived in the brain of an Asiatic barbarian.” As Summerer notes, Reinach, who praised Mithradates’ intellect, claimed that his portraits revealed the “broad nostrils, thick lips, and fleshy chin of a self-indulgent oriental sultan,” in contrast to the perfect profiles of classical Greeks. Mommsen’s stereotype persists in, for example, Colleen McCullough’s novel The Grass Crown (1991).

  Michael Curtis Ford’s 2004 novel The Last King, told from the point of view of Mithradates’ son, portrays the king as a brilliant Greek commander. Mithradates makes an appearance as “an ambitious despot” from the East, “power hungry and ruthless,” in Tom Holland’s Rubicon (2003), and a military history by Philip Matyszak depicts Mithradates as savage and vindictive, “almost a monster,” but magnificent in defeat.15

  European scholars after Reinach have focused on specific aspects of Mithradates’ reign. Brian McGing analyzes his propaganda and diplomacy in The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator (1986). The campaigns against Mithradates from the Roman perspective are covered in the Cambridge Ancient History, volume 9 (Crook et al. 1994). Luis Ballesteros Pastor’s Mitridates Eupator, rey del Ponto (1996) assessed Mithradates’ conflicts with Rome as an independent Hellenistic monarch, and Attilio Mastrocinque’s Studi sulle guerre Mitridatiche (1999) considered how ancient biases influenced modern views of the king.

  The lands around the Black Sea are beginning to attract scholarly attention in their own right. Stephen Mitchell’s two-volume Anatolia (1993–95) was the first comprehensive study devoted to ancient Asia Minor. The Black Sea Trade Project (1996) of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology used advanced archaeological techniques to explore ancient Sinope, the capital of Mithradates’ kingdom. In 2006, archaeologist Gocha Tsetskhladze founded the interdisciplinary journal Ancient West & East. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of History sponsors scholarship about Eurasia, defined as stretching from the Yellow Sea to the Danube. Deniz Burcu Erciyas (2006) surveyed Mithradatid archaeology around the Black Sea; Susan Alcock’s “archaeology of memory” is uncovering the impact of Roman imperialism in Armenia; and a study of the impact of the Mithradatic Wars on civilians, by Toni Ñaco del Hoyo and colleagues, appeared in 2009. The Danish Centre for Black Sea Studies (founded in 2002) hosted an international conference of leading Mithradates scholars in 2007: the superb collection of papers, Mithridates VI and the Pontic Kingdom, was also published in 2009.16

  For many readers, Mithradates’ story may bring to mind current events in the Middle East, Transcaucasia, and former Soviet republics around the Black Sea. As a classical folklorist and a historian of ancient science, I first became fascinated by Mithradates’ life and legend while researching unconventional warfare and the use of poisons in antiquity.17 My initial research began in the shadow of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on New York City and the Pentagon, masterminded by the charismatic Islamic leader Osama bin Laden, who eluded capture by disappearing into the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I began writing during the “war on terror” and invasion of Iraq in 2003, which President George W. Bush justified by a spurious casus belli, claiming that Saddam Hussein of Iraq not only possessed weapons of mass destruction but was protecting the terrorists responsible for 9/11. As of this writing, spring 2009, U.S. military forces have been unable to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and are still engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some parallels with Rome’s decades-long failed mission to capture Mithradates have already been drawn by others.

  Mithradates’ blows against a Western superpower two thousand years ago have begun to recapture the attention of Western commentators and the supporters of Islamic insurgencies. As it has for two millennia, Mithradates’ name continues to strike discordant notes. Italian journalists compared Osama bin Laden to Mithradates in 2003. In 2007, a classicist and conservative commentator, E. Christian Kopff, remarked that “Rome suffered its own version of 9/11 in 88 BC,” when Mithradates “massacred 80,000 Roman and Italian businessmen and traders and their families.” Even though many Roman generals defeated Mithradates in battles, he “remained at large, a hero in the Near East,” posing a threat to Rome’s national interest as long as he lived.18

  “The story of Rome and Mithridates is worth pondering today,” notes Robert W. Merry, an expert on international economics. “Imperial expansion always breeds the likes of Mithridates in the far-flung reaches of the imperial domain.” It was the decades of inconclusive wars in the Near East to crush Mithradates and his followers, remarked Merry, that ushered in the “internal chaos and violence” which would end the four-hundred-year-old Roman Republic.19

  Islamicists and their sympathizers often cast their resistance to Western superpowers in terms of resistance to “Rumieh,” the Arabic name for ancient Rome. The former Indian ambassador to Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Jordan, K. Gajendra Singh, sees “echoes of Mithradates” in the Iraq War. He maintains that Western hegemony in the Middle East began when the Roman army first invaded Anatolia. Since then, says Singh, the West has “demonized Mithradates VI of Pontus for standing up to Rome.” In Singh’s view, the West exploits Mideast oil resources “with the connivance of client rulers” just as the Roman Empire “ruthlessly exploited and taxed their subjects in Asia.”20

  Striking parallels between current world crises and the Mithradatic Wars arose during the completion of this book. The resurgence of piracy on the high seas, as Somalian pirates captured international oil tankers and held them for ransom, recalls the powerful pirate fleets of the first century BC, allies of Mithradates. Piracy thrives when authority is disputed and superpowers are distracted. Rome, contending with civil uprisings and provincial revolts as well as with Mithradates’ challenges, was severely hindered by the pirates infesting the Black Sea and Mediterranean.

