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

by Adrienne Mayor

  Unless new evidence emerges—say, a verifiable recipe on papyrus or stone, or sealed jars of the king’s own Mithridatium containing residue, or Mithradates’ mummified corpse sufficiently preserved to allow an autopsy and hair and bone sampling—the Poison King’s universal antidote is irretrievable. Yet Mithradates’ ambitious goal of creating a “universal antidote” lives on. Serguei Popov, a top scientist in the ultrasecret Soviet bioweapons program (based in the homeland of the Agari), defected to the United States in 1992. Popov now seeks to perfect a broad-spectrum biodefense, a “universal” antidote to promote immunity to a wide range of biotoxins and “weapons-grade” pathogens. Like the Janus-faced pharmaka of the Mithridatium, the materials Popov works with carry the potential for great harm or great good.25

  Mithradates took further precautions against assassination by poison, employing guards in his kitchens and royal tasters. Some metals and certain other crystals and stones were said to detect—even neutralize—poison in wine or food. Mithradates and his best friends surely owned “poison cups,” chalices of electrum, a gold and silver alloy. A goblet of electrum revealed the presence of poison when iridescent colors rippled across the metallic surface with a crackling sound, apparently the result of a chemical reaction. Red coral, amber, “adamas,” and glossopetra (“tongue stones”) were thought to have magical properties against poison. Tongue stones (fossilized giant shark teeth from limestone deposits) would “sweat” or change color on contact with poison; ground into power, they deactivated poison. In fact, the calcium carbonate in fossils does react with arsenic. In a chemical process called chelation, the arsenic molecules are mopped up by the calcium carbonate.26

  Mithradates tested the nature of poisons for many reasons besides immunity. Which poisons were best for efficient, undetectable assassination? What if one found oneself in the situation of Hannibal or Jugurtha, with enemies closing in and no escape route? Which poison was ideal for suicide? We know that Mithradates carried suicide capsules and distributed them to Dorylaus, his generals, and close friends. Those capsules, concealed in rings, bracelets, amulets, or sword hilts, obviously contained an extremely fast-acting, relatively gentle, lethal poison with no known antidote.27

  AGATES AND ART

  Mithradates’ dominions were rich in mineral resources. Perhaps toxic pigments such as red cinnabar, yellow orpiment, blue azurite, and green malachite led to his fascination with gemology, the magical properties of precious metals and gems. Mithradates himself wrote a treatise on the powers of amber, sacred to the Sun. He corresponded with the leading gemologist of the day, Zachalias, a Jew in Babylon who dedicated his treatises to the king. Mithradates was especially fond of agates, beautiful translucent forms of chalcedony. Gazing on agates’ colored bands and speckled, swirling patterns was thought to bring pleasant dreams; agates from Sicily were said to repel scorpions; and the Magi advised athletes to wear red agates ro become invincible. Zachalias recommended wearing a ring of heliotrope (“sun reflecting,” a green jasper agate flecked with red iron oxide) to make one a convincing speaker. Mithradates often gave agate rings with his likeness to his ambassadors, to help them argue his case before the Romans and others.28

  Mithradates’ vast dactylotheke—collection of agate rings—was renowned. In his love of carved gemstones, Mithradates followed Alexander, the first to inspire the popularity of glyptics, the intricate art of engraving animals, mythic scenes, and other images on intaglio seals and cameos (reliefs on sardonyx, a multilayered agate). The only artist permitted to create gem portraits of Alexander was his personal engraver, Pyrgoteles. Like Alexander, Mithradates patronized his own highly skilled engravers and artisans.

  A connoisseur of precious objets d’art, Mithradates owned thousands of cups, pitchers, plates, and bowls of polished agate from the Rhodopi Mountains, Crimea, and Colchis, and onyx and rock crystal from Cappadocia. His treasury at Talaura alone held two thousand onyx and gold drinking cups, wine kraters, and drinking horns. A precious burnished agate pitcher now in the Louvre was believed to have belonged to Mithradates. Artisans achieved its unique dark brown coloring by slowly heating Rhodopian agate in honey.

