Here Athenion paused and wiped his face, giving the multitude time to absorb and exclaim over this news.
Athenians! We must not bear this state of anarchy any longer, imposed by the Roman Senate while it controls our government. The Romans have closed our temples and let our schools fall to dust. Our theaters are off limits and our courts of justice and schools of philosophy are silenced. They have even taken the Pnyx, our sacred place of Assembly, away from the people!
After this rousing speech, the crowd rushed to the Theater of Dionysus and voted to elect Athenion general of the citizen army. Athenion accepted the generalship, a one-year post. “Now, Athenians,” he declared, “you yourselves are your own generals, and I am commander-in-chief. If each of you exert everything in your power to cooperate, I shall be able to do as much as all of you put together!” Nine archons, high officials, were selected, following ancient democratic practice. Archaeologists have discovered an inscription with their names, showing that the men were all from prominent Athenian families.
Athenaeus (like other Roman-era writers) characterized the philosopher as a dictator seizing power: “Athenion thus appointed himself tyrant.” Yet as Athenaeus himself describes, Athenion was democratically elected by the majority of citizens in Athens, according to the traditional process set out in the ancient Athenian constitution. Other contradictions in Athenaeus’s account reveal his antidemocratic biases and his resort to stock insults. For example, he calls Athenion’s mother a “lowly Egyptian slave” and accuses him of growing fabulously wealthy as a philosophy teacher, even while he reviles him as impoverished. The historian Strabo, writing in the generation after the Mithradatic Wars, also asserted that Mithradates “placed tyrants in Athens who violently oppressed the city.” In fact, as modern historians agree, these leaders were elected by majority vote, by an electorate that included all classes.13
The restoration of democracy in Athens gave Athenion a mandate in a city previously controlled by Roman conquerors and elite sympathizers among the citizenry. Athenaeus’s report of what happened next in Athens is elaborately detailed, portrayed as a “reign of terror” by the democratic majority. The events he describes were probably based on the experiences of Romans and pro-Roman Greek aristocrats who escaped prosecution and death after Athenion’s election. Athenion placed guards at the city’s gates, but many Romans and their sympathizers fled over the walls by night. Athenion sent out soldiers in pursuit, killing some and imprisoning others. Citizen assemblies and people’s courts were convened. Athenians who collaborated with Romans were tried for treason. The convicted were beaten or executed, their property confiscated. Later that year, because of disruptions in trade, food and supplies became scarce in the city. Athenion had to order strict rations on barley and wheat. In Athenaeus’s snide words, the “ignorant Athenians were forced to subsist on grain that was barely enough to keep a chicken alive.”14
Had Mithradates informed Athenion of his secret plans to wipe out Romans in Anatolia? Did Athenion order similar actions in Athens? The violence against Romans and their supporters in Athens after Athenion’s election does parallel what was occurring in the cities of Anatolia in 88 BC. Mithradates appealed to both rich and poor, but any opposition that arose always came from aristocratic quarters. As in Athens, Roman collaborators among Anatolian oligarchic families lost their lives. For example, in Adramyttion, one of the towns where Romans were massacred, the local philosopher-statesman Diodorus, a partisan of Mithradates, was elected general. Diodorus had some members of the city council killed—undoubtedly these were aristocratic supporters of Rome.15
The restored democracy in Athens, with Athenion and his successor Aristion elected on anti-Roman platforms, prepared the way for the coordinated arrival of Mithradates’ liberation forces in Greece. A host of barbarian allies, led by his son Arcathius, marched out from Pontus across Bithynia and Thrace to northern Greece. At the same time, a large Pontic fleet and army, commanded by Metrophanes, occupied Euboea and Thessaly. Meanwhile, Archelaus’s troops took Delos by force. The sacred island served as the treasure house of the Aegean, controlled by Rome. Traditionally allied with Athens, the Greek residents of Delos had welcomed Mithradates early in his reign and honored him with the monument decorated with statues of the king and a dozen of his friends. But now Delos was pledged to aid Rome. After the massacre in 88 BC, the Italian residents who dominated the island took up hammers and smashed the fine marble portraits in the Mithradates Monument on Delos, obliterating the faces of Mithradates and his friends.
