Participation in wars:
Conquest of the Bosporus. Wars with the Roman Republic.
Participation in battles:
At Chaeronea. Orchomen. Kabira
(Mithridates VI of Pontus) King of Pontus Euxine (from 122 BC), descendant of the Achaemenid and Seleucid dynasties
During the years of government Mithridates the small state of Pontus on the northern coast of Asia Minor became the paramount power in the Hellenistic east.
At the beginning of his reign, Mithridates captured Colchis, the coastal part of Transcaucasia, and then subjugated neighboring states - Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Armenia - to his influence. When in 110 BC. The Chersonese, pressed by the Scythians, turned to Mithridates for help, the king sent his troops to Chersonese under the command of the commander Diophantus, who, after several years of struggle, took possession of the Bosporan kingdom, which came under complete control Mithridates. By this time, the king managed to unite under his rule all the lands adjacent to the Black Sea.
This led to the inevitable clash between Pontus Euxine and Roman Republic.
In 85 BC. e. Fighting began between the troops of the Pontic king and the Roman legions. At first, success was favorable Mithridates. Pontic troops (about 250 thousand infantry, 40 thousand horsemen and about 400 warships) managed to expel the Roman legions from the province of Asia. The king announced to the population of the occupied territory the restoration of freedom and self-government in the cities, the introduction of democratic government, the abolition of tax arrears and tax exemption for the next five years. All these measures brought Mithridates wide popularity among the population of Asia Minor, with the help of which, by order of the king, on one of the appointed days, all the Romans and residents of Italy living in the occupied territory (from 80 to 150 thousand people) were exterminated.
After capturing Asia Minor, Mithridates moved his troops to conquer Balkan Greece and Macedonia and, using anti-Roman sentiments, soon captured most of Greece, making Athens and the port of Piraeus his main base. Mithridates assisted the tyrant Aristion, who seized power in Athens in 88 BC. e. and who set as his goal to achieve the restoration of the former independence of Athens from Rome.
But already in 87 BC. e. the situation changed not in favor of Mithridates. An army of thirty thousand under the command Lucius Cornelius Sulla landed in Epirus and launched an attack on Athens. The Pontic troops were defeated in Boeotia, and the Roman troops approached Athens and began to besiege the city. It lasted for several months, but then famine and disease began in Athens, and after a bloody assault the city itself and the port of Piraeus fell into the hands of Sulla. Athens was subjected to terrible plunder and forever lost its former power.
To help his troops in Balkan Greece Mithridates sent a new army (about 100 thousand infantry, 10 thousand horsemen), but it was defeated in 86 BC. e. in the battle of Chaeronea (Boeotia) by the troops of Sulla. In 86-85. BC e. Two Roman armies under the command of Sulla and Flaccus were already operating against the Pontic troops.
To recruit a new army, Mithridates had to cancel his previous decisions on tax breaks for the population of Asia Minor, introduce new taxes and resort to requisitions from many Greek cities.
By this time, internal contradictions within Pontus had intensified. Asia Minor slave owners and oligarchs were dissatisfied with the widespread distribution of civil rights, the provision of land to the poor, the emancipation of slaves, and Mithridates’ patronage of pirates.
Urban circles of the Bosporus were dissatisfied with the strengthening role of barbarian tribes, primarily in the army Mithridates, in which the Scythians, Taurians, Sarmatians, Thracians, and Meotians fought. The king increasingly relied on them, and not on the Greek cities of the Northern Black Sea region. This, in turn, caused a change in the mood of Asia Minor slaveholding circles, which began to focus not on Mithridates, but on Rome. In 85 BC. e. Roman troops inflict new damage on the Pontic army defeat at Orkhomenes(Boeotia) and capture the city of Pergamum in Asia Minor. The Roman fleet pushed back the fleet of Mithridates, gaining dominance in the Aegean Sea. The king of Pontus now found himself in a critical situation as his reserves were exhausted. He asked Sulla for peace, and he put forward the condition for concluding peace that Mithridates would cleanse all the territories he had captured in Asia Minor, hand over prisoners and defectors, and provide Rome with 80 ships and 3,000 talents of indemnity. In 85 BC. e. was concluded Dardanian Peace.
Defeat Mithridates in the 1st war with Rome, the Kingdom of Pontus, which once claimed a unifying role in the Eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor, weakened. However, Rome did not forget about the danger of Mithridates and, fearing his new strengthening, decided to provoke a new war with him.
In 83 BC. e. Roman governor Moray invaded the territory of Pontus, but this offensive was repelled by the troops of Mithridates in the process.
Taking advantage of Rome's external and internal political difficulties, Mithridates began preparations for a new war, concluding a military-political alliance with his son-in-law, the king of Armenia Tigran II. After the king of Armenia captured vast territories in Asia, Mithridates decided that the opportunity for a new attack on Rome was quite favorable. He previously agreed on joint actions with the ruler of Spain Sertorius who rebelled against Rome.
Before the start of his 3rd war with Rome (74-64 BC), Mithridates prepared a fairly large army (about 100 thousand infantry, 16 thousand cavalry, 100 war chariots and 400 ships). Rome was able to oppose this army with very limited forces (about 40 thousand infantry and 2 thousand horsemen).
The war began with the invasion of the Bosporus by Pontic troops under the command of Neoptolemus. Soon the Bosporus again passed to Mithridates, who appointed him governor of his son Mahrab.
Following this, Mithridates decided to take possession of the fortresses of Calchedona and Cyzicus (Prepontis) before the arrival of the Roman legions from Italy. However, their siege was unsuccessful, and in 74 BC. Roman legions under the command of the consul landed in Prepontis Licinia Luculla.
Roman troops defeated the troops of Mithridates, after which the Pontic people lifted the siege of Cyzicus and retreated to the territory of Pontus. Pursuing the Pontines, Roman troops moved the fighting to the territory of the kingdom itself Mithridates and in 72 BC. e. defeated his army near the city of Kabira. Mithridates was betrayed by his own son Mahrab, who foresaw the outcome of his father’s struggle with Rome. The Mahrab sent Lucullus a transport with food intended for the Pontic troops. By the end of 72 BC. e. the territory of the Pontic kingdom was occupied by Roman troops. Mithridates with a detachment of two thousand horsemen fled to Tigran II in Armenia. Lucullus demanded the extradition of Mithridates from the Armenian king, but was refused. Then the Roman consul declared war on Tigran II and invaded the territory of Armenia. At first, the consul was successful, but with the transfer of the war to mountainous Armenia, a streak of failures began for the Romans. In 87 BC. e. troops Mithridates managed to defeat the Romans at Enel.
The course of the war changed again when the command of the Roman troops took Gnaeus Pompey. The Roman commander managed to conclude an alliance with Parthia, which began military operations against Tigran II. Under these conditions, the Armenian king faced the prospect of a war on two fronts - against Rome and Parthia, which led to the severance of his allied relations with Mithridates.
After the defeat in 66 BC. e. under Nicopolis, Mithridates strengthened himself in the Bosporus, where he came up with a plan for a grandiose campaign against Rome through the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region, through the Danube Roman provinces and through the Alps. Mithridates entered into an alliance with the leaders of many tribes, offering them his daughters as wives.
However, at the end of 63 BC. e. In one of the largest cities of the Bosporus, an uprising broke out against Mithridates, led by the Phanagorian Castor. The uprising quickly grew and engulfed other Bosporan cities - Nymphaeum, Feodosia, Chersonesus. In Phanagoria, the rebels besieged and set fire to the acropolis, in which the sons of Mithridates were located; they had to surrender. One of the sons of Mithridates Pharnaces openly went over to the side of the rebels and led the movement against his father already in the Pontic army.
