The Poison King

by Adrienne Mayor

  These recent precedents, combined with Mithradates’ knowledge of Persian and Greek kings who sacrificed virgins at the beginning of their great wars, lend plausibility to the ancient reports that Mithradates attempted to sacrifice a young girl. It is impossible to know whether the murders of his mother, brother, and sister—not to mention the murder of eighty thousand Roman residents—weighed on Mithradates’ conscience. But a sacrifice to the Furies could appease angry divinities, absolve bloodguilt, and ensure victory in what Mithradates saw as a just war. The ritual could also be a useful propaganda move to demonstrate his religious commitment. What is so fascinating about the Roman account of Mithradates’ human sacrifice is that it was reported in Rome without any sense of surprise or outrage. The fact that the sacrifice of the maiden was not actually carried out only adds to the credibility of the account.

  After these untoward events, Mithradates abandoned the siege of Patara. He could use the excuse that trying to take Rhodes and Patara at this time was forbidden by the gods. Leaving Pelopidas to continue the war in Lycia, Mithradates ordered Archelaus to “gain allies by persuasion or by force” in the Aegean en route to Greece. Delegating the war to his generals, the king returned to Pergamon to concentrate on manufacturing more weapons and siege machines, building more ships, and raising more reinforcements for Greece. He celebrated his forty-sixth birthday in grand trencherman style. Appian tells us that Mithradates also spent a good deal of time enjoying himself in the arms of his new wife, Monime. While the king had been away at war, the lovers had exchanged many billets-doux filled with longing and lust.22

  The setbacks—possibly exacerbated by misgivings about his own murderous tactics—triggered paranoid behavior in Mithradates. The near miss with the Chian trireme at Rhodes led him to distrust his allies. The king resorted to harsh retributions, establishing tribunals to try those who were conspiring against him, much like the trials already going on in Athens and Adramyttion. People accused of inciting revolution against the king or supporting the Romans were brought before Mithradates and his judges. Many were convicted, but these courts do not appear to have been simply rubber stamps for juridical murder. As we saw, Mithradates had appointed the orator Metrodorus as an expressly independent judge. Perhaps Metrodorus was to thank for the acquittal of a fellow orator, Diodorus Zonas of Sardis, who had frequently pleaded Mithradates’ cause in Rome. Falsely accused by some sycophants in Mithradates’ court of urging cities to revolt, Diodorus was able to prove his innocence and survived the king’s wrath.23

  Despite the stalemate in Rhodes, Mithradates’ rule extended from the Black Sea and most of western Asia to Greece, and his navy ruled the Aegean Sea. The extermination of Romans in Asia had gone like clockwork. Mithradates’ vast stores of money were multiplying, he enjoyed his new love and basked in popular adulation, and his armies and navies were undefeated. His generals were advancing on Greece by land and sea, to complete the capstone in Mithradates’ new version of Alexander’s great Greco-Persian Empire. Now everything depended on the Greek campaign.

  9

  Battle for Greece

  WHILE he eagerly awaited the news from Greece, Mithradates was also following developments in Italy. His takeover of Provincia Asia appeared to be the least of Rome’s problems now. Roman legions were battling the Italian insurgents in the countryside, and civil war had broken out in Rome. Sulla, Marius’s rival, had been elected to a consulship. Gangs of Sulla’s Oligarch faction were at war with Popular party mobs loyal to Marius. Sulla was driven out of the city by the Populars; he took command of a Roman legion fighting Marsi rebels. Encouraged by a dream in which Cybele, the great mother goddess, gave him a divine thunderbolt, Sulla stormed Rome and occupied the city, with murderous street fighting. Sulla posted a reward for the head of Marius, who fled into hiding, but many Romans remained loyal to the old warrior.

  Now master of Rome, Sulla was nevertheless in a precarious situation. Sacred treasures from Rome’s temples had already been sold to finance Sulla’s war chest for the Mithradatic War. After Mithradates’ victories in Anatolia and Greece, his influence was gaining momentum; he had promised to aid the Italian insurgents. Rome’s power in the East would be lost forever if Sulla failed to defeat Mithradates. A decisive triumph over the Republic’s deadliest threat since Hannibal would elevate Sulla’s status from civil warrior to heroic conqueror. But would Sulla dare to leave Italy? How could he fight Mithradates and still maintain control in Rome?