All the while, Mithradates’ shipbuilders had been expanding his navy for the attack on Rhodes, still loyal to Rome. Now, bidding farewell to Queen Monime, Mithradates boarded his flagship as supreme naval commander of the fleet bound for Rhodes. The Rhodians hurried to “strengthen their walls and harbors and erect engines of war everywhere,” recruiting reinforcements from the mainland.16
THE BATTLE FOR RHODES
Rhodes, as Mithradates was well aware, had defended itself forcefully against Demetrius Poliorcetes, “Besieger of Cities,” back in 305/304 BC. That grueling siege went down in history as one of the greatest battles in antiquity. Demetrius’s engineers had erected the tallest, most powerful mechanized siege tower ever built. The “City Taker” was 130 feet high, weighed 160 tons, and was equipped with 16 heavy catapults. It required relays of more than 3,000 men to activate it. Iron plates fireproofed the wooden tower, and curtains of soaking wet wool and seaweed protected the windows from the Rhodians’ fusillades of fiery arrows and flaming oil grenades. Demetrius had also deployed a 180-foot-long battering ram manned by 1,000 soldiers, and he constructed huge drills for boring through walls. Despite all this technology, however, Rhodes had repelled the invader after a year of fierce fighting. Both sides won everlasting fame. Demetrius’s glorious failure was materialized for all to see. The Rhodians melted the metal from his abandoned siege equipment to create the massive Colossus of Rhodes.17
Mithradates intended to outdo Demetrius. Planning his attack by sea and land, Mithradates’ engineers constructed a sambuca, an immense tower mounted on two ships. It had a movable wicker bridge, for scaling city walls from the sea. Meanwhile, Mithradates’ land forces massed at Caunus; from there they would sail to join the Pontic navy at Rhodes.
Appian and other historians described the battle for Rhodes. As Mithradates’ grand navy, decked out with magnificent carved figureheads and fancy equipment, hove into view, the people of Rhodes took drastic, “scorched earth” measures, destroying and burning the outskirts of the city to deny Mithradates shelter and food. The Rhodian navy, commanded by the experienced and bold Greek admiral Damagoras, advanced, ready to attack the Pontic ships head-on. Mithradates, sailing ahead in his quinquereme (the largest warship of the day), saw that he greatly outnumbered the Rhodians and ordered his vessels to encircle the enemy. But Damogoras quickly withdrew within Rhodes’ walled harbor, and the Rhodians prepared to fight from their city walls. Mithradates camped in the burned-over suburbs outside the city, while his ships continually probed the harbor.18
But the Rhodians maintained their defensive advantage. Damagoras sent a bireme (a small, fast ship with two decks of rowers) to engage one of Mithradates’ merchant vessels. Mithradates sent a multitude of warships into the fray, fighting with zeal, but his sailors were inexperienced and undisciplined compared to the expert Rhodians. Damogoras skillfully rammed Mithradates’ vessels. The Rhodians came away with a great many costly figureheads and rich spoils, as well as a Pontic trireme and crew.
The next day, Damogoras took six swift ships out to search for a lost ship. Mithradates’ royal quinquereme and twenty-five of his fastest ships set off in pursuit. Damogoras cleverly evaded Mithradates all day, drawing him far out to sea. At sunset, as Damagoras expected, Mithradates ordered his ships to turn back. At that point, Damagoras plowed into them, ramming the enemy ships in the dark. During the confusion, while Mithradates was yelling orders at his sailors, one of his allied trireme
s—from Chios—rammed hard into Mithradates’ own ship. The king’s quinquereme somehow survived the jarring impact. In the thick of battle, Mithradates continued fighting. But Damagoras sank two Pontic ships and drove two others all the way to the Lycian coast.
FIG. 8.2. During the naval battle for Rhodes in 88 BC, Mithradates’ ship was rammed by an allied Chian ship (center). (Foreground) archers aim fire missiles. Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War video game screenshot, courtesy of Midway Games, Inc.
Rattled by the surprising successes of the outnumbered Rhodians, Mithradates brooded suspiciously on the collision with the Chian ship during the night battle. Was it deliberate? He had the Chian pilot and the lookout sailor flogged. From that day on, says Appian, Mithradates “conceived a hatred for all Chians.” Someday he would find a way to get even.
