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

by Adrienne Mayor

Sulla was distinguished by red-blond hair, pale gray eyes, and very fair skin. According to Plutarch, the name Sulla (“Pimples”) was an insulting reference to his unfortunate complexion. Perhaps because of some dermatological affliction, his skin was spotty with coarse, bright red patches. Jesters joked that Sulla’s face resembled a purplish-red mulberry mash sprinkled with white flour; today the cruel expression might be “pizza-face.” Yet Sulla’s imperious personality and his piercing gray eyes gave him a fearsome expression.

  Years before, when Sulla had bested Tigranes’ army in Cappadocia, to reinstate Ariobarzanes, a Babylonian seer had cast Sulla’s fortune. Staring into the Roman’s cold, pinpoint pupils, taking account of his haughty bearing, his striking red hair and odd skin markings, the holy man predicted that Sulla was bound to rise to great power. In his own memoirs (lost, but quoted by Plutarch and others), Sulla proudly recounted how a chasm had opened up in the earth, belching forth huge gouts of flames to the sky. Interpreting this omen, the soothsayers predicted that “a brave man of rare valor and surpassing appearance would take charge of Rome.” Sulla identified himself as that man, because of his “golden hair and his great and noble deeds.”

  As soon as Sulla’s ships set sail across the Adriatic Sea, his political rival Cinna broke his promise of peace. Cinna issued a People’s Decree nullifying Sulla’s command and proclaiming Sulla Public Enemy of Rome. Thus it happened that Rome’s Public Enemy Number One marched out to battle Rome’s Most Dangerous Enemy.9

  Cut loose from Rome, Sulla now had to provision his five legions in a hostile land, with no supply lines or money from Italy. The year’s delay since the massacre meant that instead of sailing directly to Anatolia to crush Mithradates and retake the Province of Asia, Sulla had to defeat the vast and victorious Pontic army occupying Greece. Upon landing in Greece, Sulla demanded money, reinforcements, horses, mules, and food from Aetolia, Thessaly, and Boeotia. At Sulla’s approach, the city of Thebes got cold feet about its alliance with Mithradates and promised to supply iron, catapults, and weapons to the Romans. Dispatching half of his legions to attack Aristion in Athens, Sulla marched to Piraeus. He could have simply laid siege and waited for starvation and thirst to wear down Piraeus and Athens. But he was too worried about the events out of his control in Rome, impatient to return to Italy as supreme war hero.

  THE BATTLE FOR PIRAEUS

  Like the great walls surrounding Athens, Piraeus’s walls were constructed of limestone blocks with upper courses of brick and wood. Sulla immediately sent his men to try to scale the high walls, but Archelaus’s defenders inflicted heavy casualties. Sulla’s legions dragged themselves to safety, taking over the nearby towns of Eleusis and Megara.

  As hardware and materiel began to arrive from Thebes, Sulla scoured the countryside for mules. He needed at least ten thousand draft animals to operate his huge siege engines and towers. To build those machines, he ordered his men to hack down all the beautiful olive trees in the vicinity, ancient groves sacred to Athena. A bolt of lightning killed one of Sulla’s soldiers cutting trees—but his soothsayers insisted it was a good omen because the man had fallen with his head pointing toward Piraeus. Next, Sulla’s soldiers set about demolishing Piraeus’s Long Walls connecting the harbor to Athens. They piled stones, timber, and dirt into a great mound for his catapults and siege machines.10

  Inside Piraeus, two men conspired to betray Archelaus and help Sulla. Ironically, despite Mithradates’ well-publicized liberation of the enslaved, these plotters were Athenian slaves. Were they, as Plutarch speculated, “simply looking out for their own safety in the emergency”? Perhaps the men suffered under cruel masters. At any rate, the pair secretly inscribed messages about Archelaus’s plans onto lead sling balls and hurled them to land harmlessly near the Roman workers. After many volleys of these oddly aimed balls, Sulla noticed and picked one up. It read: “Tomorrow Archelaus’s soldiers will sally out to attack your workers, while his cavalry attacks both flanks of your army.” Thus warned, Sulla ambushed and killed Archelaus’s assault force.

  As Sulla’s mound rose, Archelaus erected numerous catapult towers on Piraeus’s ramparts, and sent for Dromichaetes’ reinforcements (Neoptolemus’s army remained in Chalcis). In this tense period before the battle, Archelaus armed all his oarsmen and distributed bowmen and slingers to defend his fire-archers and catapults on the walls. Other men massed inside the gates with torches, ready to dash out and burn the enemy’s machines.