  The global economic collapse of 2008/9 bears striking similarities to the financial catastrophe that Rome suffered when Mithradates invaded Rome’s Province of Asia and wiped out the Roman presence there in 88 BC. As the great statesman Cicero explained, when so many thousands of “investors lost large fortunes, there was a collapse of credit at Rome, because repayments were interrupted. It is impossible for many individuals in a single state to lose their property and fortunes without involving still greater numbers in their ruin.”21

  MITHRADATES’ SIDE OF THE STORY

  Extreme, charismatic personalities have always attracted popular fascination. In explaining the magnetism of the “Bad Men of antiquity” (and modernity), Edward Champlin, biographer of two Roman emperors with notoriously negative press, Ne
ro and Tiberius, cites a fundamental truth: those considered heroes are not always good human beings.22 Many revered historical figures perpetrated deplorable acts. And even ultimate failure need not tarnish heroic status; nobility in defeat can win glory.

  Combining the history of science, military history, and biography, I tell a tale of genius, charisma, and idealism ultimately destroyed by a powerful empire that could tolerate no rival. Capable of savage acts as well as gallant compassion, Mithradates embodied paradox. He was a Persian monarch who idealized democratic Greece and despised the Romans as uncivilized barbarians. The typical view of classical antiquity pits the civilized West (Greece, Rome) against the barbarian East (Persia).23 Mithradates’ dream was to unite the great cultures of Greece and the East to resist the seemingly unstoppable tide of the Roman Empire. In this romantic goal—and against impossible odds—Mithradates carried forward Alexander’s vision of a new, diverse Greco-Asian empire for more than half a century.

  My goal is to render a three-dimensional, holistic portrait of Mithradates and his world, and to try to explain his complex legacy. An articulate and erudite philhellene, admirer of Alexander the Great, and proud heir of Cyrus and Darius of Persia, he was a courageous warrior, brilliant strategist, devious poisoner, daring gambler, scientific researcher, avid lover, unpredictable parent, connoisseur of art and theater, escape artist, sometime terrorist, and relentless nemesis of the Roman Empire. Mithradates’ vital afterlife in art, music, literature, and science is an important part of the story. This is the first biography to take account of the popular lore that surrounded Mithradates from his birth to the present day. To illuminate his life and the legend, I’ve drawn on the widest possible range of sources, from antiquity to international modern scholarship, and from the most recent numismatic, archaeological, epigraphical, and pharmacological discoveries to medieval chronicles, Gothic folklore, European tragedies, operas, modern fiction, and poetry.

  Like the paradoxical toxins and antidotes he sought to control, Mithradates was a double-edged sword: corrosive of the predatory Roman Republic and protector of Rome’s intended prey. In the end, the Romans emerged victorious. Yet Mithradates proved to the world that the new Roman Empire was not invincible. He forced the Romans to conquer and occupy the Mideast, a perpetual trouble spot for them. His popular cause led Rome to rethink its imperial policies. The long pursuit of this formidable enemy coincided with the death of the old Roman ideals of honor and freedom. Mithradates helped define for the ancients the limits of violent resistance and prepared the way for new methods of grappling with tyranny in the transition from Republic to Empire, from BC to AD.

  Mithradates’ story is well worth our attention. Modern parallels may sharpen our interest. But as the curious reader delves deeper into the ancient narratives, one is swept away by the sheer audacity, the epic defiance, the chiaroscuro effect of treachery and revenge set against compassion and idealism, the noble dreams and dreadful nightmares, and the tantalizing unsolved mysteries. Mithradates’ incredible saga is a rollicking good story.

  1

  Kill Them All, and Let the Gods

  Sort Them Out

  IN SPRING of 88 BC, in dozens of cities across Anatolia (Asia Minor, modern Turkey), sworn enemies of Rome joined a secret plot. On an appointed day in one month’s time, they vowed to kill every Roman man, woman, and child in their territories.