Mithridates found himself surrounded in his own palace, in the acropolis of Panticapaeum, which stood on a mountain that has bore the name of Mithridates since ancient times. He was afraid of being captured by the Romans or ending up in the rebel camp.
The former king of Pontus Euxine tried to commit suicide with poison, but his body, hardened by antidotes, stubbornly resisted this. Mithridates tried to kill himself with a sword, but also failed to do so. And then he turned to his devoted ally with a request to help him die, and he stabbed his king. Pharnaces sent Pompey the body of his father.
At the suggestion of Cicero, the death of Mithridates was celebrated in Rome with ten days of festivities and games.
Mithridates VI Eupator went down in history as a man of irrepressible lust for power and enormous energy, as a skilled military leader and talented diplomat who spoke more than 20 languages. It combined Hellenistic education and barbaric despotism. But the main feature of the Pontic king was persistent progress towards his goal.
King of Pontus, who reigned from 121 to 63 BC.
But even now it seems possible, assessing in totality all the conditions of Mithridates’ activity, to recognize him as an outstanding ruler of his time. First of all, because he was considered as such by his contemporaries and the immediate subsequent generations of the ancient era. It is enough to quote the assessment of a Roman historian of the 1st century. n. e. Velleius Paterculus, whom you would never suspect of affection for the Pontic ruler: “Mithridates, king of Pontus, a man who cannot be kept silent or spoken of with disdain, in war full of determination, distinguished by military valor, sometimes great for his luck, but always with courage, was a leader in plans, a warrior in battles, in hatred of the Romans - second Hannibal"(Vel., Pat., II, 18). .
Beginning of the reign
He began solving this problem by creating powerful armed forces of the Bosporan kingdom - the army and navy. Mithridates Eupator managed to assemble a huge army for that time. The army was hired, and the royal treasury had large funds for this thanks to the stably collected taxes in the Pontic state. According to ancient sources, Mithridates' navy consisted of up to 400 warships.
The creation of such an armada was possible because among his subjects there were a sufficient number of merchant sailors and fishermen (fish, salted and dried, was one of the country's main exports). A large number of ships made it possible to transport thousands of troops to the southern Black Sea coast and wage war against the strong Roman fleet.
One of my colleagues decided to collect an army for a tabletop wargame and I decided to prepare the necessary information for him. 6 Evpator, king of the small Hellenistic state of Pontus, was one of the most stubborn and consistent opponents of Rome. Having annexed significant territories in Asia to Pontus, he was able to oppose Rome with serious material, human and diplomatic resources.
I had to see the opinion that he was as dangerous an enemy of Rome as Hannibal. I can't agree with this. The invasion of Italy either by sea or by land through Thrace and Illyria remained projects. The troops of both commanders consisted of contingents of various nationalities, but the troops cannot be compared in terms of organization and professionalism with the troops of Hannibal.
Internal Roman problems contributed greatly - the allied war, the confrontation between the Sullans and Marians, the war with Sertorius, riots in the Roman armies. The talent of a commander cannot be put next to the talent of Hannibal. But where both commanders are similar is in their tenacity and hatred of Rome.
Artist Justo Jimeno
Army of Mithridates
Information about the army of Mithridates is quite superficial, although numerous. Information can be gleaned from Appian, “Roman History”, Mithridatic Wars and from Plutarch, “Comparative Lives”, Sulla, Lucullus, Pompey. The size of Mithridates' army must be questioned. Initially, Mithridates uses a typically Hellenistic army, similar to the Seleucids, with a phalanx of slaves and sickle chariots, who fought in Greece against Sulla in . Convinced of the low effectiveness of such an army against the Romans, Mithridates tries to rebuild it according to the Roman model. The Romans sent to Mithridates by Sertorius are used as commanders and instructors. However, the Roman uniform, without Roman content, and the help of his son-in-law, the king of Armenia Tigran, did not help Mithridates create a combat-ready army.
Artist D. Aleksinsky
Appian:
Mithridates had 250,000 and 40,000 horsemen in his own army; military ships with a covered deck 300 and with two rows of oars 100 and, accordingly, all other equipment for them; His commanders were two brothers - Neoptolemus and Archelaus, but the king himself commanded most of the army. Auxiliary troops were brought to him by the son of Mithridates himself, Arcathius from Minor Armenia - 10,000 horsemen and Dorylai... lined up in phalanxes, and Craterus - 130,000 war chariots... Archelaus was joined by the Achaeans and the inhabitants of Laconia and all of Boeotia with the exception of Thespiae, which he surrounded and began to besiege.
... And then he (Sulla) moved against Archelaus, also through Boeotia. When they came close to each other, those who had recently been at Thermopylae withdrew to Phocis; these were the Thracians, inhabitants of Pontus, Scythians, Cappadocians, Bithynians, Galatians and Phrygians and inhabitants of other countries that had recently been conquered by Mithridates - a total of 120,000 people. They had their own commanders over each part, but Archelaus was the commander-in-chief over all.
... As allies, he (Mithridates) was joined, in addition to the previous troops, by the Khalibs, Armenians, Scythians, Tauris, Achaeans, Heniochs, Leucosuras and those who live in the lands of the so-called Amazons near the Thermodont River. Such forces joined his previous troops from Asia, and when he crossed into Europe, the so-called royal, Iazygians, and Corals joined from the Sauromatians, and from the Thracians those tribes that live along the Ister, in the Rodon and Gemu mountains, as well as the Bastarnae , the strongest tribe among them. Such powers were then received by Mithridates from Europe. And he gathered all his fighting forces, about 140,000 infantry, and up to 16,000 horsemen.
Artist Angus Mcbride
... At this time, Mithridates was preparing weapons in every city and called almost all Armenians to arms. Having chosen the best of them - about 70,000 foot and half of this number of horse, he released the rest, and distributed these into detachments and cohorts almost in the same way as the Italian army, and handed them over to Pontic teachers for training.
Plutarch:
Meanwhile, the military leader of Mithridates Taxilus, having descended from Thrace and Macedonia with one hundred thousand infantry, ten thousand horsemen and ninety sickle chariots, summoned Archelaus...
... Sulla, barely noticing the confusion in the ranks of the enemy, immediately struck and quickly covered the distance separating both armies, thereby depriving the sickle chariots of their strength. The fact is that the main thing for these chariots is a long run-up, which imparts speed and power to their breakthrough through enemy ranks, and at a short distance they are useless and powerless, like arrows fired from a poorly drawn bow. This is what happened that time among the barbarians, and the Romans, having repelled the sluggish attack of the lazily moving first chariots, with applause and laughter, demanded new ones, as they usually do at circus races.
... The fact is that in the front ranks of the enemy formation they (the Romans) saw fifteen thousand slaves, whom the royal commanders recruited from the cities, declared them free and included them in the number of hoplites. ...thanks to the depth and density of their formation, the slaves were too slow to yield to the pressure of the Roman heavy infantry and, contrary to their nature, stood bravely.
Artist Jose Daniel Cabrera Pena
... Having decided to start a war a second time, he (Mithridates) limited his forces and their weapons to what was really needed for the cause. He abandoned the motley hordes, the terrifying multilingual barbarian cries, and no longer ordered the preparation of weapons decorated with gold and precious stones, which did not add power to its owner, but only to the greed of the enemy. He ordered swords to be forged according to the Roman model, ordered long shields to be prepared, and selected horses that, although not elegantly dressed, were well trained. He recruited one hundred and twenty thousand infantry and equipped it like the Romans; There were sixteen thousand horsemen, not counting the sickle chariots.
