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

by Adrienne Mayor

  Exactly. The historians—and Lucullus—failed to understand the new guerrilla tactics that Mithradates had put in place, adopting the asymmetrical style of fighting that his barbarian warriors excelled in. Mithradates and Tigranes gave way in close quarters, avoiding direct conflict and turning the enemies’ own momentum against them. While the Romans grew more frustrated and baffled, the barbarians and their tough little ponies were at home in the harsh landscape as fall turned to winter. They knew exactly where to find food, water, shelter, and hideouts. They monitored the movements of Lucullus and his men, while Lucullus had no idea where he himself was, where the enemy was hiding, or when they would strike next.

  Mithradates, astute student of history, appears to have studied Xenophon’s discussions of his Greek hoplite army’s difficulties fighting the mounted archers native to this same region where Lucullus now found himself. As noted above, Mithradates was also aware of Alexander’s creation of new, mountain-trained, light-armed, highly mobile cavalry to match the mounted resistance fighters he faced after his invasion of Afghanistan (330 BC). The tactics were similar to those used by Jugurtha, and by Mithradates’ allies, the Scordisci horsemen from the Danube, against Lucullus in Pontus.

  Mithradates could also recall how the nomads of Scythia had out-witted Darius and his Persian army in 512 BC. As the Greek historian Herodotus commented, the nomads “understood self-preservation better than anyone on earth. . . . if they wish to avoid engaging with an enemy, that enemy can never come to grips with them.” Luring Darius to penetrate deep into Scythian territory, the nomads melted away whenever Darius attempted to attack. Darius sent an exasperated message to the Scythian chief: “Why on earth do you keep running away? Why are you wandering all over the place trying to escape? If you are so weak, surrender! If you think you are strong enough to oppose me, stand and fight!” But as Herodotus pointed out, the Scythian strategy was not employed out of fear or cowardice; it was psychologically and militarily sound. As a result of their falling back whenever the Persians had the upper hand, and then unpredictably striking and fading away, Darius was kept off balance, and his supply lines were stretched to the breaking point. “Again and again,” wrote Herodotus, “Darius’s momentary success gave way to acute embarrassment.” In this way the nomads led Darius to march across the entire Scythian territory, all the way to the Danube, without ever engaging with the enemy.27

  In 68/67 BC, Mithradates ensured that Lucullus was in the same predicament as Darius had been. The Roman army, unused to high-altitude weather, trudged on, wary, hungry, complaining. Where was the enemy hiding? How could the air be so frigid when the sun shone brightly in an azure sky? Suddenly, long before the Romans expected it, winter arrived. Snow blanketed the ground; icicles crusted the pine boughs; streams froze solid. The sun’s rays gave no heat, and the glare on the snow blinded the men. The freezing temperature gnawed at toes and fingers and caused the breath to “congeal upon mustaches and beards, speedily forming icicles, which hurt horribly.” Ice on the dark rivers shattered when the horses tried to cross, and the jagged shards cut their legs. Wrapped in skimpy cloaks, legionnaires marched single file through narrow canyons and over frozen marshes. They were always shivering now, huddling in frosty tents and melting ice to drink.28

  The soldiers’ complaints escalated into “tumultuous assemblies” in their tents at night and threats of desertion. Trying to avert another mutiny, Lucullus urged them to persevere—they would soon destroy the city built by Hannibal and seize Mithradates, triumphing over “Rome’s two most hated foes.” But Plutarch reports that the soldiers forced Lucullus to abandon his pursuit of the renegade kings. He accompanied his army back down from the mountains, to the mild winter of the Tigris.

  There Lucullus roused his men to storm Nisibis, held by Tigranes’ brother Gouras. Defending this city was none other than Mithradates’ engineer Callimachus, Lucullus’s nemesis at Amisus, as we have seen. Gouras surrendered; he was saved for the Triumph. Callimachus was brought before Lucullus. He promised to reveal Mithradates’ secret stores of fabulous treasures, but Lucullus tortured Callimachus to death for burning Amisus, denying him the chance to spare the Greek city. When Callimachus died, the knowledge of many of Mithradates’ most cleverly hidden caches of gold and valuables was lost, hoards overlooked by the Romans and perhaps still awaiting discovery today.29

  Lucullus and his army were burned out. The officers and men castigated him as arrogant and distant, thinking only of enriching himself. Comparing their leader unfavorably to Pompey, who triumphed in Spain and Italy and looked after the welfare of his soldiers, they ignored Lucullus’s pleas to resume the pursuit of Mithradates. In 67 BC, Lucullus’s army camped at Nisibis and refused to budge.