Ominous prodigies began to undermine Mithradates’ morale. In the burned-over countryside, where Mithradates was camped, a gang of crows suddenly attacked a vulture. Then that night, a “huge star” (a meteorite?) fell on the very spot where the vulture had been pecked to death. The king’s Magi and soothsayers muttered grimly.
The campaign for Rhodes was not going well. Where were his land forces? Mithradates’ troops were supposed to board merchant vessels and triremes in Caunus and join him. In fact, they had set sail, but a massive storm drove the battered fleet toward Rhodes in no condition to fight. Damagoras’s navy sailed out and “fell upon the ships while they were still scattered and suffering the effects of the tempest. Damagoras captured some ships, rammed and sank others, and burned still more.” The Rhodians took four hundred prisoners that day.
Some Rhodian deserters appeared in camp requesting a meeting with Mithradates. Perhaps things were looking up. The men led the king to the highest mountain on the island, a two-hour climb up to the walled Temple of Zeus. Here Mithradates decided to station some soldiers, with instructions to create a fire signal later that night. Then he sent half of his army under cover onto his ships, directing the other half to sneak into positions with scaling ladders. At the fire signal from the mountain, all would attack Rhodes by land and sea simultaneously. But some Rhodian sentries posted on another hill detected the sneaky movements and lit a fire. Mithradates’ army and the naval contingent, thinking this was the fire signal from Zeus’s temple, were tricked into attacking too early. The Rhodians rushed to their walls and beat off Mithradates’ men. Somehow, it seemed that the Rhodians had been prepared for his surprise attack. Had those “deserters” been double agents?
It was time to bring up the sambuca. The enormous contraption, astride two ships, drew up alongside the outer seawall of the Temple of Isis, great mother goddess of Asia. The back wall of her temple formed part of the harbor fortifications. Mithradates’ men labored to operate the pulleys of the sambuca to raise the bridge to the top of the wall, so that the soldiers, massed in small ships below with ladders, could swarm into the city.
The Rhodians were struck with fear at the sight of the colossal siege machine. Its approach must have aroused anxiety for Cassius and the little group of Roman refugees inside the walls too. Mithradates’ troops began to clamber up the sambuca. Suddenly a great cheer went up among the Rhodians. Mithradates’ grand structure was collapsing under the weight of all the men. And just at that moment, a glowing apparition of the goddess Isis appeared atop her temple! The goddess hurled a great fireball down onto the sambuca and the men clinging to it. The huge contraption fell burning into the sea.
The Rhodians had long been masters of fire power. During the fight against Demetrius in 305 BC, the entire night sky was lit up by spectacular fire missiles dipped in burning pitch and sulphur. Demetrius had been stunned: Rhodians fired more than eight hundred flaming projectiles in a single night! Now Mithradates was beginning to appreciate Demetrius’s decision to sue for peace with Rhodes. Was the vision of the goddess throwing masses of fire an illusion caused by a burst of awesome Rhodian incendiary power? Another meteor? A case of freak lightning? It didn’t matter: for Mithradates’ dispirited army, Isis’s anger was a very bad omen.
Mithradates despaired of taking Rhodes. Undefeated but displeased, he sailed away to the coast of Lycia, leaving the charred remains of his sambuca floating in the sea below the temple walls. Damagoras, itching to finish off Mithradates, would have another chance, but that duel lay years ahead.19
THE FURIES
On the coast of Lycia, Mithradates and his general Pelopidas decided to lay siege to Patara (Lycian Pttara), an ally of Rhodes and Rome. Nearby, the Temple of Apollo boasted an oracle nearly as famous as Delphi. If Mithradates consulted this oracle, he and his soothsayers observed a school of sacred fish summoned by a flute, as Apollo’s priests scattered bits of meat on the water. If the fish devoured the scraps, all was well; if they flipped the offering away with their tails, things looked bad. Given the trajectory of Mithradatic omens in this campaign, the fish probably turned tail.