... After all, in front of them (the Romans) lined up a great many cavalry and selected enemy fighters, and in the front ranks took place Mardian archers on horses and Iberian spearmen, on whom, among the foreign soldiers, Tigran had special hopes, as the most warlike. But no exploits followed on their part: after a small skirmish with the Roman cavalry, they could not withstand the onslaught of the infantry and fled in all directions. The Roman horsemen chased after them and also scattered in different directions, but at that moment Tigran’s cavalry came forward. Lucullus was frightened by her formidable appearance and enormous numbers and ordered his cavalry to stop pursuing. He himself was the first to strike at the Atropatenes, whose best forces were directly opposite him, and immediately filled them with such fear that they fled before it came to hand-to-hand combat. Three kings took part in this battle against Lucullus, and the one who fled most shamefully, it seems, was Mithridates of Pontus, who could not even withstand the battle cry of the Romans.
Mithridates
There is no name more famous than Mithridates. His life and his death are a significant part of Roman history,” wrote the famous French playwright, probably still a little prone to exaggeration, Jean Racine. Meanwhile, Mithridates died in Kerch. This happened in the first century BC, and Kerch was then called not Kerch, but Panticapaeum, and this city was the capital of the Bosporan state.
The story that brought the Pontic king Mithridates from Asia Minor to Panticapaeum, as a last refuge, begins from afar. First, its military leader Diophantus with his troops appeared in Crimea, and more than once. The name of Diophantus was preserved for us by a decree, the text of which in the form of an inscription on a stone was found at the end of the last century among the ruins of Chersonesos. In this decree, Diophantus is named as a friend and benefactor of Chersonese, who defeated the Scythian king Palak, son of Skilur. “When the Scythian king Palak suddenly attacked Diophantus with a large horde, he put the Scythians, who had hitherto been considered invincible, to flight, and thus arranged for King Mithridates Eupator to be the first to hoist a trophy over them,” says the decree. However, in Tauris Diophantus learned not only victories...
He, the envoy of the powerful Mithridates, some time after the victory over Palak, was forced to flee from Savmak, who led the uprising on the Kerch Peninsula, and he fled so that he barely managed to jump on the ship that was sent for him from Chersonesos. True, having reached this glorious, but nevertheless slave-owning city, the commander came to his senses and in the main city square, in a voice high with anger, he called on the wrath of the gods on the heads of those who refused to help him.
The Chersonesites, wrapped in their white robes, listened to Diophantus attentively. They nodded with their big noses - how to refuse? Didn't they themselves call him for help? Will we have to turn to him again and ask for protection from the Scythians? The Scythians scoured their very walls, burned fields, trampled vineyards, and tried to take advantage of the benefits from trade that so far had only been enjoyed by the Greek reseller cities.
In exactly the same way, the Scythians besieged the Bosporus, and there, too, the wives hurried their husbands: something needs to be decided about this! If you cannot defend the city, send messengers overseas to Pontus, call Mithridates' army for help!
Messengers were sent, and soon the first trireme from Pontus flew into the Chersonesos harbor, followed by the second, third, tenth - without number!
The Chersonesos poured out of their homes: Diophantus has come again! Oh, King of Pontus, Mithridates, how fast, how strong and glorious you are!
Diophantus, who led an entire army to the shores of the peninsula, this time, in addition to military victories, also won diplomatic victories: it was on his advice and insistence that the Bosporans decided to transfer their kingdom into the hands of Mithridates, king of Pontus, ruler of many, many lands. Truly, it is better to live under the arm of a strong man than to defend your own freedom at your own risk in the middle of an open field!..
“Mithridates will not let us be offended!” - this was the most popular phrase in those days among the residents of the Greek cities of Chersonesos, Panticapaeum, Myrmekia, Nymphaeum. True, the fishermen of Tiritaki asked each other: would Mithridates himself want to offend his new subjects? But their voices did not influence the course of events.
Diophantus brought cruel order to the peninsula. He finally succeeded in strangling the uprising of Savmak, driving away the Scythians, pushing back the Taurians, and intimidating everyone who encroached on the freedom of the ancient cities. Still would! These cities would be useful to Mithridates himself in his long, almost half-century-long war with Rome! More precisely, in those wars in which, and not always successfully, the best commanders, the flower of Roman history, opposed Mithridates. Since the sixth grade we have known the names: Sulla, Lucullus, Pompey.
In the mountains of Macedonia, on the coast of Greece, soldiers born in Chersonesos and Panticapaeum died. There was not enough bread, meat, gold, new ships and hardy horses. For a long time now, both the Chersonesos and the Bosporans realized how wrong they were when they decided: it was better to live under the arm of a strong man than to die for freedom in an open field.
...Tsar Mithridates has long grown old, but has not calmed down; for a long time now the Bosporus has been ruled by his son, who is also no longer young, but peace is not visible in any distance. Meanwhile, the Bosporians are peering intently into this sun-bleached distance: will it bring something?
Now is the time: wait every hour - either the Roman fleet will enter the harbor, or Mithridates will burst into Panticapaeum, destroying his own subjects, some for sluggishness, some for treason...
But why does he need to go to Panticapaeum? Even his son had long ago, so as not to miscalculate, sold himself to the Romans, sending them grain and other supplies, which, having robbed the Bosporans, he had prepared for his father.
...However, Mithridates still enters Panticapaeum and gloomily looks at the remains of the burning fleet, which his son burned, fleeing from his father’s wrath. Well, Mithridates will still argue with fate! Now the Bosporus will become its stronghold, this piece of land, so clearly visible from the high mountain of the Acropolis.
Mithridates stood at its top, huge and old, but his twisted muscles still tensed under his dark skin, like under the skin of an animal ready to jump. And the nostrils flared, and dry, strong legs stepped impatiently on the trampled grass: the king was ready to go to the hated Rome for the fourth time.
And, who knows, maybe he would have gone, if not for a new betrayal: the second son, Pharnaces, also went over to the side of Rome. And down there, in the square near the harbor, where smoke still clouds the water, he is crowned king! The garrison of the fortress is on his side, and now high walls guard Mithridates himself, and there is no road out of the ring...
But the king does not want to surrender alive. The thought of shame is so scary that he even laughs, moving his short neck from side to side. The poison is always with him, and so he pours yellow hemlock balls onto his huge palm and hands them to his daughters. Brides of the kings of Egypt and Crete, they also prefer death to shame. But death does not take him, hemlock is powerless in front of a powerful body, an indomitable spirit. However, there is a very prosaic explanation for this. Even from childhood, the future ruler of Pontus knew: the Romans would try to kill him, most likely with hemlock poison, as they did to many who stood in their way. And only hemlock helps against hemlock: you just need to accustom yourself to it gradually. So, I didn’t take the hemlock, only the sword remained. According to legend, the king ordered himself to be stabbed. Others said differently: he threw himself on a sword stuck into the ground with the tip up.
...But there is no grave or tomb of Mithridates in Kerch. Just like the once living but defeated Scythian Savmak, the dead Mithridates was taken to Sinope, the capital of Pontus. There he was buried not only without desecration, but with the honors that Rome was generous with.
In Kerch, in memory of Mithridates, only the name of the mountain remained, from where the king last looked at the sea, at the green hills around, at the white cubes of the houses of Myrmekia and Tiritaki...
Nothing in the city today reminds us of Mithridates. The mountain that was once named after him has a different glory. Perhaps the remains of antique columns on its side, lying in the dust and in the golden blossoms of dandelions, someone out of ignorance will mistake for Mithridat’s tomb, as Pushkin once did when traveling through the Crimea with the family of General Raevsky. And, perhaps, a predatory trireme will flash in his imagination like a narrow glare of the sun, but in a moment it will melt away. Because just at this time, interrupting the mirage and puffing busily, a small tugboat with the loud name “Red Army” will pass into the harbor and bump into the pier...