  MITHRADATES’ SURGE IN PONTUS

  Mithradates was free to recover his Kingdom of Pontus. Tigranes would arrive later to retake Cappadocia. Accompanied by the Agari, Timotheus, Hypsicratea, his bodyguard Bituitus, Roman deserters, and a highly trained army of about eight thousand infantrymen and cavalry, Mithradates received a joyful welcome from his people. Many eagerly joined his new army, as he visited old strongholds to establish garrisons.30

  Filled with optimism, in spring of 67 BC, the old warrior, now about sixty-seven years old, led his army against the two Fimbrian legions (about twelve thousand men) still occuping Pontus. These were the soldiers who had refused to leave their lax tour of duty to join Lucullus in Mesopotamia. As the historian Eutropius remarked, it was their negligence and greed that gave Mithradates the chance to recover Pontus. Taken by surprise, the Roman legate desperately sought to increase his forces by arming the slaves kept by the Fimbrians. Could he be the one finally to stop Mithradates the Great? He led his crew of slaves and legionnaires onto the field, where the battle lasted all day. The Romans retreated, leaving behind five hundred dead.31

  Although the Roman threat still loomed, this was a rousing victory. Rising phoenixlike from the ashes, Mithradates was surging back. But fighting in the front lines, the king was wounded, his first war injury. An arrow pierced his cheek, just missing his eye. He had to be carried from the battlefield. For several days, his worried troops feared for his life, as he hovered in critical condition. The Agari shamans successfully treated the arrow wound, using their secret knowledge of serpent venom as a coagulant to stop hemorrhage. Mithradates was back in the saddle in time to repulse a renewed Roman assault a few days later.

  Now Nature intervened, once again sending extraordinary meteorological events. Before the battle began, wrote Appian, a freak tornado struck with howling winds “the likes of which were unknown in living memory.” The cyclone blew away the canvas tents in both camps, sweeping men and pack animals over precipices. Both sides regrouped. The next battle would prove decisive.

  The Romans attacked Mithradates at night, at Zela. Throwing on his helmet and armor, Mithradates rallied his men. They drove the legionnaires into trenches filled with rainwater and mud, soon clogged with dead Romans. But in the heat of the battle, a brave centurion came running up alongside Mithradates’ horse. The centurion stabbed his sword into Mithradates’ thigh with all his might. Those nearby—maybe Bituitus and Hypsicratea—immediately chopped the Roman to pieces, but Mithradates was felled, bleeding profusely. Again, the king was carried off the field. The high spirits of victory descended into alarm and despair. Would their intrepid commander survive such a grave wound? The soldiers crowded together on the plain, trying to catch a glimpse of Mithradates lying on the muddy ground, attended by the field medic Timotheus and the Agari wizards. For the second time in this campaign, medical history was made. Again the Agari staunched the flow of blood, using snake venom. Mithradates regained consciousness. Everyone knew that Alexander had suffered a similar grievous thigh wound, and they recalled how his doctors had raised him high up above the Macedonian army to reassure the men that their beloved leader still lived. Now Mithradates’ doctor Timotheus lifted Mithradates up so that he could be seen by his cheering soldiers.32 />
  By late afternoon, Mithradates the invincible was back on his horse, storming the Roman camp. But the camp was empty: the survivors had fled in terror, leaving behind 7,000 dead. As Mithradates and his men viewed the carnage, they counted 24 tribunes and 150 centurions, the largest number of officers ever killed in a single ancient battle. Mithradates’ recovery of Pontus in this great battle at Zela in 67 BC was one of the most unexpected, remarkable feats in his long career. He erected a large victory trophy on the battlefield, thanking Zeus Stratios.

  Lucullus arrived in Pontus after the devastating defeat at the muddy trenches. He took command of the shattered Fimbrian units but did not arrange for burial of the 7,000 Roman corpses strewn over the battleground. This neglect, according to Plutarch, was the last straw for his demoralized soldiers.

