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

by Adrienne Mayor

  PONTUS, CULTURAL CROSSROADS

  Mithradates’ father, Mithradates V Euergetes (“Benefactor”), inherited the wealthy Kingdom of Pontus in about 150 BC. Euergetes expanded Pontus’s influence, annexing land and making advantageous marriage alliances. He and Queen Laodice had seven children. Continuing the tradition that frustrates historians, the royal pair named both sons Mithradates and called their first two daughters Laodice. The boys had nicknames: our Mithradates was dubbed Dionysus as a boy and later added Eupator (“Good Father”). His younger brother was Mithradates Chrestus (“the Good”). Their three younger sisters were Nyssa, Roxana, and Statira.

  To gain control of Cappadocia, the kingdom south of Pontus, Euergetes married his eldest daughter Laodice (Mithradates’ older sister) to the boy-king Ariathes VI, whose mother had placed him on the throne after poisoning his five brothers. Poisoning was a typical form of royal succession in this era. Not long after the self-assured Laodice—a few years older than her husband—arrived in Cappadocia, her wicked mother-in-law was conveniently murdered.3

  Mithradates Eupator’s best friend was Dorylaus, raised in the palace as a brother. Dorylaus was the orphaned nephew of General Dorylaus, best friend and military adviser of Mithradates’ father. Dorylaus’s family was related to the historian Strabo, who was born in Amasia, Pontus, in 63 BC (the year of Mithradates’ death). Strabo wrote extensively and nostalgically about his homeland and the surrounding countries. He described Sinope’s impressive fortifications, beautiful gardens, old peach and olive orchards, handsome marble buildings, fine temples, lively market, and new gymnasium. Strabo’s narrative also tells us about the kind of education an aristocratic boy received in Pontus.

  Strabo recounted how his own family had been sundered by the Mithradatic Wars. His mother was a great-granddaughter of General Dorylaus, and his mother’s uncle, Moaphernes (a Persian name), was a friend of Mithradates. Strabo’s great-uncles served Mithradates, and his paternal grandfather was one of his commanders, overseeing fortresses in Pontus. Near the end of the Mithradatic Wars, Strabo’s grandfather turned the forts over to the Romans but never received the promised reward, something that still rankled Strabo.4

  Other information links Strabo and Mithradates. Strabo’s mother sent him to school in Nysa near Tralles, towns that had massacred Romans in 88 BC. Later Strabo studied with Tyrannio, a learned friend of Mithradates. Strabo mentions a relative named Theophilus. This name, in view of Strabo’s pro-Mithradatic ties, led Strabo’s modern biographer to wonder whether Strabo was related to Theophilus of Paphlagonia, hired by the people of Tralles to slaughter the Romans in 88 BC. That remains an intriguing guess, but Strabo, a native Pontian who has much to tell us about Mithradates’ world, was typical of the multiethnic heritage and complicated politics of Anatolia in the first century BC.5

  Native Anatolians, Greek colonists, Persians, and Alexander’s Macedonians were powerful influences in Mithradates’ homeland. Greek culture was strong in the large cities on the Aegean coast, but much less marked in the ports rimming the Black Sea. The great Russian historian M. Rostovtzeff characterized the Hellenic influence around the Black Sea as “a thin Greek shell around a hard native kernel.” In the Anatolian heartland and Pontus, Persian-influenced and indigenous culture predominated.6

  At the same time, Mithradates’ father was a philhellene and Greek was the official language of his court. Ambassadors and eunuchs, peripatetic Greek philosophers and Black Sea pirates, polyglot traders and tattooed Thracians, snake charmers and grim Magi, learned doctors and shamans, soldiers and storytellers from many different lands rubbed shoulders in the palace of Sinope. Surrounded by so many diverse ethnicities, dialects, and backgrounds, Mithradates could practice his gift for languages at an early age. In this dynamic, cosmopolitan milieu, exciting tales of the Persian heroes Cyrus and Darius mingled naturally with the exploits of Alexander of Macedon and Hannibal of Carthage.7

  In such a melting pot, religious beliefs and practices were eclectic and overlapping. Young Mithradates performed Greek rituals for the Olympian gods, but he also worshipped ancient Anatolian and Iranian deities. Mithradates’ father was devoted to Apollo and Zeus, but as king he was also the high priest, or Magus, in the Zoroastrian worship of the Iranian Sun divinities Ahuramazda and Mithra. As a boy Mithradates observed his father saluting the rising sun and consulting the Magi about omens and dreams. When his father made fire offerings on mountaintop altars, young Mithradates learned the ritual duties he would inherit.