E.G. Krishtof
Mithridates VI Eupator
With its annexation to the Pontic kingdom, Bosporus became the most important part of a huge state in the Black Sea region, which included, in addition to Pontus, Chersonesus and its choir *, Olbia, Colchis, Armenia Minor and some Asia Minor regions. During the long struggle of Mithridates with Rome, the Bosporus remained the base from which the Pontic king drew not only funds to equip and feed the army, but also soldiers for his troops. In the end, it became his last stronghold.
The wars of Mithridates with Rome shook the entire East. They turned out to be the final stage of resistance that the Eastern Greek world offered to the enslaver Rome. In this struggle, the personality of Mithridates most closely corresponded to the image of the leader of the defending East.
Mithridates VI Eupator was an extraordinary man in all respects1. Its origins are connected with the Achaemenidian dynasty and with the descendants of Alexander the Great and Seleucus. This gave Mithridates special significance in the eyes of his subjects and surrounded the king’s name with an aura of glory. Gigantic growth, enormous physical strength, indomitable energy and unyielding courage, deep and cunning mind, boundless cruelty - this is how he was preserved in the descriptions of ancient authors. On his orders, a mother, brother, sister, three sons and three daughters were killed or died in captivity.
Mithridates imposed a huge tax on the Bosporan population. Strabo reports that the king annually received from him about half a million poods of grain and large sums of money. All this was required for his wars with Rome. The situation in the Bosporus became especially difficult when Mithridates arrived here after a series of defeats inflicted on him by Rome. The ruler of Pontus was preparing for new wars and for the sake of them he took the most extreme measures in relation to the Bosporus and other subordinate regions.
The Roman historian Appian (2nd century AD) describes Mithridates’ preparations for the war with Rome: “He continued to recruit an army from freemen and slaves and prepared masses of weapons, arrows and military vehicles, sparing neither forest material nor working bulls for production bowstring, he imposed taxes on all his subjects, not excluding the poorest, and the collectors offended many of them.”2
This policy of Mithridates caused discontent against him in different segments of the population. The Bosporan nobility was dissatisfied with the collapse of maritime trade due to the naval blockade by Rome. She was also alarmed by the fact that Mithridates was recruiting slaves into the army. Even among the troops there was no support for his fantastic plans to go through the Balkans and Italy in order to defeat Rome there. A denouement was brewing. A conspiracy arose in Panticapaeum led by the son of Mithridates Pharnaces.
According to Appian, events unfolded like this.
At night, Pharnaces went to the camp of the Roman deserters and persuaded them to desert their father. That same night he sent his agents to other military camps. At dawn, the Roman deserters raised a war cry, followed by gradually other troops. The sailors most inclined to change were the first to shout, followed by all the others. Mithridates, awakened by this cry, sent to find out what those shouting wanted. They replied that they wanted to have his young son as king, instead of the old man who had killed many of his sons, military leaders and friends. Mithridates went out to talk with them, but the garrison guarding the acropolis did not let him out, as they sided with the rebels. They killed the horse of Mithridates, who fled. Mithridates found himself locked up. Standing on the top of the mountain, he saw the troops below crowning the kingdom of Pharnaces. He sent envoys to him, demanding free passage, but not one of them returned. Realizing the hopelessness of his situation, Mithridates took out the poison that he always carried with him with his sword. His two daughters who were with him, the brides of the Egyptian and Cypriot kings, did not allow him to drink until they received and drank the poison first. It had an immediate effect on them; it did not have any effect on Mithridates, since the king was accustomed to constantly taking poisons to protect himself from poisoning. Preferring death to captivity, he asked the chief of the Celts, Bithoit, to provide him with one last favor. And Bitoit, touched by the words addressed to him, stabbed the king to death, fulfilling his request.
The Romans granted power over the Bosporus to Pharnaces (63-47 BC), proclaimed him a friend and ally of Rome, and in the coming years did not interfere in Bosporan affairs. Later, Pharnaces took advantage of the temporary weakening of Roman power in the Black Sea region and tried to regain his father’s possessions. He first of all besieged and took Phanagoria, to which Rome had granted autonomy as a reward for the uprising against Mithridates, and then with a large army went through the Caucasus to Asia Minor, where he reconquered part of his father’s possessions. But in the battle of the city of Zela he was defeated by the Roman commander Julius Caesar, who sent his famous message of victory to Rome: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Upon returning to the Bosporus, Pharnaces was soon defeated by Asander, whom he left in his place as ruler.
A new stage in the history of the state begins.
Second half of the 1st century. BC e. was a period of consolidation and restoration of economic and political forces for the Bosporus. Asander strengthened his rights to the throne by marrying Pharnaces' daughter Dynamia. He managed to stop attacks on power by the new king of Pontus, the Roman protege of Mithridates VII, and even achieved diplomatic recognition from Rome. Asander ruled for 30 years, and during this time the country's economy was restored. To strengthen the borders of the Bosporan state, he built a fortification system in the form of a rampart about 65 km long with powerful towers. The remains, apparently, of this shaft are still preserved behind the village of Mikhailovka, about 20 km from Kerch. The line of the Asandrov Shaft ran from Lake Uzunlar near Cimmeric to the Sea of Azov. The construction of such a defensive line could only be within the power of a sufficiently powerful state.
OPPONSES OF MITRIDATES EUPATOR
L ucius Cornelius Sulla - Roman consul, Gaius Marius - Roman commander, Gaius Julius Caesar, who defeated the son of Mithridates - Pharnaces, Gnaeus Pompey - Roman commander
According to available information, Mithridates was born in 132 BC. Mithridates Eupator traced his ancestry through his father from the Achaemenids, and through his mother from the Seleucids. He was an energetic and capable man with enormous physical strength.
The fate of the Pontic sovereign-commander, famous in the history of the Ancient World, was not easy. He could not immediately inherit his father’s royal throne, which legally belonged to him, because due to the machinations of his mother and guardians, he had to hide, fearing for his own life. The hardships of his youth largely determined the firmness and decisiveness of character and the belligerence of Mithridates VI Eupator. 
In 113 BC. e. Mithridates and his supporters return to Pontus and assert their royal power over the country. However, he managed to achieve this only after a merciless and bloody reprisal against his enemies from among the Pontic nobility. At his court, secret murders of people became commonplace. Only after such a prologue to his accession to the kingdom did the aristocracy of Pontus recognize him as a full sovereign.
Mithridates VI Eupator began his long reign with the creation of a strong Pontic army, at the head of which he intended to make great conquests. Indeed, soon the warlike king of Pontus subjugated neighboring Colchis by force of arms, turning it into a Pontic satrapy, and Lesser Armenia, Tauric Chersonesus, which was provided with protection from the Scythian kingdom and part of the Scythian settled tribes in Taurida. Alliances were concluded with the free tribes of the Scythians, Bastarnae and Thracians.
The Bosporan king, the last representative of the Spartokid dynasty, renounced power in favor of the Pontic king Mithridates Eupator. At that time, a powerful uprising of slaves and the poor took place in the Bosporan kingdom under the leadership of Savmak, who managed to retain power for a year. The troops of Mithridates Eupator, having made a campaign in the Northern Black Sea region, suppressed a slave uprising in the Bosporus kingdom, which became part of the Pontic kingdom.
Now the Bosporan state was located on the shores of the Black and Azov Seas and waged long, and not without success, wars with the powerful Ancient Rome.