  The rare beauty of Mithradates’ collection inspired a fashion for agates among the Roman aristocracy. Mithradates’ dactylotheke ended up in Roman hands after his death in 63 BC. Pompey dedicated several large chests of his carved gems to Rome’s Temple of Jupiter; Julius Caesar placed six of Mithradates’ agate rings in the Temple of Venus; and other rings were dedicated to the Temple of Apollo. Some of Mithradates’ agates and miniature gem portraits have survived. During the Crusades, the Venetians plundered Constantinople, dispersing many fine Mithradatic agates among European royalty. Agates from rich hoards and royal tombs of Mithradates’ friends, envoys, and concubines, and some belonging to Mithradates himself, found their way into Catherine the Great’s personal dactylotheke of ten thousand ancient cameos. The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg now stores a large collection of exquisite cameos, many taken from wealthy Mithradatic-era tombs around the Crimea.29

  FIG. 11.2. The Mithradates vase. Polished and carved sardonyx (Rhodopian agate), 7 inches high. The burnt-caramel coloring was achieved by heating with honey. Louvre. Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.

  Mithradates also amassed bejeweled caskets, golden horse trappings, curios and ornaments, armor and weapons set with precious stones, jewelry, vintage robes, carpets and tapestries, and unique scientific instruments. He inherited antique couches and chairs from Darius I, and Mithradates himself enjoyed making furniture of maple and nut woods. On state occasions, the king sat on a fancy throne under a silk canopy, carried an ornate scepter, and rode in a chariot studded with gems. The opening of the Silk Road from India and China (120 BC) to the Black Sea meant that he could acquire silks, brocades, jade, cinnabar, rare spices, exotic drugs, and hardy camels from Bactria and Margiana (Afghanistan and Turkmenistan). An admirer of fine art, Mithradates could afford the highest quality and the best artists (Reinach believed that Mithradates himself had the “soul of an artist”). His coin portraits are remarkable for their clarity and beauty, vigor and kinetic energy. Their superb artistic quality advertised Mithradates as a discerning patron of high culture. Some coin profiles, with windswept hair, evoke a futuristic illusion of speed and progress, hinting at Mithradates’ ability to escape danger (see figs. 9.1, 12.1, 13.2).30

  A handsome bronze krater, over two feet high, shows off the skills of Mithradates’ craftsmen—and reveals the complex destinies of his treasures. Part of his largesse to supporters in Greece, this inscribed krater was given to a gymnasion (college, probably in Athens) early in his reign. The members called themselves the Eupatoristai after their patron Eupator, who promised to liberate Greece. During the First Mithradatic War, this krater was apparently plundered by Sulla and taken to Rome. Two hundred years later, the krater belonged to the emperor Nero, who kept it in his luxurious seaside villa at Antium (Anzio). Unearthed from the villa’s ruins by Pope Benedict XIV in the eighteenth century, the krater is now a centerpiece in Rome’s Capitoline Museum.31

  FIG. 11.3. Bronze krater of Mithradates, 27 inches high, 120–63 BC, discovered in Nero’s Villa, Anzio, eighteenth century, Benedict XIV donation MC1068. Capitoline Collection, Rome.

  During Mithradates’ reign, cosmopolitian Pontus on the Black Sea became the intellectual and cultural capital of the ancient world, drawing sophisticated artists and scholars from many lands. A lover of Greek poetry, literature, music, and theater, Mithradates sponsored plays, dramatic readings, and musical contests. Tyrannio the Grammarian, a leading poetic orator, was one of many stars in Mithradates’ court. The modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (b. 1863) imagined the private thoughts of a Cappadocian poet in Mithradates’ retinue. In Cavafy’s poem, this poet is penning an epic about Darius I, commissioned by Mithradates. Suddenly he is interrupted by a servant shouting that the Roman army is coming. The terrified poet realizes that Mithradates’ interest in poetry will be
set aside in favor of war. Before taking cover, the poet searches for the perfect phrase to describe the Persian king and, by implication, Mithradates. The final words on the page: “arrogance and exultation.”32

  A MUSICAL INTERLUDE

  As we’ve seen, an evening with the king might feature any manner of entertainments, from rowdy drinking contests and shocking poison pageants to elegant cultural events. At one of the royal banquets, a musician brought along his pretty daughter. She played the cithara for Mithradates while he was savoring a mellow old wine. Female harpists were unusual. Mithradates was charmed, perhaps recalling that Aristonicus’s mother had played the cithara. The girl’s Macedonian name, Stratonice, was a good omen (“Victory in War”). Plutarch says that Stratonice made “such a swift conquest that Mithradates immediately took her away to his bed,” without a word to her father.