  And Mithradates was long gone. True to his new strategy, Mithradates had withdrawn out of reach in western Armenia. Tigranes was coming to help secure his kingdom. Lucullus gave the order to march to the point where the two grand armies would meet, hoping to defeat the two rogue kings once and for all. But the battered Fimbrians deserted their posts. The mutiny spread throughout Lucullus’s legions. At this point, says Plutarch, Fortune completely abandoned Lucullus. “So ill-starred and wandering had his course become, that Lucullus nearly lost all that he had accomplished, through no fault but his own.” Lucullus went from tent to tent in tears, begging the men to obey. The soldiers mocked their commander, hurling their empty purses at his feet, telling him to fight the enemies alone since he alone knew how to get rich from them.33

  Lucullus sat by helplessly as Tigranes the Great rolled through Cappadocia, taking it over for the third time since the Mithradatic Wars first began. One wonders whether Lucullus gave any thought to the masses of wandering Cappadocian refugees, who had been transplanted to Tigranocerta by Tigranes, and now had been liberated by Lucullus and sent back to their homeland—just in time to meet Tigranes’ reinvasion.

  In Rome, the Populars denounced Lucullus for prolonging the war and stripping the palaces of Mithradates and Tigranes for his own profit. He had wasted years, money, and lives, railed his critics, “compelling his soldiers to conduct caravans of camels and carts laden with golden beakers set with gems” when he should have annihilated Rome’s great enemy. Lucullus had assured the Senate that he had completely subdued Mithradates. Now officials arrived from Rome and observed the utter anarchy and collapse of the mission—the mission Sulla had failed to accomplish, the mission that Lucullus had claimed to achieve. Lucullus, fifty-two years old, was relieved of his command, his soldiers released from military service.

  In 66 BC, Gnaeus Pompey—dubbed “the Great” by his patron Sulla who admired his ruthlessness—was appointed to take over the war on Mithradates. At age forty, Pompey had already celebrated two Triumphs; he claimed credit (many said unfairly) for defeating both Sertorius and Spartacus. Pompey and his older rival Lucullus met at a village in Galatia. Through gritted teeth they congratulated each other, then proceeded to snipe. Pompey belittled Lucullus, and Lucullus likened Pompey to a lazy vulture alighting on the kills of others. He warned that Mithradates was an illusory shadow-enemy. Pompey assigned a mere sixteen hundred soldiers to accompany the disgraced commander to Rome. The rest of the legionnaires eagerly reenlisted under Pompey.34

  FIG. 13.3. Pompey (left) takes over the command of the Mithradatic Wars from Lucullus (right). Engraving, Augustyn Mirys, ca. 1750.

  FIG. 13.4. Lucullus introduces the cherry tree to Rome. Journal des gourmands, Paris 1806–07. Courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

  Returning to Italy with shiploads of plunder, captives, and his precious cherry tree saplings, Lucullus was allowed to celebrate a Triumph. His parade began with mail-clad Parthian knights, followed by ten of Mithradates’ scythed chariots. Tigranes’ hapless brother Gouras carried the tiara of Tigranes: these had to stand in for Tigranes himself. Mithradates, of course, was also conspicuous by his absence. He was represented by a life-sized golden statue and a huge bronze shield adorned with precious stones. Trudging behind the statue came Mithradates’ downcast sister Nyssa captured in Kabeira, and about 60 of Mithradates’ generals and advisers. Next, 110 bronze prows from Mithradates’ warships trundled by. There were 50 litters heaped with Mithradates’ gold, and 56 mules loaded with more than 2.5 million silver coins, all looted by Lucullus from Pontus and Tigranocerta.35

  Lucullus used his war profits to take up a life of such excess that he went down in history as Rome’s most notorious libertine and gastronome, lolling in luxurious villas and staging lavish banquets featuring exotic delicacies (the adjective “lucullan” now describes an extravagant feast). Anecdotes were told about Lucullus’s outrageous lifestyle, while gourmands praised him for introducing the cherry to Italy. Within a few years of handing over his command to Pompey, however, Lucullus began to lose his mind. He died insane in 57 BC, poisoned, some whispered, by an overdose of a love potion.36

  But those events were far in the future. For Mithradates, buoyed by his success in regaining his kingdom, battered though it was, the future looked bright again. Tenacity and his new tactics had paid off. He knew that Pompey could not afford to take up a new war against him right now. Rome—and Pompey—faced a crisis on the high seas that could not be ignored. During the wars, the pirates—more than a thousand ships equipped with silver oars, gilded sails, and awnings of purple silk—had infested the entire Mediterranean, from Cilicia to Gibraltar, plundering, raiding, and kidnapping to their hearts’ content.37 While Pompey took on the task of destroying the pirate nests across the Mediterranean, Mithradates rebuilt power and wealth from his headquarters in Pontus.