The Greek states and the Bosporan kingdom gave Mithridates Eupator considerable funds, bread, fish and other food for his army. The "barbarian" peoples who lived to the north and east of Pontus's possessions regularly supplied mercenaries to the royal army.
Mithridates dreamed of creating a state powerful in all respects, capable of becoming the successor to the Hellenistic dynasties. He asserted his influence on the eastern borders of Rome not only by force of arms, being a subtle diplomat and purposeful politician. So, he married his daughter to the Armenian king Tigran and could rely on his son-in-law’s troops if necessary.
Mithridates Eupator managed to establish peaceful relations with the leaders of the nomadic Scythian tribes, with whom the Pontians conducted brisk trade.
However, on his way, the ruler of the Bosporan kingdom saw a formidable obstacle - Roman expansion to the East. Mithridates VI Eupator decided to assert his dominant position not only in Asia Minor, but also in the territories adjacent to it, primarily in Greece.
He began solving such a difficult task by creating powerful armed forces of the Bosporan kingdom - the army and navy. Mithridates Eupator managed to assemble a huge army for that time (according to ancient sources, which greatly exaggerated its real size) of 300 thousand people. The army was hired and the royal treasury had large funds for this thanks to the stably collected taxes in the Pontic state.
According to ancient sources, Mithridates's navy consisted of up to 400 warships built by local shipbuilders.
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The creation of such an armada was possible because among his subjects there were a sufficient number of merchant sailors and fishermen, because fish, salted and felted, was one of the country’s main exports. A large number of ships made it possible to transport thousands of troops to the southern Black Sea coast and wage war against the strong Roman fleet.
The Pontic ruler, after fairly easy victories for him in Asia, led his army and fleet to the west. The Pontians moved through Macedonia to Greece. The alarm was sounded in Rome, and a large army was assembled under the command of the consul Sulla to repel the invading army of Mithridates. However, the internecine struggle that broke out in the Eternal City delayed the march of the Roman army to the east, to Greece.
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MITRIDATE WARS.
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SEEKERS. IN SEARCH OF THE GRAVE OF MITRIDATES (2015). |
Treasures of King Mithridates.
King Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus entered world history as one of the outstanding figures of the ancient world. The Black Sea State he created included almost the entire Black Sea coast and was one of the most dangerous enemies of powerful Rome, which was striving for world domination.
He had remarkable talents as a statesman, knew more than twenty languages, and had enormous physical strength. Mithridates died at Panticapaeum in 63 BC. In memory of him, the hill of the acropolis of Panticapaeum (a mountain in the center of Kerch) bears the name of Mithridates. The history of Mithridates and his Pontic state is one of the brightest pages in the history of our Motherland.
The extensive collection of agate rings (dactylotheca) of Mithridates became very famous. In his love of precious stones, Mithridates followed in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, thanks to whom the complex art of glyptics - carving animals, plants, mythological scenes and other images on seals - intaglios and cameos - first became popular. The only one who was allowed to engrave Alexander's portraits on precious stones was Pyrgotel, the king's personal engraver. Like Alexander, Mithridates patronized skilled craftsmen and carvers.
Considered a connoisseur of precious works of art, the collection of Mithridates included thousands of goblets, jugs, saucers and bowls made from polished agates brought from the Rhodope Mountains, Crimea and Colchis, as well as onyx and stone crystals from Cappadocia. Only in his treasury in Talavra there were about 2 thousand onyx and gold cups, kraters and wine horns. The priceless polished agate jug in the Louvre is believed to have belonged to Mithridates. Skilled craftsmen were able to obtain the unique dark brown color of the jug by slowly heating Rhodope agate in honey.
The rare beauty of Mithridates' collection marked the beginning of a fashion for agates among the Roman aristocracy. After his death in 63 BC.
Mithridates also collected jeweled boxes, gilded horse harnesses, rarities and jewelry, armor and weapons inlaid with precious stones, jewelry, ancient clothing, carpets and tapestries, and unique scientific instruments. From Darius I he inherited antique benches and chairs, and Mithridates himself loved to make furniture from maple and walnut trees. During the ceremonies, the king sat on a luxurious throne under a silk canopy, held a decorated scepter in his hands and rode a chariot encrusted with precious stones. Thanks to the opening of the Great Silk Road from China and India to the Black Sea, Mithridates could buy brocade, jade, cinnabar, rare spices, exotic medicinal potions and hardy camels from Bactria and Margiana (Afghanistan and Turkmenistan).
An admirer of fine art, Mithridates could afford the best quality and the most skilled craftsmen. The portraits he made on coins were distinguished by their purity and beauty, liveliness and energy. Their excellent quality indicated that Mithridates was a sophisticated patron of high art. Some of the profiles depicted on the coins, with hair blowing in the wind, created the illusion of speed and progress, which hinted at the ease with which Mithridates managed to avoid danger.
During the reign of Mithridates, cosmopolitan Pontus, located on the Black Sea, became the intellectual and cultural capital of the ancient world, attracting sophisticated artists and scholars from around the world. An admirer of Greek poetry, literature, music and theater, Mithridates paid for the production of plays, dramatic performances and musical agons (competitions). Once, the court musician Aristonicus took his beautiful daughter Stratonika with him to one of the royal feasts. The girl played the cithara for Mithridates, who savored the aged sweet wine. The king was fascinated by her beauty and playing a musical instrument. Plutarch writes that Stratonice “so quickly captured the heart of Mithridates that he immediately spent the night with her” without saying a word to her father.
Waking up the next morning, the distraught father found his tables laden with silver goblets and golden dishes. Servants and smiling eunuchs handed him beautiful clothes. In front of his modest house stood a horse, saddled as luxuriously as the personal mounts of the king's warriors. Assuming that these fabulous decorations were just someone’s joke, the musician wanted to run away, but the servants explained everything to him. Stratonica became Mithridates' favorite concubine, whom everyone treated with such respect that the king granted her father the property of his recently deceased rich friend. Plutarch writes that to the surprise of Mithridates and all the inhabitants of the city, Stratonice’s father put on his new purple robe and rode through all the streets of the city on his new horse, shouting: “All this is mine! My! I'm incredibly happy!
In his youth, Mithridates was struck by the natural beauty and inaccessibility of Kabira standing on the Lykos, surrounded by steep cliffs and beech, maple, walnut, pine and spruce forests. On a remote hillock, Mithridates built Kaynon Khorion (“New Castle”), a fortress-treasury where valuables were kept. In its cellars lay not only gold, silver and priceless works of art, but also Mithridates’ personal papers, his letters and court archives. Strabo, who visited there, notes that the fortress was located 200 stadia (about 25 miles) north of Cabira. In 1912, the ruins of the fortress were discovered with preserved underground stone staircases.
Mithridates enjoyed relaxing in this luxurious and safe palace.
The carefully irrigated area, in which willows, poplars, grapevines, and apple trees grew, was surrounded by extensive gardens, where the royal botanists tended the plants, and ducks browsed hellebores and hemlocks. In Kabir there was a large zoo of Mithridates, which contained rare creatures brought as gifts from distant allies and trading partners: ostriches, cobras and scorpions, crocodiles, pheasants from Colchis, Bactrian camels, Indian elephants and tigers.
Mithridates and his friends often stayed in the hunting lodge and hunted hares, partridges, quails, foxes, lynxes, bears and wild boars. The model for all these luxuries was the Persian gardens, zoos and hunting grounds created by Cyrus, Xerxes and Darius. Mithridates also followed the example of Alexander, who kept a whole exotic menagerie - lions, bears, mongooses and ostriches. 