  Appian and Plutarch recount how the first battle for Piraeus raged for many days. Archelaus led an all-out attack that sent the Roman legions reeling. Sulla’s lieutenant, Murena, desperately screaming out orders, managed to drive the Romans forward, although the odds were against them. But just then, another Roman legion returned from a wood-gathering detail. Dropping the logs, these legionnaires barreled into the battle. The Romans managed to kill more than two thousand of Archelaus’s men and forced the rest back inside the walls. Archelaus, hoarse and possessed, urged his men to keep fighting. Appian reports that Mithradates’ valiant commander stood his ground so long—even after the city gates slammed shut behind him—that he barely escaped. At the last moment, he was hoisted over the wall by ropes.

  Archelaus could inform his king in Pergamon that Piraeus stood fast against Sulla. Up in Athens, however, starvation loomed. Piraeus had abundant grain supplies, because Sulla could not stop ships in the fortified harbor. Archelaus attempted to deliver wheat to Athens under cover of night. But the two informers in Piraeus alerted Sulla by lobbing more messages on lead balls. Sulla ambushed several supply trains. Just as Archelaus realized that there were traitors in his city, he received miserable news from Neoptolemus in Chalcis. One of Sulla’s officers had attacked there, killing fifteen hundred soldiers and capturing twice as many prisoners.

  Work on Sulla’s siege mound continued outside Piraeus. All winter, Archelaus kept up constant pressure, slamming the Roman workers with catapult boulders, lead balls, stones, javelins, and fire arrows. Unseen, Archelaus’s sappers secretly tunneled under the mound, carrying away tubs of earth. Suddenly the mound collapsed, killing Romans and toppling war machines. The Romans rebuilt the mound and dug a counter-tunnel. The tunnelers met underground. Swords and spears clashed in the dark passage; above, Sulla pounded Piraeus’s walls with battering rams until a section fell away. He directed volleys of fire bolts at Archelaus’s catapult towers.

  But Piraeus’s towers were oddly impervious to fire. Archelaus knew a secret method. He had coated his walls and towers with alum, an opaque crystal formed by the vapors of volcanoes, imported from Smyrna, Syria, and Egypt. Alum was used in tanning, dyeing, and medicine; mixed with water it hardened plaster and strengthened rope. Painted on wood it is an effective fire retardant. Sulla’s men, unfamiliar with alum, were stymied. Finally, the Romans lit an enormous bonfire of pine logs under the wooden beams of the damaged wall. Copying a tactic invented by the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War, Sulla tossed sulphur and pine resin onto the flames, which burst into a raging conflagration, spewing toxic gases. The burning wall crashed down, killing many defenders.11

  Pressing his advantage, Sulla sent men to scale the walls in the middle of the night. They snuffed the sleeping guards, but Archelaus’s soldiers hurled the attackers over the wall and ran out to set fire to Sulla’s towers. A full-scale battle raged in the dark, lit by fires and flaming missiles. A great many defenders of Piraeus died, killed by fire from Sulla’s siege towers, each of which could catapult twenty heavy lead balls and bolts at once, at a range of four hundred yards. In 2004, an exceptional archaeological discovery in Greece—the skeleton of a soldier killed instantly by a catapult bolt—graphically illustrates the kind of massive damage that was inflicted by Sulla’s machines.12

  The demoralized and jittery troops on the walls “could only offer feeble resistance to Sulla’s relentless assault.” Sensing weakness, Sulla pushed harder, continually sending in fresh divisions and cheering them on: This is our main chance! B
ut Archelaus met Sulla’s challenge, bringing up fresh troops to replace the discouraged ones, and imploring his men to fight on. Casualties were extremely high on both sides. Appian’s sources agreed that it was again Mithradates’ general Archelaus who “surpassed all others in endurance and valor.” Relief flooded his men when they heard Sulla sound the retreat. They labored several nights to repair their walls. Sulla tried one last attack, with his entire army. But the Romans fell back under a heavy rain of missiles from the restored walls.13

  Archelaus honored his men with tokens for their bravery. A remarkable discovery of one of these tokens brings the battle for Piraeus alive for us more than two thousand years later—and it indicates the ethnic diversity of Mithradates’ liberation army in Greece. The silver bracelet, presented to a soldier in 86 BC, is inscribed with the words “In Piraeus, the General Archelaus gives this to Apollonius . . . a Syrian, as a reward for his courage.”14

  Forced to abandon any idea of taking Piraeus by assault, Sulla had to settle in for a very long siege. But he still had no way to blockade the harbor and deny Archelaus food and reinforcements arriving by sea. Mithradates’ strategy of occupying Euboea and Macedonia and dominating the Aegean Sea was paying off.