  14

  End Game

  FROM their tree houses in the rhododendron forests, the Turret-Folk observed Pompey’s army on the march across Mithradates’ kingdom. As a young prince, Mithradates had befriended this fierce tribe. They knew the secrets of the local wild honey, the powerful neurotoxin that had felled Xenophon’s Greek army in 401 BC. After tasting the honey, his soldiers had collapsed, open to attack in hostile territory. To Xenophon’s great relief, his men eventually recovered.

  In 66 BC, however, the poison honey would be deployed as a deliberate biological weapon against the Roman invaders, ignorant of Xenophon’s experience. The Turret-Folk placed tempting honeycombs along Pompey’s route. Mithradates had recently passed through their territory, ahead of Pompey. Were the Turret-Folk following Mithradates’ suggestion? That is unknown, but the ploy certainly would have pleased the Poison King, and it was a great success. Pompey’s advance cohorts stopped to enjoy the treat. Struck dumb and blind, wracked by violent vomiting and diarrhea, they lay paralyzed along the roadside. The Turret-Folk descended with their iron battle-axes. When Pompey arrived on the scene, a black cloud of flies buzzed over a thousand legionnaires sprawled on the road, sticky with honey and blood.1

  And Mithradates? He was far away, a desperado on the run again from the long arm of Roman rule.

  POMPEY

  A year earlier, in 67 BC, Pompey had received a budget of 6,000 talents, an army of 120,000 soldiers, 4,000 cavalry, and 270 ships to quash the pirates, whose armadas of “odious extravagance” dominated the Mediterranean. Other Roman campaigns against the pirates had failed, but by skillfully marshaling his resources, Pompey caught or killed about 10,000 of the Mithra-worshipping buccaneers. Rome’s massive response to the piracy emergency persuaded most of the remaining pirates to relocate on land grants in Rome’s provinces.2

  Pompey’s success gained him unlimited war powers to take over the command of Lucullus’s failed war on Mithradates. Cicero urged Pompey to “wipe out that stain . . . which has now fixed itself deeply and eaten its way into the Roman name.” Cicero was referring to the unavenged atrocity of 88 BC, when Mithradates had ordered “all the Roman citizens in all Asia, scattered as they were over so many cities, to be slaughtered and butchered.” Yet Mithradates “has never yet suffered any chastisement worthy of his wickednes
s,” continued Cicero. “Now, twenty-three years later, he is still a king, and a king not content to hide himself in Pontus, or in the recesses of Cappadocia, but a king who seeks to emerge from his hereditary kingdom, and ravage Rome’s revenues, in the broad light of Asia.”3

  While Pompey was pounding the pirates, Mithradates had a year to secure his kingdom, raise armies, and ensure the safety of his remaining family members. Concubines were assigned to various strongholds; Stratonice and Xiphares held Kainon Chorion; his daughter Drypetina held Sinora; other children were with Mithradates’ sons Machares and Pharnaces in the Bosporan Kingdom. In Pontus, Mithradates stationed about thirty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry to guard the frontiers. After the Roman depredations, provisions were scarce. This would hinder any new Roman invaders, but starvation also led to desertions. Mithradates harshly punished those caught abandoning the frontier outposts.

  Many Roman officers and soldiers had defected from Lucullus to join Mithradates. In 66 BC, their connections reported that Pompey the Great was en route from Rhodes to Pontus with a large army and navy, authorized to make war on both Mithradates and Tigranes. Pompey had even forged an alliance with the king of Parthia.

  Seeking an honorable way to avoid this new war and determined to retain his ancestral homeland—the kingdom he had just rescued from the grip of Roman occupation—Mithradates immediately sent envoys to Pompey. What terms would he demand for peace? Pompey’s blunt reply: “Unconditional surrender—and deliver up our Roman traitors.” Mithradates relayed this response to the Romans in his ranks. They urged the king to resist. The rest of his soldiers agreed with their Roman comrades.