  In 87 BC, the horns of Sulla’s dilemma sharpened when Cinna, loyal to Marius, won a consul seat. That summer, Halley’s Comet appeared, a portent of disaster for Rome. Cinna swore an oath to keep peace with Sulla’s aristocratic party, but his promise rang hollow. Marius’s gangs were poised to fall on Sulla’s supporters, and the lives of Sulla’s wife and children were in grave danger.1

  What course would Sulla take? Mithradates assumed that Sulla, the Senate, and the Roman People intended to try to avenge his killing of Italians in Anatolia. But he believed the chaos in Italy would tie their hands for some time. After his liberation of the Greek world became a fait accompli, he could hope that Rome would have to accept the new division of power, and respect Mithradates the Great, King of Kings, as the new Alexander at the helm of a reborn Greco-Persian empire.2

  THE LIBERATION OF GREECE

  While war ravaged Rome, Mithradates gloried in the victories of the Greek campaign. Halley’s Comet was taken as a good omen by Mithradates’ Magi and by his allies. In Athens, the philosopher Aristion succeeded Athenion, elected on a pro-Mithradates platform; Aristion’s name appeared with Mithradates’ on Athenian coins of 87–86 BC.

  Mithradates’ own handsome coins featured his idealized portrait—looking very much like his hero Alexander, with parted lips and luxuriant hair. Imagery evoking Mithradates’ Persian connections appeared on the reverse, such as winged Pegasus and the star and crescent. Other coins displayed Dionysus the Liberator (associating him with opposition to Rome by slaves and rebels in Italy). Mithradates made sure his portrait was known to everyone. He employed the best Greek artisans, and he understood the propaganda value of aesthetically pleasing currency. His coinage conveyed the message that Mithradates was the great unifier—and protector—of Greek and Persian civilizations. Knowing that his unsurpassed coins would be admired, collected, and selected for hoards of buried treasure, Mithradates also designed them for posterity. Indeed, Mithradates’ portrait coins are considered by numismatic experts to be the most beautiful of all ancient coins. Mithradates also commissioned numerous seal rings bearing his portrait, which he presented to friends and allies. Such rings bestowed political authority on the wearer. They also carried propaganda messages, as we saw with Sulla’s signet ring depicting his victory over Jugurtha, and the ring with Mithradates’ likeness flaunted by Athenion in Athens.

  FIG. 9.1. (Left) Mithradates’ portrait, silver tetradrachm, 86/85 BC, idealized profile, similar to Alexander’s coin (right), with tousled hair and parted lips. Mithradates’ coins are distinctive for artistic excellence and sense of dynamic movement. 1980.109.66, bequest of A. J. Fecht, and 1944.100.45726, bequest of E. T. Newell, courtesy of the American Numismatic Society.

  In 87 BC, Mithradates’ generals Archelaus and Metrophanes stormed Roman-controlled Delos. The destruction was devastating: the city was sacked and burned to the ground. Thousands of able-bodied slaves, suddenly freed from Roman chains, joined the Greek liberation army. Mithradates’ generals killed virtually all the unarmed Italian merchants of Delos and sold their wives and children into slavery. The estimated number killed on Delos was 20,000, bringing the death toll of noncombatant Roman citizens in 88–87 BC to at least 100,000, perhaps more.

  Metrophanes and Archelaus took possession of the island’s valuables and seized the coffers inside the great Temple of Apollo. They stored most of the plunder on the little wooded island of Skiathos, Metrophanes’ naval base and hospital. But what should be the fate of Apollo’s sacred hoard, stored over th
e centuries in his temple? Traditionally, Apollo’s treasure on Delos had been safeguarded by Athens. Mithradates decided that the treasure would be delivered to Aristion in Athens by a contingent of 2,000 handpicked soldiers. This grand gesture sealed Mithradates’ promise to liberate all Hellas from Rome.3

  Aristion used the treasure to finance the revolution begun by Athenion. The 2,000 Pontic soldiers sent by Archelaus probably completed the purge of Romans and pro-Romans remaining in Attica. They also trained the mainland Greeks, whose armies had long ago been disbanded by the Roman overseers. Then, in the words of one modern historian, “with absurd and sublime devotion” to its old ideals, Athens declared war on Rome and announced its alliance with the savior-king Mithradates the Great. Athens still enjoyed prestige throughout Greece and the non-Roman world. The once great, now ghostly city-states of Sparta and Thebes set aside their ancient rivalry with Athens and joined the Pontic Alliance, anticipating the arrival of Mithradates’ liberation army. General Archelaus’s troops, mostly Gauls from Galatia, were welcomed with joy in the Peloponnese, Attica, and Boeotia. As they marched north, bands of eager but ill-trained and poorly armed citizen-soldiers from Sparta, Athens, and other Greek towns joined the liberated slave auxiliaries in Archelaus’s ranks.4