  SHIPS AND TREASURE

  Seething with hatred for the Greeks, anxious to win this damnable war and return to Rome, Sulla knew he needed a lot of money and a navy to destroy Mithradates’ forces in Greece. But as Rome’s Public Outlaw, he could expect nothing from the Senate. Sulla got a message through to Rhodes demanding ships, but to no avail. Rhodes had the ships, but pointed out that Mithradates’ navy and pirate fleets controlled the entire Aegean. So Sulla sent his aide Lucullus on a daring secret mission. Sail to Rhodes and Alexandria to procure ships and sailors. Then somehow escort these fleets, evading Mithradates’ navy, back to Sulla.

  Lucullus embarked at night on a swift vessel. Taking evasive action, changing ships frequently, Lucullus managed to slip past Mithradates’ blockade and roving pirates. He spent the winter in Rhodes, and in early 85 BC he arrived in Alexandria. But his success so far was unknown to Sulla.

  Sulla, in the meantime, solved his financial problem. He seized the sacred treasures of Greece, plundering the temples of Zeus at Olympia and Asclepius in Epidaurus. Selecting the most beautiful, precious art objects for himself, he melted down massive amounts of silver to pay his men and buy supplies.

  Delphi was the most ancient and richest treasury of antiquity, its integrity traditionally guarded by distinguished citizens from around the Greek world. Wealthy monarchs had dedicated magnificent riches and artworks to Apollo’s Delphic Oracle over the centuries. In the sixth century BC, for example, King Croesus of Lydia had donated 117 enormous ingots of gold, many solid gold statues including a lion weighing more than five hundred pounds, immense silver urns and golden bowls, and other fabulous artifacts, jewels, and weaponry. The guardians at Delphi were horrified to receive Sulla’s blunt command: Apollo’s treasures were to be transferred to him for “safekeeping.” If he found it necessary to melt down the god’s property, Sulla assured them the “loan” would be repaid.

  Sulla sent a Greek, Caphis, to take possession, with orders to record the weight of each valuable object. But once inside the temple, Caphis burst out crying. He could not bring himself to touch Apollo’s treasure, which had escaped even Xerxes’ Persian looters in 480 BC and marauding Gauls two centuries later. He sent a desperate message to Sulla, swearing that the god could be heard playing his lyre in the inner sanctum. Sulla’s reply: “Don’t you understand? The music signals Apollo’s approval! Bring me the treasure immediately.”

  Delphi’s treasures were packed onto mules. Only one item remained, one of the Royal Gifts of King Croesus described by the historian Herodotus: a huge, repoussé silver jar with a capacity of five thousand gallons. The tearful guardians were forced to cut the beautiful jar into pieces to be loaded on the mules. Plutarch, who later served as a priest at Apollo’s Delphic Oracle, felt their anguish. In the past, he exclaimed, more honorable, disciplined Roman commanders had not only spared Greece’s sanctuaries; they had bestowed important gifts to the gods themselves. “But those generals were lawful, self-restrained, incorruptible Romans from olden days,” wrote Plutarch, nothing like the grasping and brutal Sulla “who paved the way for horrors” in Greece and Italy.

  From the treasures of Delphi, Sulla again picked out choice artifacts for himself. One of the dedications became his personal amulet, an exquisite little golden figure of the god Apollo. From that day on, says Plutarch, Sulla always wore this image around his neck. Before battles, it was his habit to ostentatiously pull out the little statuette and kiss it, admonishing the god to bring a speedy victory.15

  THE FALL OF ATHENS

  While Lucullus negotiated for ships in Egypt, Sulla set up camp outside Athens. From the Dipylon Gate, the Athenians watched aghast as Roman soldiers hacked down the venerable groves of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum. The logs were hammered into enormous siege engines on the very spot where an unbroken line of philosophers had taught since Socrates. Sulla took personal possession of the precious library of works by Aristotle and Theophrastus, which had been rescued from a moldy cellar in Scepsis (near Troy) and stored in Athens. A gifted Athenian student named Lenaeus may have been taken as Sulla’s slave at this time—many years later he would find himself translating Mithradates’ toxicological notes into Latin.16

  The citizens of Athens, delirious with starvation, defiantly took to the ramparts, deriding the Romans, mocking Sulla’s ugly mulberry face, and belting out obscene songs about his wife. Their leader, the philosopher Aristion, put on his bronze helmet and breastplate and danced about on the walls with them, shouting out insults. Against Aristion’s orders, a party of councilmen ventured out to beg Sulla for mercy. They began by reminding the Roman warlord of Athens’ heroic ancient history, from the mythic Theseus to the great panhellenic victory in the Persian Wars. Sulla interrupted, “Stop rambling!” He sent them away: “I’m not here for a history lesson. Rome sent me to subdue you Athenian rebels!”