Lycia was also the center of worship of the Anatolian and Greek mother goddesses Eni, Cybele, and Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis. Leto’s sanctuary has been uncovered by archaeologists in the lush Xanthus valley near Patara’s shore. Mithradates ordered his men to cut down the old trees along the beautiful white sand beach. He knew this grove was sacred to Leto, but he desperately needed wood to rebuild his siege machines. That night, however, the king tossed and turned in his tent. The goddess Leto appeared in a dream and warned Mithradates to spare her sacred trees. Mithradates and his Magi took dreams very seriously—they analyzed and recorded not just the king’s dreams but those of his concubines as well.20
More bad news came in the morning. Some other Greek islands had defected, joining Delos, pledging to help Rome. They must be punished. Resourceful enemies, angry gods, evil omens, bad weather, stubborn fish, now even his once-loyal allies—everything seemed to be turning against him. Suspicion coiled in Mithradates’ guts; paranoia raised its Hydra heads. First Isis, now Leto. Mother goddesses in particular seemed upset with him. How to placate them? The dour seers in his entourage began murmuring the names of the Furies, she-demons of justice who haunted murderers, especially those who had killed their own mothers and families. These horrid hags, carrying scorpion whips, hair writhing with poisonous serpents and eyes dripping blood, were relentless avengers, hounding a murderer till he or she went insane with guilt and terror. The Furies had sent famous Greek heroes over the brink of madness, and mortals—even emperors—feared them. Mithradates, steeped in Greek myth and drama, may well have believed he was being pursued by the Furies for his murders, particularly of his mother and siblings.
FIG. 8.3. Mithradates portrait, marble, life-size. Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
Could this be the explanation for the sensational story that Mithradates sacrificed a virgin to the Furies after the failure to take Rhodes? The incident appears in a list of omens by the Roman historian Livy, now lost but preserved in the Book of Prodigies by A. Julius Obsequens. For the year 88 BC, several prodigies were reported in Rome associated with “Mithradates’ preparations for war with Rome’s allies.” Some, like the apparition of Isis at the battle for Rhodes, are confirmed by other sources.
Mithradates and his Magi went to a sacred Grove of the Furies, a forest of dark yew trees. Pregnant sheep and turtledoves were the usual sacrificial animals for the Daughters of the Night. Just as Mithradates began to kindle the fire for his sacrifice of the ewe and dove, the sound of supernatural laughter filled the grove. According to Livy and Obsequens, this terrified everyone present, interrupting the ritual. Mithradates’ Magi conferred and instructed the king that he needed to sacrifice a virgin on the altar of the Furies. A young girl was procured. The next evening Mithradates began the incantations again, the knife poised over the victim’s neck. But all of a sudden, the girl herself began laughing in a frightening, mirthless way. Her hysterical laughter, echoing the horrible laughter of the Furies, completely disrupted the sacrifice.
Is it p
lausible that Mithradates really intended to sacrifice a human being? It seems shocking, but the practice was not unknown in his or in the Roman world. According to Herodotus, the Magi took pleasure in killing living things with their bare hands: animals, snakes, birds, butterflies, and ants. We know that the Magi sometimes ordered human sacrifice, ritually killing young boys and girls to ensure victory in battle. For example, when Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 BC, his Magi buried alive nine children abducted from Greek families. For their part, Athens and Sparta had killed Persian ambassadors as ritual sacrifices, and some Greek generals made vows to the Furies before battle—either to excuse the slaughter of innocents or to ask the Sacred Avengers to support their cause. Mithradates knew the Greek plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, describing how King Agamemnon sacrificed his own virgin daughter Iphigenia to ensure good sailing winds at the beginning of the Trojan War.
But human sacrifice was not just something from old myths or deep antiquity. Surprisingly, in 97 BC, just a decade before Mithradates lost Rhodes, the Roman Senate found it necessary to pass a decree outlawing human sacrifice. The Druids in Gaul and cults in Spain and Carthage practiced human sacrifice, but the Senate’s decree was directed at preventing such “barbarian” practices in the city of Rome itself. Indeed, the Romans had sacrificed humans in recent memory. During the Hannibalic Wars, the Romans buried alive two Greeks and two Gauls, as ordered by the soothsayers who interpreted the Sibylline Books. The Romans had carried out a similar sacrifice as recently as 114 BC, just before the Jugurthine War, again burying alive two Greeks and two Gauls.21
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.
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy Page 22