  Much about ancient Persian religion remains a mystery, but historians agree that Truth was the highest ideal. Free will was a key moral concept. Sun and Light were revered. Fire was sacred. The respect and awe accorded to fire was a natural impulse in the petroleum-rich deserts of Mesopotamia and the oil deposits of the Crimea, and in Baku by the Caspian Sea. These were places where fountains of volatile naphtha and lakes of asphalt combusted spontaneously and burned eternally with super-hot, blue-orange flames unquenched by water. Such sacred fiery substances—common in Mithradates’ lands but unfamiliar to the Romans—would prove valuable in battle.

  Herodotus, Xenophon, Strabo, and other Greek historians described the Persians’ dualistic worldview, in which Light and Truth (Arta in Old Iranian) eternally battle the evil forces of Darkness and Lies (Druj). Dishonesty was reprehensible. Debt was a morally deplorable condition, because indebted people were susceptible to deceit and enslavement. Debtors and slaves were unable to exercise free will, unable to chose to struggle against Darkness. These beliefs help explain why the hatred of Romans was so profound in the Persian-influenced Province of Asia. Under Rome’s rapacious and corrupt taxation policies, moneylenders charged exorbitant interest rates and confiscated all of an indebted man’s possessions when he defaulted; then he was enslaved and sold to Roman masters. Roman taxes plunged entire cities into overwhelming debt, forcing them to sell artworks and other treasures, their land, and their own people. Even the wealthiest kings succumbed to bankruptcy and blackmail. To oppose the Romans was to fight on the side of Truth and Light.8

  SCHOOL DAYS

  Like Cyrus and Alexander, Mithradates was nurtured by a large circle of guardians, tutors, and trainers. His playmates were Dorylaus, Gaius (son of Hermaeus, also considered a stepbrother), and other boys from aristocratic Greek, Persian, Cappadocian, and indigenous Anatolian families. The boys’ education was a blend of Greek and Persian culture and athletic training. Many of the teachers were Greeks versed in paideia, traditional Hellenic literature, classical art and music, mythology and history, with readings from Aristotle, Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Herodotus. The boys memorized Homer’s Iliad and Greek poetry and plays. Alexander had loved to quote from the plays of Euripides. Mithradates’ favorite drama might have been The Persians, written by Aeschylus after the Greeks defeated Xerxes at Salamis in 480 BC. Aeschylus painted the Persian soldiers and their weapons in luminous colors, and treated the Persian king sympathetically, as a valiant, noble despot who tragically underestimated the Greek love of liberty—a mistake King Mithradates would avoid.9

  Mithradates’ education included botanical medicine with Persian rhizotomists and Greek “root-cutters.” The Magi were adepts in plant poisons and antidotes. Mithradates’ own grandfather, King Pharnaces I, had discovered a plant, called pharnaceon, reputed to be a cure-all. Aristotle, Alexander’s tutor, had inspired a love of natural history and medicine in his student. Mithradates, too, was fascinated by natural sciences and medicine—but with a twist. Mithradates’ passion was poisons. He understood the duality of pharmaka, drugs derived from powerful plant, mineral, and animal substances. Paradoxically, these substances could be fatally toxic or they could serve as a health-giving tonic. Everything depended on the dosage. And for every poison, Nature provided an antidote—indeed, some poisons could be counteracted by other poisons.10

  One ancient historian, Memnon, declared that Mithradates was a serial poisoner from childhood on.11 This seems unlikely, although d
uring his long reign Mithradates certainly did wield poison as a weapon. Memnon’s rumor probably originated because of young Mithradates’ experiments with poisons, based on the principles that toxins could be used for good or ill. It’s likely that he began investigating easily available poisons as a boy. Pontus was blessed with an abundance of deadly natural resources. Children learned to identify common toxic plants, such as aconite (monkshood), hellebore, nightshade, yew, henbane, hemlock. A budding toxicologist could capture venomous spiders, wasps, and snakes, and carry out poison experiments on small animals.

  The prince pursued harmless hobbies too, collecting beautiful agates, crystals, and minerals. As king, Mithradates wrote treatises on gemology and amber, and his famous collection of exquisitely carved agate goblets and cameo rings ended up in the hands of various extravagant Romans after his death, later finding their way into royal museums in Europe.