In 2008, with the help of advanced technologies, it was possible to decipher the complex operating principle of the Antikythera mechanism (kept in the National Museum of Athens) and discover the inscriptions. The technological perfection of the mechanism is amazing: it calculated the exact movements of celestial bodies. The newly discovered inscription, as scientists suggest, indicates that the mechanism was created in 150-100 years. BC. in Syracuse or Alexandria, places associated with the famous scientist Archimedes. A similar but older "celestial globe", invented by Archimedes himself, was stolen from Syracuse by the Romans in 212 BC.
Researchers studying the Antikythera mechanism are perplexed: how did this incredible device, made in the tradition of the inventions of Archimedes, end up among the treasures of Mithridates captured by the Romans? They suggest that the mechanism belonged to a pro-Roman Greek who lived in Rhodes. The Italian historian Attilo Mastrocinque put forward the curious idea that the mysterious Antikythera mechanism may have been the lost astronomical "Billara globe", taken as a trophy from Sinope by Lucullus. Mastrocinque claims that Billard's sphere was an astronomical device for calculating the movements of celestial bodies. It would not be unreasonable, then, to suppose that the sphere of Billara of Sinope was on a Roman treasure ship that sank in the sea near Antikythera. If Mastrocinque is right, Mithridates, with his passion for inventions, Lucullus, who cut his teeth on the robbery of rare valuables, and the luck of the diver all together give us a unique chance to see one of the peaks of the development of ancient science.
Fyodor Savchuk, local historian.
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Secrets of Crimea. Riddles of King Mithridates. Part 1.
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Secrets of Crimea. Riddles of King Mithridates. Part 2.
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Poisons of King Mithridates.
King Mithridates VI Eupator was born in the spring of 134 BC. in Sinop, the capital of Pontus on the Black Sea. Conceived under a rare star - a comet in the fall of 135 BC. – Mithridates survived a lightning strike. The cradle in which the baby was located burned down; the boy himself was not injured, but the lightning left a crown-shaped scar on his forehead. In Greco-Roman folklore, a lightning strike, if not fatal, foreshadowed great honor and glory. The magicians in the palace of his father, King Mithridates VEverget, saw in the boy’s lightning scar a sign of divine approval.Two researchers of the history of the ancient world have recently revised the data of ancient sources concerning the origin of Mithridates. Their research shows that on his father's side, Mithridates was related by blood to the Persian king Darius I, who married two daughters and a granddaughter of Cyrus Vasraki the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. On his mother's side, Mithridates was related to Barsina, a Persian princess whom Alexander the Great captured after the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. Barsina had a son from him, with whom she settled in Pergamon, where she maintained contact with the family of Mithridates.
Mithridates' mother, Laodice, a princess from Antioch (Syria), was a descendant of the Macedonian commander Alexander - Seleucus Nikator - the founder of the new Macedonian-Persian Empire, stretching from Anatolia and Central Asia to Babylon and Iran.
To get rid of the machinations of their enemies, Mithridates and his companions left Sinope and went to Lesser Armenia, which was an ally of the Pontic kings. For seven years they lived in a camp in the mountains, hunting and fishing. The young king developed his stamina by hunting wild animals on foot and running away from them when they attacked him. He continued to conduct his toxicological experiments. One early spring near Trebizond, brave travelers drove through lush thickets of purple, pink and white rhododendron flowers. They learned that the poisonous sap of these trees makes the arrows deadly. Along a winding path in the forest, they noticed many hives of wild bees, the waxy honeycombs of which oozed tempting honey. The young men became curious and decided to take a closer look at the item: the honey turned out to be liquid and flowing, reddish and bitter - nothing like the golden honey pies that were served at birthday feasts in their home. We tried it lightly - the tip of the tongue tingled... Mithridates suggested that his friends organize a competition. He will be the judge. Who can eat more of this honey without getting tongue-tied, stumbling around like a drunk, peeing his pants, and finally dying?
After returning in 113-112 BC. to Sinope and the removal of Queen Laodice from the throne, Mithridates became the sole ruler of Pontus.
Mithridates collected scientific treatises on poisons and corresponded with scientists about poisons and antidotes. Based on the scientific works of Attalus III, Nicander of Colophon and his other predecessors, Mithridates described the properties of hundreds of poisons and antidotes, experimenting on prisoners, supporters and himself. “Through tireless research and a variety of experiments,” writes Pliny, “he sought ways to transform poisons into useful medicines.” “One can easily imagine Mithridates and his supporters,” notes historian Andrienne Mayor, “in protective masks made from pig bladders (they were used by ancient alchemists), experimenting with, say, the Egyptian colorless “fire poison” obtained from a solution of soda (carbonate sodium, widely known in Egypt) and realgar or arsenic.
Health-promoting essences combined with minimal doses of poisons formed an electuary, a paste held together with honey. The resulting paste was used to make tablets the size of almonds. Every morning the king began by carefully chewing his secret antidote and washing it down with spring water. Apparently this composition did not cause any physical problems and only strengthened his immune system, since ancient historians agree that Mithridates enjoyed excellent health throughout his long life.”
The desire to understand the properties of substances that could simultaneously bring benefit and harm to the body, and then use these properties, far exceeded his desire to consolidate power. It was part of the concept of domination over the world through penetration into the secrets of nature. In the middle of his reign, Mithridates "collected detailed knowledge of medicine from the whole kingdom, which occupied most of the land." In his library one could find treatises on medicines used by Gallic Druids, Mesopotamian physicians and Indian practitioners of Ayurveda (“long life”). In addition, in 88 BC. Mithridates received envoys from the Italian people of the Mars, known for their medicines based on toxic substances. It is known that healers from the Agri tribe in the king’s retinue milked steppe (Caucasian) vipers to create antidotes and medicines. Recently, experts who studied traditional healing methods using the venom of steppe vipers in Azerbaijan came to the conclusion that small doses can stop life-threatening bleeding. Currently, the crystallized venom of the Caucasian viper is a valuable pharmacological ingredient.
The basic principle underlying the Mithridates antidote recipe was the combination of drugs and antidotes with small portions of poisons. In ancient times, many poisons were known, ranging from the poison of vipers, scorpions and jellyfish to the poisonous juices of the yew tree and dark cinnabar crystals. Pliny describes about 7 thousand poisonous substances in his encyclopedia of natural history and lists dozens of plants that can become antidotes, such as dubrovnik, agaric mushrooms, wormwood, centaury, cyanosis and kirkazon.
Arsenic, infamously known as “heir powder,” should have been the first poison for which Mithridates would have sought an antidote, says Andrienne Mayor. Arsenic affects proteins needed for metabolism.
However, in small doses, enzymes produced in the liver bind and inactivate arsenic. If you take poison in small doses, then more and more of these enzymes are produced and the amount of poison that usually becomes fatal will not cause harm. Mithridates tested how resistant rats, insects, birds and other creatures were to such poisons. Pliny and Aulus Gellius indicated in their writings that the mithridatium (“universal antidote”) included the poisoned blood of Pontic ducks. It is known that some species of ducks, larks and quails can consume poisonous hemlock without harm to themselves and, since toxic alkaloids are not eliminated from their bodies, their blood and meat also turn into poison.
What other poisons did mithridatium consist of? According to Andrienne Mayor, perhaps from poisoned Pontic honey - for bees, the poisoned nectar was harmless, and it was believed that in small doses honey helps to increase tone.