  FIG. 11.4. Stratonice may have resembled this flirtatious cithara player, Greek terracotta, ca. 200 BC. Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

  The next morning the distraught father awoke to find his tables laden with silver beakers and golden dishes. Servants and smiling eunuchs held out beautiful garments. Outside his humble house stood a fine horse caparisoned like those of the king’s knights. Assuming the fairy-tale trappings were a mean practical joke, the man tried to run away. The retainers explained the situation. Stratonice was now Mithradates’ favorite concubine, held in such high esteem that the king was bestowing the estate of a rich, recently deceased friend upon her father. The dubious musician was finally convinced. To the good-natured amusement of Mithradates and the townspeople, Stratonice’s father donned his new purple robe and rode through the streets on his handsome horse, shouting “All this mine! Mine! I’m mad with joy!”33

  KABEIRA

  Doctors, pharmacologists, botanists joined the artists who flocked to Pontus, along with architects, scientists, and military engineers, such as Niconides of Thessaly and Callimachus, who designed fortifications, catapults, siege machines, and other innovative projects. Not all of these scientists’ bold technological experiments were successful—remember the collapsing sambuca at Rhodes and the catastrophic Nike deus ex machina at Pergamon. But the ambitious construction projects at Kabeira were striking examples of Mithradates’ scientific interests and unlimited wealth.

  Young Mithradates had been struck by the natural beauty and defensibility of Kabeira, surrounded by steep mountains and forests of beech, maple, walnut, pine, and spruce, on the Lycos River. There were important cinnabar mines (toxic mercury ore used for pigments). Perhaps the Poison King knew a useful toxicological fact that modern scientists have only recently discovered, that mercury in the soil here taints the local wild mushrooms. On a remote rocky peak, Mithradates constructed Kainon Chorion (“New Castle”), a fortified treasury for precious valuables. The vaults contained not only gold and silver and priceless artworks, but also Mithradates’ private papers, court archives, and personal correspondence. Strabo, who traveled there, said it was about 200 stades (about 25 miles) north of Kabeira. In 1912, the ruins of this citadel were discovered, complete with underground stone staircases.34

  At Kabeira, Mithradates built towers to confine his younger sisters Nyssa, Roxana, and Statira, sentenced to lifelong spinsterhood. The king’s new lover, the cithara player Stratonice, became the lady of Kabeira: perhaps their son Xiphares was born here. Mithradates loved to relax at this luxurious, secure residence. The well-watered grounds, with willows, poplars, grape arbors, and apple trees, were surrounded by extensive gardens where the royal botanists tended plants and ducks nibbled hellebore and hemlock. Mithradates maintained a large zoological garden and game park at Kabeira, for rare creatures from far-flung allies and trading partners: ostriches, cobras and scorpions, crocodiles, pheasants from Colchis, Bactrian camels, perhaps an Indian elephant and tigers. Mithradates and Dorylaus and their friends stayed at the hunting lodge and chased rabbit, partridge, quail, fox, lynx, bear, and boar. The king modeled these lavish features on the Persian gardens, zoos, and hunting parks created by Cyrus, Xerxes, and Darius. He was also following the example of Alexander, who kept an exotic menagerie of lions, bears, mongooses, and ostriches.

  One of the most striking features of Kabeira was a very high waterfall. The prodigious force and volume of the waterfall inspired Mithradates and his engineers to harness the rushing water. They constructed the first water-powered mill. It was described by Strabo, who observed the mill or its ruins after the Mithradatic Wars. Until this invention of the water mill, humans and oxen had laboriously turned heavy grindstones to mill grain. After Strabo wrote his description of Mithradates’ mill at Kabeira, water-mill technology spread to Italy and Europe.35

  MASTER OF LANGUAGES

  Mithradates’ dazzling memory and facility with languages were legendary in his own time (and a book in several languages is still called a “mithridates”). The king was naturally endowed with these gifts from childhood. But he may also have benefited from special memory techniques taught by the leading philosopher in his court, Metrodorus the Roman Hater. Metrodorus invented a memory device based on the Zodiac and mythological stories. The twelve constellations were subdivided into 360 storage compartments, each “box” a category of information. This technique could be invaluable for toxicological experiments and languages.