  Mithradates divided his forces into a three-pronged operation. One prong moved across Thrace to Macedonia, led by his favorite son Arcathius (who had proved himself in the battles against Aquillius and Nicomedes) and General Taxiles (named for an Indian prince who had welcomed Alexander the Great). They commanded about 100,000 barbarian foot soldiers (called the Bronze-shields) and 10,000 horsemen from Thrace, Sarmatia, Scythia, and Armenia. Once Arcathius and Taxiles took control of Amphipolis on the border, Macedonia came to Mithradates’ side. This victory meant they could ship plentiful food supplies to Archelaus in Piraeus, Athens’ port.5

  MAP 9.1. The First Mithradatic War: Anatolian, Aegean, and Greek campaigns. Map by Michele Angel.

  Archelaus had secured southern and central Greece; now he and Aristion occupied Attica, the territory of Athens and Piraeus, making up the second prong. The third prong was led by Metrophanes, who took Euboea, establishing headquarters at Chalcis. His fleet was advancing up the coast of Thessaly. (Meanwhile Neoptolemus and Dromichaetes were sailing with more men from Anatolia to Chalcis, and Dorylaus stood ready with another highly trained army of 80,000 reinforcements in Pontus.) Mithradates’ three armies were to converge on Macedonia. If all went according to plan, the small, isolated Roman garrison there would be pinned beneath the trident by the summer of 87 BC.

  But the commander of the Roman outpost in Macedonia decided on a bold preemptive strategy to blunt Mithradates’ three-pronged assault. He sent troops out to meet Arcathius’s barbarian horde and ordered his legate Bruttius to engage Metrophanes at sea. Bruttius’s small fleet was successful—Metrophanes had to watch helplessly as his sailors flailed in the waves, begging for mercy. Bruttius’s men killed them one by one.

  Bruttius chased Metrophanes back to Euboea, forcing him to leave his hospital and depot on Skiathos unprotected. Bruttius overran the island, grabbing up loot and capturing thousands of soldiers. The prisoners of war—many of them wounded or sick—might have hoped for humane treatment at the hands of the Romans. In the campaign for Rhodes, Admiral Damogoras had treated Mithradates’ captives honorably. Even Mithradates had famously granted amnesty to Roman soldiers and their allies in earlier battles. But the Roman Bruttius meted out revenge for the Italian victims in Provincia Asia and Delos. He separated the prisoners into two groups: freeborn men and Roman slaves who had joined Mithradates. Bruttius’s centurions announced that the free men would be released. But first, they methodically lopped off the prisoners’ hands. The maimed soldiers were free, but would never lift a sword or shield again. And the runaway slaves? All were crucified, nailed to rough crosses and left to die on Skiathos.

  Although elated with his success, Bruttius could not follow up with a direct attack on Euboea. Even with a thousand reinforcements drafted from Macedonia he was still outnumbered. Instead, he marched through Boeotia to try to stop the middle prong, led by Archelaus. The armies met at Chaeronea, the broad plain surrounded by rocky hills that controlled the route between northern and southern Greece. So many battles had been fought at Chaeronea that the plain was known as the “dancing ground of Ares,” god of war. This was the same battleground where Alexander’s father, Philip, had defeated the Greeks in 338 BC.