  Roman intelligence, probably wrung from famished Greeks attempting to forage herbs outside the walls, had informed Sulla that the Athenians were starving. All the sheep, goats, cattle, rabbits, chickens, tortoises, and other animals had disappeared long ago. There was no oil; even Athena’s sacred lamp was extinguished in the Parthenon. A shower of black ashes the year before had been a very bad omen, and still no rain fell to fill the cisterns. There was no wheat or barley, no fruit or olives. The people devoured weeds that grew on the Acropolis. Sulla’s sources revealed that the trapped citizens were boiling down cow hides and leather sandals in cauldrons, “licking up whatever sustenance they could.” There were even rumors of cannibalism.

  With wolfish pleasure, Sulla directed his men to strangle the city by digging a deep trench around the walls. Plutarch wondered, Why was Sulla “possessed by such a dreadful and inexorable passion to punish Athens?” Was Sulla so resentful of Athens’ former glory? Was he “provoked by the scurrilous abuse showered on him and his wife by Aristion and the Athenians on the walls?” Appian, writing centuries later, believed that Sulla’s wrath stemmed from Greece’s brazen loyalty to Mithradates and the “Athenians’ violent animosity toward himself.” Every day the Athenians held out was a day wasted, while Sulla’s enemies grew strong in Rome and Mithradates gloated in Pergamon.17

  Plutarch’s description of Sulla’s destruction of Athens is vivid. A native of Chaeronea, Plutarch (b. AD 46) interviewed some elderly Athenians whose grandparents had survived Sulla’s siege; his other details came from Sulla’s own journals and soldiers serving with him. Appian and Pausanias add further information. Sulla commanded his army to raze Athens’ walls. He had learned that the weakest area, between the Agora and the Kerameikos cemetery, was not well guarded. Evidence of Sulla’s attack is still visible today; several of his stone catapult balls can be seen in the ruins of the Kerameikos cemetery.
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br />   The citizen-soldiers defending the walls were courageous, fully committed to Mithradates and freedom, but they were no match for five Roman legions. The starving people wandering or dying inside were too frail to fight. At midnight, Sulla himself led the charge. Screaming war cries, the Roman soldiers vaulted over the walls and rammed through the gates. They ran through the dark streets swords drawn, lusting to carry out their leader’s explicit orders to pillage, rape, and massacre. No one, not even women and children, was to be spared. One exception was slaves—they counted as loot, at least as profitable as the hidden Athenian valuables the Romans dragged up from the wells.

  FIG. 9.3. Catapult balls, from Sulla’s siege of Athens, still visible in the Kerameikos cemetery outside the Dipylon Gate. Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, photograph, Hedwig Brueckner.

  “A great and pitiless slaughter” swept through Athens, gem of ancient Greek civilization. The city of Athens, which had survived burning by Xerxes nearly five hundred years earlier, the Peloponnesian War, and the Macedonian conquest, was utterly destroyed. Amid terrifying trumpet blasts and bloodcurdling cries, many of the hopeless mustered their last wisp of energy to rush onto the enemy swords. Others, “expecting no humanity from Sulla,” killed their families and themselves. As the Roman soldiers went about their bloody business, they found evidence of human flesh prepared as food in the houses. “In this way,” laments Appian, “did Athens have her fill of horrors.” Plutarch’s sources described blood coursing from the Agora to the Kerameikos cemetery. The only way to gauge how many died that night was to measure how much ground was soaked in blood, wrote Plutarch.

  FIG. 9.4. Athens pillaged by Sulla’s invading Romans, by Leutemann. Media Storehouse.

  When the attack came, Aristion and company “made their feeble way up to the Acropolis,” the citadel where the last Athenians would make their last stand. On the way, Aristion stopped to set fire to the timbers of Pericles’ famous concert hall, the Odeon, to deny Sulla wood for storming the sacred hill.18