  Mithradates far excelled Cyrus the Great, who knew the names of all his officers and satraps. Only one other individual in antiquity had linguistic abilities that even approached those of Mithradates. According to Plutarch, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt “spoke many languages and gave audiences to most foreign ambassadors without the help of interpreters.” She knew Greek and Latin, and some Ethiopian, Coptic, Hebrew, Median, Arabic, Syrian, and Persian. Mithradates was reportedly so fluent in the languages of his subjects and soldiers that he never required interpreters. Aulus Gellius remarked that “he was thoroughly conversant in the dialects of the 25 nations that he ruled, and spoke each language as if it were his native tongue.” Pliny, who personally studied Mithradates’ library and letters, declared, “Mithridates spoke or read the languages of 22 nations; he could address and listen to the petitions of all of his subject peoples without interpreters.” Valerius Maximus cited Mithradates’ linguistic proficiency as a shining example of “industrious study.”36

  Mithradates’ international court, allies, and armies presented unique opportunities. Consider Colchis: this region was said to have more than 100 tribes, each with a different dialect—Roman traders in Colchis required the services of 130 interpreters, according to Pliny. In the lands south of Colchis, 26 different tongues were spoken. It is unlikely that Mithradates learned every single dialect of these remote places, but he could make himself understood by most of his subjects.

  Which languages did Mithradates speak or read with ease? These are certain: Greek, Macedonian, Persian, Latin, Aramaic/Hebrew, Parthian, Armenian, Old and New Phrygian, Cappadocian, and the Gaulish dialect of his Galatian lover Adobogiona. Other languages may have included Avestan (Old Iranian, used in Zoroastrian prayers); Sanskrit (Hindu medical texts); Egyptian and Punic; Celtic/Gallic (perhaps Allobrogesean, the language of his bodyguard Bituitus). He knew some Anatolian tongues, such as Carian, Mysian, Isaurian, Lydian, Lycian (and Pisidian), and maybe had a smattering of Syriac, Elamite, and Sumerian (used in religious texts of the Seleucid era). He could have learned Italian dialects, Marsic, Oscan, and Umbrian; Thracian (spoken by many of his cavalry regiments; and Getic (spoken in Tomis on the Danube). Other possibilities include vestigal forms of Assyrian or Hittite and dialects of Colchis, Sarmatia, and Scythia.

  Mithradates’ ease with languages meant that he could receive and send messages in private, without risking wide knowledge of his dealings. In the peaceful interlude after the treaty of Dardanus, the king reigned uneventfully, shoring up his Black Sea Empire, building new strongholds, training armies, seeking new allies, and considering strategies vis-à-vis Rome.37 Meanwhile, what were his friends and foes up to?

>   TIGRANES THE GREAT, KING OF KINGS

  The Romans now controlled Bithynia and western Anatolia. To collect the massive fine of 20,000 talents imposed by Sulla, tax collectors returned to prey on Anatolia. Plutarch compared them to “harpies, stealing the food of the people,” causing “unspeakable and incredible misfortune.” In fact, Sulla’s fine had been paid off. Roman creditors had already made a profit of 20,000 talents—their exorbitant interest rates had inflated the total public debt to an astronomical 120,000 talents. Anatolian families were forced to sell their young sons and virgin daughters into prostitution and slavery; towns sold sacred statues and temple dedications. The Roman creditors were vicious, torturing debtors before selling them into bondage. The land was also oppressed by the greed and violence of the two occupying Roman legions who had run wild under Fimbria and Murena.38

  Just as Mithradates had anticipated, Galatia, the buffer zone between Pontus and Bithynia, allied with Rome. Cappadocia remained uneasily divided between Mithradates and Ariobarzanes, who owed his crown to Sulla. Mithradates’ ally and son-in-law Tigranes of Armenia had taken over Syria. After violent intrigues among the Syrian king Grypos and his murderous relatives, the Syrians looked abroad for a stable monarch. They wanted to invite Mithradates to rule Syria, but others (perhaps Mithradates himself) worried that this might attract the attention of Rome. In 83 BC, the Syrians chose Tigranes of Armenia to be their king.