  The conspiracy was masterminded by King Mithradates the Great, who communicated secretly with numerous local leaders in Rome’s new Province of Asia. (“Asia” at this time referred to lands from the eastern Aegean to India; Rome’s Province of Asia encompassed western Turkey.) How Mithradates kept the plot secret remains one of the great intelligence mysteries of antiquity. The conspirators promised to round up and slay all the Romans and Italians living in their towns, including women and children and slaves of Italian descent. They agreed to confiscate the Romans’ property and throw the bodies out to the dogs and crows. Anyone who tried to warn or protect Romans or bury their bodies was to be harshly punished. Slaves who spoke languages other than Latin would be spared, and those who joined in the killing of their masters would be rewarded. People who murdered Roman moneylenders would have their debts canceled. Bounties were offered to informers and killers of Romans in hiding.1

  The deadly plot worked perfectly. According to several ancient historians, at least 80,000—perhaps as many as 150,000—Roman and Italian residents of Anatolia and Aegean islands were massacred on that day. The figures are shocking—perhaps exaggerated—but not unrealistic. Exact population figures for the first century BC are not known. But great numbers of Italian merchants and new Roman citizens had swarmed to recently conquered lands as Rome expanded its empire in the late Republic. Details of the bloody attack were recorded by the Roman historian Appian, whose figures were based in part on the memoirs of Cornelius Sulla, the Roman general dispatched by the Senate to avenge the killings. Other details emerged from accounts of eyewitnesses and survivors, such as P. Rutilius Rufus, a Roman official who escaped and wrote a history of the attack and its aftermath. More facts came from enemy combatants and communiqués captured by Sulla in the war that erupted after the massacre. Ancient statistics often represent guesswork or exaggeration. Even if the lower death toll of 80,000 was inflated, as some scholars believe, and if we reduce the count of the dead by half, the slaughter of unsuspecting innocents was staggering. The extent of the massacre is not in doubt: modern historians agree with the ancient sources that virtually all Roman and Italian residents of Provincia Asia were wiped out.2

  FIG. 1.1. Mithradates the Great, silver tetradrachm, 86–85 BC. Bibliothèque National de France.

  The plan was meticulously synchronized, and it was carried out with ferocity. As the fateful day dawned, mobs tore down Roman statues and inscriptions that had been erected in their public squares. We have vivid accounts of what happened next from five of the numerous cities where Romans were slain.

  Pergamon, a prosperous city in western Anatolia, was fabled to have been founded by Hercules’ son. Like many Hellenistic cities populated by Greeks who intermarried with indigenous people, Pergamon after Alexander the Great’s death (323 BC) had evolved a hybrid of democracy and Persian-influenced monarchy. The cultural center of Asia Minor, Pergamon boasted a vast library of 200,000 scrolls, a spectacular 10,000-seat theater, and a monumental Great Altar decorated with sculptures of the Olympian gods defeating the Giants. People came from all around the Mediterranean seeking cures at the famous Temple of Asclepius, god of medicine. The Romans had chosen Pergamon to be the capital of their new province. But by 88 BC, most of western Asia was allied with King Mithradates, who had taken over the royal palace in Pergamon for his own headquarters.3

  MAP 1.1. Greece, the Aegean Islands, and western Anatolia. Map by Michele Angel.

  When the violence began that day in Pergamon, thousands of terrified Roman families fled out of the city gates to the Temple of Asclepius. By ancient Greek custom, all temples were sacred, inviolable spaces, havens from war and violence, under the protection of the gods. Under the right of asylum (asylia), anyone—citizen, foreigner, slave, innocent or guilty—could find refuge inside a temple. Pursuers usually dared not commit the sacrilege of murder before the gods. But on this day, there was no mercy for the people crowding around the statues of the healing god. The Pergamenes burst into the sanctuary and shot down the trapped men, women, and children in cold blood, at close range with arrows.

  Meanwhile, as night fell in Adramyttion, a shipbuilding port, the townspeople drove the Roman settlers down to the seashore. The desperate throng plunged into the dark water. The killers waded in after them, cutting down the men and women and drowning the children in the waves.

  In Ephesus, a cosmopolitan city of nearly a quarter million, similar atrocities defiled the Temple of Artemis. The Ephesians took great pride in their temple, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Amazons had worshipped here, and the fabulously rich King Croesus buil
t the original temple. It was said that the goddess herself had magically lifted the colossal lintel stone over the entrance. The sanctuary was filled with priceless treasures dedicated to Artemis, protector of supplicants. Known as Diana to the Romans, Cybele or Anahit in the Near East, Artemis was honored by Greeks and barbarians alike. When Paul preached in Ephesus a century after the massacre, he acknowledged that Artemis was still “the goddess worshipped by all Asia.”4

  The Temple of Artemis claimed the most ancient tradition of asylum. The Ephesians liked to tell how Alexander the Great had visited their temple and, in a grand gesture, extended its radius of protection. Two centuries later, King Mithradates himself had climbed onto the roof of the temple and declared that the new boundary of asylum would now reach as far as he could shoot an arrow (his arrow flew a stade, about two hundred yards).

  Everyone in the Greek world understood that murder in a sacred place was taboo. In fact, the citizens of at least one community allied with Mithradates, the island of Cos, spared the Roman families who huddled inside the temple on the day of the massacre. When townspeople began smashing statues in Ephesus, the Romans naturally fled to the great Temple of Artemis. But the Ephesians violated the hallowed tradition of sanctuary. Charging through the temple’s carved cypress doors, they chopped down the suppliants as they clung to statues of the goddess.5