In order to protect himself from poisoning, Mithridates took additional safety measures: sentries served in the kitchens, and court tasters were hired. It was claimed that certain metals, crystals and stones could help detect and even neutralize poison in wine or food. Mithridates and his comrades had special “cups for poison,” cups made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver. If poisoned wine was poured into such goblets, as a result of a chemical reaction, iridescent ripples would crackle across their metal surface. It was believed that red coral, amber, “adamas” and glossopetra (“tongue stones”) had magical properties against poisons. These stones (fossilized teeth of huge sharks from limestone deposits) “sweated” or changed color when in contact with poison; ground into powder, they neutralized it. Indeed, calcium carbonate found in fossils reacts with arsenic. In a chemical process called chelation, the arsenic molecules are removed by calcium carbonate.
Mithridates kept his work on producing a “universal antidote” secret. Scientists believe that the original lost recipe contained more than fifty ingredients, many of which were costly substances from distant lands. After the death of Mithridates, Roman doctors declared that they had mastered the secret of Mithridates. There are known recipes for antidotes that Roman emperors took. Thus, in the recipe developed by Nero's physician Andromachus, which was said to be an improved version of mithridatium, there were 64 ingredients;
Every Roman emperor since Nero (d. 68 AD) religiously took the antidote, which his personal physician called a form of mithridatium. There were more and more recipes, and they included more and more expensive and rare ingredients. A hundred years after the death of Mithridates, Celsus of Gaul will mention a mixture weighing almost 3 pounds (1.3 kg), which included 36 ingredients. This mixture lasted for six months, and it was recommended to drink it with wine. In 170 AD. Galen of Pergamon, who prescribed liquid mithridatium to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, added opium and expensive wine to the drug, which significantly improved its taste and ensured that the patient would happily take the medicine every day.
In the Middle Ages, mithridatium became widespread in Europe. According to European laws, pharmacists had to display priceless ingredients for everyone to see and prepare mithridatium right in the squares. More than two millennia after the death of Mithridates, aristocrats and royalty, from Charlemagne to Henry XIII and Elizabeth I, religiously took mithridates prepared according to one recipe or another throughout their lives. The potion prepared for the kings was kept in richly decorated vessels depicting scenes from the life of Mithridates. There were also cheaper recipes for mithridatium for the poor.
Fyodor Savchuk, local historian.
The universal antidote for the king of poisons became a “long-liver” among medical recipes: back in 1984, it could easily be bought in Rome.
The mystery of the death of Mithridates.At his royal residence in the palace on the acropolis of Panticapaeum, Mithridates was preparing for a new campaign against Rome. By 64 BC Mithridates' new army consisted of 6 thousand combat units trained according to Roman custom, and of a great many others: steppe nomads, mountaineers, archers, spearmen and slingers. Mithridates minted coins, stocked up on grain and food; cut wood for ships and siege engines; founded factories for the production of armor, spears, swords and shells. As Appian writes, many of the king’s supporters recoiled from him: they were frightened by the grandiose scale of Mithridates’ ideas. Among them was his beloved son and heir Pharnaces, who rebelled against his father - from the window of the palace Mithridates saw how the crowd welcomed Pharnaces as the new king.
After all his requests to be given the opportunity to freely leave Panticapaeum by Pharnaces were rejected, Mithridates decided, in order not to surrender to the mercy of the victorious Romans, to take his own life and take poison. He opened a secret compartment in the hilt of his dagger and took out a small vial of poison. The king and his daughters, Mithridatis and Nissa, took the poison while the chief of the guard, Bituitus, guarded them. When the two girls died, Mithridates drank the rest, but the poison had no effect - his body, invulnerable to poisons as a result of consuming microscopic doses of poison throughout his life, turned out to be stronger. When it became obvious that the poison was not working, Mithridates took out his sword and tried to stab himself, but physical weakness and mental pain did not allow him to stab himself. At this moment, the king called his faithful bodyguard Bituit and ordered him to stab him with a dagger.
Ancient historians write that after the bodies were discovered in the tower, Pharnaces sent word to Pompey and asked permission to rule his father's kingdom as a friend of the Roman people. Pharnaces embalmed his father's body, dressed in royal dress and armor, and sent it along with the royal weapons, scepter and other treasures across the Black Sea to Pontus. Other ships carried the bodies of members of the royal family (including Mithriadatis and Nyssa) and the surviving royal children (Artaphernes, Eupatra, Orsabaris and little Darius, Oxatra, Xerxes and Cyrus).
When this news reached Pompey a few months later, who was in camp between Petra and Jericho, he went to Pontus to receive the remains of his enemy. But when Pompey’s soldiers opened the king’s coffin on the shore, the face of the deceased was completely unrecognizable! Everyone knew well, thanks to widely published portraits on coins and statues, what Mithridates looked like, but due to the decomposition it was almost impossible to identify the body. According to Plutarch, the embalming was not carried out very well: the face decomposed because the brain was not removed. It was impossible to see on the decomposed face of the deceased the noticeable scar on the forehead from the lightning that struck him in childhood. For the same reason, the scar on his cheek from a wound received as a result of a battle in 67 BC could not be seen.
The only evidence that the deceased was King Mithridates were the signs of royal dignity in the coffin.
The armor, chain mail and greaves corresponded to the heroic build of Mithridates; the helmet was ornamented; the body is covered with a purple cloak; the rich sword of Mithridates - the scabbard alone cost 400 talents; a scepter encrusted with precious stones and a golden crown. Plutarch reports that Pompey admired these things and "looked with wonder at the clothes that the king wore and his magnificent and precious weapons." After Pompey left, the Roman officers and some people who had previously served Mithridates surrounded the prey like jackals: they took the scabbard and began to squabble over the crown and other treasures.
According to Cassius Dio, Mithridates' body was placed "in the family tomb." Plutarch and Appian believed that the king was buried “in the tombs of the kings in Sinope,” since it was the royal residence of Pontus. However, extensive modern archaeological excavations in Sinope have not revealed any tombs that could be the burial place of Mithridates himself or his royal ancestors. So the ambiguities surrounding Mithridates' body are further compounded by the uncertainty about his grave. The mysterious circumstances of the death of such an outstanding figure of the ancient world as Mithridates, for many centuries, attracted the attention of historians and biographers of the Pontic king, writers, playwrights, and artists.
Interestingly, the great French playwright Jean Racine began his famous tragedy Mithridates (1673) with the fake death of Mithridates. Mozart's opera (1770) also opens with the appearance of Mithridates after rumors of his death have passed. Historian Brian McGing suggested in 1998 that the story of Mithridates' suicide in a tower of the Panticapaean acropolis may have been invented by Pharnaces, perhaps to avoid charges of parricide. A number of historians and biographers of Mithridates admit that Mithridates remained alive and safely left Panticapaeum. If anyone was capable of orchestrating a ruse to deceive the Romans into believing that Mithridates was dead, it was Mithridates himself. A brilliant escape artist, he often evaded capture through cunning and trickery and repeatedly traveled incognito among his own subjects. Mithridates repeatedly cheated death - and at least four times he disappeared and was presumed dead.
Moreover, Mithridates was an excellent expert on Greek myths and theatricality was his natural element. Ancient tragedies and comedies are often based on the fact that a hero is mistaken for another and the plot revolves around characteristic scars, moles, gestures, favorite things. Mithridates knew the story of how the body of Alexander the Great was faked. Alexander's best friend, Ptolemy, stole his body from Babylon and secretly transported it to Alexandria, Egypt. To throw competitors off the scent, Ptolemy ordered sculptors to make a realistic wax figure of Alexander and dressed it in royal clothes.
This double was placed on a luxurious hearse of silver, gold and ivory in one of Alexander's own magnificent Persian carriages. The copy, surrounded by Alexander's royal regalia, deceived his pursuers, while the real body was carried in a modest cart along an unknown road to Egypt.