  A Persian prince’s upbringing was described in exciting detail by the Greek historians Herodotus and Xenophon, whose books Mithradates read. Both writers had traveled extensively in the old Persian Empire, and, like Aeschylus, they admired certain Persian customs and values taught at an early age, such as justice, gratitude, responsibility, and self-control. We can be sure that young Mithradates heard plenty of family lore from his relatives about the origins of his kingdom and his glorious forebears. But Mithradates could also pore over the lively accounts of his ancestors by Herodotus and Xenophon, to learn how to become a proper Greco-Persian monarch.

  Xenophon’s own story was thrilling: he had commanded ten thousand Greek mercenaries fighting for the Persian usurper Cyrus the Younger’s lost cause in Mesopotamia, in about 400 BC. Xenophon’s memoir, The March of the Ten Thousand, told of the long, arduous trek home by way of Pontus. Xenophon’s vast army had camped right outside the stone walls of Sinope—Mithradates’ own hometown had provided Xenophon’s soldiers with food and supplies.12

  Xenophon’s historical romance, The Education of Cyrus, brims with stirring tales about the boyhood, military career, and chivalry of the elder Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire in about 550 BC. Xenophon recounts how Cyrus the Great became a good and enlightened king, commited to Truth and Light, ruling myriad independent tribes from Parthia to the Black Sea with their consent. Cyrus’s respect for Truth also encompassed justice, mercy, and generosity. Xenophon reveals the secret of the great ruler’s power, a question of interest to Mithradates. It was Cyrus’s ability to inspire awe and fear while winning the loyalty and affection of his followers. Persians believed that the best king was a strong-willed, benevolent father to his people. Notably, Mithradates later chose the nickname Eupator (“Good Father”).13

  Xenophon tells how Cyrus, an expert charioteer, redesigned the archaic chariot for war. He gave it stronger, longer axles and a high, bronze-armored turret to protect the driver, and armored the driver and four horses in chain mail. Then Cyrus added a fiendish flourish: sharp curved blades extending about three feet out from the wheels. Cyrus’s retooling transformed the chariot from a fancy, flimsy taxicab into a monstrous threshing machine that could churn through enemy lines. Some of Xenophon’s most riveting passages describe the horrible effects of Cyrus’s three hundred scythed chariots.14

  Mithradates himself became a champion at racing chariots, a dangerous contest inaugurated by Cyrus. The little prince probably began driving chariots at eight or nine. Controlling a team of two or four horses for up to twelve laps around a crowded race course with hairpin curves—and no rules—demands extraordinary skill and strength. As an adult, Mithradates won chariot races in games around the Aegean and Anatolia. His size, strength—and daring—allowed him to take this high-risk sport to unheard-of extremes. Cyrus had driven eight horses abreast. Mithradates topped him, winning fame for driving chariots with ten racing steeds! The more horses, of course, the greater the thrills and spills. This exploit later inspired the young Roman emperor Nero to pen a poem criticizing Mithradates’ hubris (by Nero’s day, the number of Mithradates’ chariot horses had been exaggerated to sixteen). Later, competing at the Olympic Games in Greece, Nero attempted to match Mithradates’ amazing feat. The emperor crashed and nearly died.15

  FIG. 3.2. A Chariot Race, Alexander Wagner, 1898. Manchester Art Gallery.

  Since the time of Cyrus, aristocratic Persian boys were taught the three pillars of a noble education: Ride, Shoot, and Tell the Truth.16 Boys began riding soon after learning to walk. As we saw, conspirators inside the court tried to arrange riding accidents to do away with the rightful heir of Pontus. There were also attempts to poison him. Many—including Mithradates—believed that his mother, Queen Laodice, was involved. There is no reason to doubt these ancient suspicions. Such schemes were common in the treacherous world Mithradates inhabited.

  Perhaps because of the dangerous steeds he was given to ride, Mithradates became an expert horseman of legendary endurance. Learning to shoot meant expertise with the bow and arrow and hurling javelins from a galloping horse, crucial skills in hunting and warfare. Mithradates and his friends lived like boot camp recruits, taking turns guarding the citadel of Sinope, practicing hand-to-hand combat with the Persian harpe, saber, and spear. They ate spartan meals of bread, watercress, and water. They were taken on short excursions into the countryside to hunt rabbits and other small game. Within his father’s game park, they practiced stalking stags and old lions, perhaps boars and bears. Mithradates loved the hunt—the boys were impatient for the time when, like Cyrus, Xerxes, Darius, and Alexander, they would venture into the mountains after real wild animals. Vigorous athletic and military training was part of Greek education, too, and historians tell us that Mithradates, an unusually tall and robust youth, excelled in wrestling, boxing, foot racing, swimming, wielding the dagger and sword, and traditional face-to-face hoplite combat with spear and shield.17