  Bruttius and Archelaus clashed here for three days. As Alfred Duggan commented, Bruttius was actually holding his own until a “typically Roman piece of red tape compelled him to break off the campaign.” A communiqué arrived from Sulla’s young lieutenant, Lucius Lucullus, informing Bruttius that Sulla alone was commissioned by the Roman People to conduct the war on Mithradates. Bruttius was ordered to return to Macedonia. Bruttius obeyed. That allowed Archelaus to occupy Boeotia and set up winter quarters in Piraeus. Meanwhile Aristion’s citizen army battened down in Athens. They felt secure inside the great walls and fortifications protecting the city and its port.6

  MEANWHILE IN PERGAMON

  Mithradates must have been annoyed by the losses at Skiathos, but he could glory in his spectacular successes so far. He was popular, prosperous, victorious. The grand future foretold by the oracles and comets was coming true at last. He had wrested Asia from Rome’s grip, and he ruled Bithynia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, and Anatolia. The Romans were driven out of Asia. His general Archelaus was master of the Aegean and mainland Greece. Mithradates’ son Machares was viceroy of Pontus and Bosporus, including the Scythian lands beyond the Sea of Asov. His beloved son Arcathius, steamrolling south, overcame Bruttius’s small garrison in Macedonia. Arcathius had subdued northern Greece and was already appointing satraps to govern what was to become his kingdom.

  As ambassadors from rebel cities in Italy, North Africa, Egypt, Parthia, and Syria sang Mithradates’ praises, the savior-king amassed more gold and dispensed riches, principalities, and satrapies to his friends. Cities allied with Mithradates issued grateful decrees, minted coins with his name and image, and dedicated portrait statues to him in their agoras. The king commissioned impressive statues of himself. Large silver and gilded images of the Mithradatic ancestors decorated the palace in Sinope, but those of Mithradates were even more grandiose. We know of at least two statues cast in solid gold, one life-sized, the other ten feet tall. Not only was gold impressively expensive; its color was sacred to fire, the Sun, and Mithra.7

  In Pergamon, a splendid festival was planned to celebrate Mithradates’ successes. In the Theater of Dionysus, where Aquillius’s gruesome last supper had been served, the royal engineers put the finishing touches on an immense mechanized statue of Nike, the goddess of victory, suspended on cables behind curtains high above the royal box.

  On the day of the celebration, King Mithradates and Queen Monime, dressed in lavish finery, nodded and beamed at the audience from their silk-canopied, cushioned thrones as choirs sang, officials orated, and actors representing various lands thanked the liberator-king for his benevolence. The pageant was to climax with the appearance of Winged Victory bearing a real crown in her outstretched hands. By means of pulleys and levers, the goddess would majestically descend to place this crown on Mithradates’ brow and then magically rise up to the heavens again. If there were any witnesses of the awful collapse of the colossal sambuca at Rhodes in the audience, they must have collectively held their breath, trying to suppress premonitions of disaster.

  Their fears were justified. Just as the stagehands were lowering the heavy statue in front of the royal box, the cables broke. Winged Victory crashed to the ground, the victor’s crown dashed to pieces. Shocked silence, then pandemonium. Crowd and king shuddered in horror. The royals were hustled away from the scene of the terrible omen.

  Mithradates, naturally, fell into a depression. But not for long. The king emerged from seclusion a few days later, summoning his seers, the Magi, his advise
rs, and spies. He pored over all the dispatches from the front, questioned everyone closely, demanded the freshest intelligence. He was certain that some disaster must have befallen one of his armies in Greece or Asia at the very moment that Victory had come crashing down in Pergamon. His inquiries revealed nothing but sunny reports from his command posts. But he did hear a scrap of ominous news. On that very day, Lucius Cornelius Sulla had set sail from Italy, bringing five Roman legions to Greece.8

  SULLA

  This report must have sent an icy sliver of anxiety into Mithradates’ already troubled mind. Far from the action, he could not personally supervise his armies in Greece. But he had great confidence in his excellent generals. And after all, how could Sulla’s mere thirty thousand troops prevail against Mithradates’ myriads?

  But Sulla’s men were battle-hardened, disciplined professionals. These tough veterans would fight ferociously for Sulla—as long as they were paid handsomely in plunder. What sort of man was their commander? The Roman biographer Plutarch paints a portrait of an arrogant, repellent character, with a hypnotically commanding presence and fathomless hunger for power. From an obscure patrician family without wealth, Sulla (b. 138 BC) spent his youth carousing in the company of theatrical lowlifes. A rich courtesan financed his political career. At age fifty, Sulla retained his louche habits, but cultivated a love of art and literature and won a reputation as a hard-driving, brave military leader. Shrewd and calculating, Sulla could also be rash and unpredictable. As Sulla and many other leaders well understood, capricious behavior made one seem godlike, and it kept friends and foes off balance. Alternating clemency with sudden brutality was a tried-and-true power trip, practiced by autocrats of all eras, including Mithradates.