Another irrefutable proof of Mithridates’ escape is the fate of his devoted Amazon companion Hypsicratia. The disappearance from the historical record of this interesting woman, the brave horsewoman who was so closely associated with Mithridates in the last years of his life, leaves a blank page which is too curious to be forgotten. No ancient source mentions Hypsicratia after the winter of 63 BC. The recent discovery by Russian archaeologists in Phanagoria proves that Hypsicratia survived the crossing of the Caucasus and was with Mithridates when he reconquered the Bosporan kingdom. The inscription on the base of the Hypsicratic statue, read by archaeologists, honors her as the wife of King Mithridates Eupator Dionysus. Unfortunately, the statue itself has not survived to this day, but the inscription says that Hypsicratia was revered in the Bosporan kingdom as a queen - the wife of Mithridates.
The historian Adrienne Meyor discovered in one of the medieval Scandinavian sagas of the 9th century a legend about how a barbarian tribe from the Sea of Azov, in alliance with Mithridates, realized their dream of one day invading Italy. Led by their leader Odin, the tribe fled Roman rule after Pompey's victory, moving to Northern Europe and Scandinavia. They became the Goths, who, still inspired by the old struggle of Mithridates, avenged his defeat by crushing the Roman Empire. According to the poet William Wordsworth, an ancient legend tells how
... The defeated Mithridates went north,
Hidden in the fog of years, he turned around
He is in Odin, the Father of the tribes, from whom
The Empire is dead...
Adrienne Mayor suggests that “on a May morning in 63 BC, galloping across a wide expanse of green grass strewn with scarlet wild peonies, Mithridates threw off his royal vestments and chose the life of a nomad for the rest of the century. In this story, he and Hypsicracy would live among “wild” men and women who love to wander through endless spaces... In this new life, our couple would have free time to tell each other the story of their lives. Hypsicracy spoke about its people in the Caucasus, among whom freedom and equality reign. Thanks to his Persian heredity and antidotes, Mithridates could have lived another five, ten, or even twenty years... Over time, Mithridates could have died in battle or hunting, or died peacefully in his sleep. Mithridates’ friends would have buried him the way nomads are usually buried - with a horse and a small treasure of gold treasures and cameo rings, in an unnamed mound in the steppe.”
And another very interesting hypothesis is expressed by A. Mayor. About 16 years after the death of Mithridates (63 BC) in 47 BC. For the first time in historical sources the name of the historian Hypsicrates is mentioned. Having suppressed Pharnaces' attempt to regain the lost kingdom of his father, Julius Caesar captured Pontus and released a prisoner of war named Hypsicrates in Amis. This Hypsicrates accompanied Caesar as his historian on campaigns and wrote treatises on the history, geography and military affairs of Pontus and the Bosporan kingdom. The works of Hypsicrates have not reached us, but they were cited by other historians. Thus, Strabo, a native of Pontus, cited Hypsicrates as an authority on two very significant topics: the military fortifications of the Bosporan kingdom and the life and customs of the Amazons of the Caucasian region. Hypsicrates died at the age of 92.
“This series of striking coincidences uniting Hypsicracy and Hypsicrates,” writes A. Meior, “remained unnoticed by modern scientists.
A. Meior believes that the historian, known under the name Hypsicrates, was none other than Mithridates’ beloved companion, Hypsicrates. A. Mayor suggests that at some point after 63 BC. Hypsicracy returned to Pontus. Disguised as a man, she began to lead the life of a scholar in Amis and was captured by Caesar after the Battle of Zela in 47 BC. The fate of the female captive was unenviable. A distinguished man such as Hypsicrates was in an advantageous position. Caesar, impressed by the unique knowledge about the kingdom of Mithridates and its recent history that Hypsicrates possessed - and perhaps knowing about the “sex change” and who the scientist really was - made Hypsicrates his personal historian.
“Who was better prepared than Hypsicracy to preserve the history of Mithridates and his kingdom? – asks A. Mayor. “She loved Mithridates and fought with him side by side. She knew everything the king knew - his personal stories, desires and achievements. If Hypsicrates subsequently wrote books as the historian Hypsicrates, she may well have been the source of many of the details about the character and reign of Mithridates that other ancient historians have preserved."
Fyodor Savchuk, local historian.
WARS OF KING MITRIDATES
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Diophantine Wars in Crimea.
Archaeologists in Taman have excavated the palace of King Mithridates
21:57 05/08/2009 “What we saw is a symbiosis of literary, written and archaeological evidence that completely corresponds to each other. This happens extremely rarely in world archeology, it is a great success, it is a scientific sensation.” “, - the head of the excavations, the head of the Taman expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Kuznetsov, said in an interview with RIA Novosti on Wednesday. According to him, scientists have been working for several years in Phanagoria, which is the largest ancient city on the territory of modern Russia. By the 1st century BC, this city was one of the main centers of the Hellenistic Bosporan kingdom, which, during the time of the Pontic king Mithridates VI, became part of Pontus, a state on the southern and eastern coast of the Black Sea. Wife with a man's name “We have carried out and continue to work in the flooded part of the city. Three years ago, during underwater excavations, we found a marble tombstone on which was written the name of the wife in the masculine gender: "Hypsicrates, wife of King Mithridates, Goodbye". This perplexed us because we did not understand what we were talking about,” Kuznetsov said. However, later, the scientist says, a mention was found in the ancient historian Plutarch that Mithridates’ wife Hypsicrates was very courageous, accompanied the king on campaigns, taking care of him, and for this courage he nicknamed her with the masculine name Hypsicrates. “It turned out to be a very interesting story - our find, an epigraphic inscription, confirms the words of the biographer. He apparently knew this situation. And those who buried her highlighted this intimate detail in the writing of the name - the name that the king called his wife.” , says the archaeologist. Rebellion and death This year, excavations in Phanagoria yielded even more sensational finds: the palace of Mithridates was found - the Phanagorian acropolis that burned down in ancient times. "In a fortified citadel we found the remains of a large building that had been destroyed in a very severe fire. Based on the coins found in the ashes - we found quite a large number of coins thrown during the fire - we dated this fire to approximately the 1st century BC," - Kuznetsov said. According to him, it was a huge palace, a large amount of broken dishes, a large number of coins were found in it - people fled in panic, throwing money - almost 300 coins were found in total. Scientists connected this fire with the story of another ancient historian, Appian, who described the numerous wars of Mithridates with Rome. In the book "The Mithridatic Wars" he writes that in 63 BC Phanagoria rebelled against the king. The rebels surrounded the acropolis, where the garrison and the king's children were located. “The besiegers set fire to the acropolis, it burned, and the elder brother, who was responsible for the lives of the younger children, surrendered, and over time the children were transported to Rome, and there, as representatives of the conquered peoples, they were paraded in triumph through the city.” , says Kuznetsov. He added that the tombstone tells us something that the historian Appian did not say: “Among Mithridates’ relatives was his wife. Apparently, she died during the uprising. Subsequently, she was buried in the necropolis of Phanagoria, and after 450 years her tombstone ended up in the sea, it was used for the foundation of port structures.” “The result is the following picture: an uprising in Phanagoria against Mithridates, the siege of the acropolis on which there is a military garrison, the wife and children of Mithridates, his garrison dies, his wife dies, the children are captured, sent to Rome, and all these events described by ancient historians confirmed by our archaeological excavations" , notes the scientist. “I emphasize once again that this is a coincidence of archaeological materials and ancient written sources, which together give this picture. Some sources confirm others and vice versa.” , he concluded.
Material from the site: http://www.rian.ru/science/20090805/179876059.html |