  As future commander of Pontus’s army, Mithradates needed to learn how to rule and protect his kingdom’s wealth and independence. His father expected his son to know the history, geography, economy, natural resources, towns, roads, fortresses, and trade relations of Pontus and the neighboring lands.18 Mithradates would inherit his father’s foreign policy concerns, too, which included clashes with the powerful Scythian nomads of the northern Black Sea area and steppes. Intricate diplomacy maintained balance among the democratic Greek cities and indigenous monarchies of the East. The complex negotiations and shifting alliances of this period are extremely difficult to follow in the fragmentary ancient accounts and are much debated by modern historians. But the key issue for an Anatolian monarch was how to handle Rome’s burgeoning power and imperial designs in the lands east of the Mediterranean.

  FIG. 3.3. Boys’ wrestling lesson. Andre Castaigne, 1895.

  During the final Punic War, Mithradates’ father had aided Rome, sending troops to help defeat Carthage in 146 BC. When Mithradates was a boy, his father sided with Rome again, helping to suppress a popular uprising in Anatolia. The Roman Senate recognized the Kingdom of Pontus as an official “Friend of Rome”—in other words, a client state they expected to control.19

  In the lands influenced by the venerable civilizations of Greece and Persia, the ambitious, raw power of upstart Rome inspired contempt mixed with fear. Rome had a history of suddenly turning on its allies. As a child, Mithradates learned the names of the important clans in Rome: the Julii, Cornelii, Lucinii, Aquillii, and others. He was conversant in Roman history and myth. In later speeches he mocked Rome’s legend of the wild wolf that had nursed the founder twins Romulus and Remus, and revealed his deep knowledge of Roman conquests and conflicts. Mithradates grew up very aware of Rome’s great power. Negotiating with Romans was like walking a tightrope over a deep gorge, easy to fall off, impossible to sidestep. There were only two options, both risky: become Rome’s “friend” or confront Rome head-on. For a savior-prince predestined for mythic glory, there was only one honorable path.

  But perils lurked close to home too. Struggles over power, territories,
and independence constantly arose among and within the Hellenistic monarchies, states with fluid borders and unstable ruling families left over from the old Persian and Macedonian empires. The courts seethed with conspiracies, intrigues, factions, betrayals, poisonings, and murders. At a tender age in Sinope, Mithradates understood that his most treacherous enemies might be his friends and family; even his own mother was suspect.

  Pontus was rich. Its navy controlled the Black Sea trade. For as long as anyone could remember, swift pirate ships had plied the same waters. Large pirate fleets amassed wealth by supplying the sprawling Roman slave market on the island of Delos, unloading thousands of fresh captives every day. During Mithradates’ childhood, he heard a lot of talk of piracy and certainly met pirate captains in his father’s banquet halls. Pirates were raiding ship and shore with increasing boldness, even kidnapping Roman nobles for ransom. More than a thousand pirate vessels cruised the Black Sea and the Aegean during the first century BC. They considered themselves a sovereign nation of the high seas. Pontus had long benefited from lucrative arrangements with the pirates, ensuring safe harbors and markets where they could sell booty. His father’s military adviser, the elder Dorylaus, recruited mercenaries and pirates in the Aegean and the Black Sea for Pontus. During his own wars on Rome, Mithradates would count the great pirate navies among his strongest allies. Mithradates’ access to money throughout his life has posed a perennial puzzle for historians: pirate plunder was surely one source.20

  Another source of Pontus’s wealth was the Black Sea’s abundant tuna and mackerel. Tons of salted fish were exported each year to the Mediterranean. Peaches, apricots, figs, nuts, olives, and grain grew along Pontus’s mild coast, watered by rivers from great mountain ranges. A system of roads linked the trading ports of Sinope and Amisus to Amasia and other inland towns. Thick forests provided pine for shipbuilding, walnut and maple for furniture, and game for meat, hides, and even pharmaka. Beavers, for example, were a prized Pontic product. Beaver testicles were valued for treating fever and boosting immunity and sexual vigor (castoreum, from the musk glands, contains salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin, from willow bark, the beavers’ chief food). Pontus also possessed plentiful gold, silver, copper, iron, rock salt, mercury, sulphur, and many other rare minerals used for pigments and medicine—or for poison.21