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

by Adrienne Mayor

  Tigranes was powerful and imperious. After the Peace of Dardanus, the title “King of Kings” was up for grabs. Tigranes took it. He now ruled a kingdom that stretched from Syria to the Caspian Sea, from Artaxata to Mesopotamia. Tigranes’ armies swelled with divisions from Arabia, Caucasia, and central Asia, but Rome had paid little attention since Sulla turned Tigranes out of Cappadocia in 95 BC. The new King of Kings was building a magnificent fortified city for himself on the Tigris River, Tigranocerta, “City of Tigranes.”39

  SULLA: THE PERFUMED CORPSE

  In about 80 BC, Mithradates sent ambassadors to Rome, hoping to sign the peace agreement of five years earlier. But Ariobarzanes had complained to Sulla that Mithradates still held part of Cappadocia. Sulla ordered Mithradates to give it up, as agreed at Dardanus. Mithradates complied and withdrew his army. He dispatched his ambassadors back to Rome, ready to formalize the treaty.

  But in the meantime Sulla had unexpectedly resigned his dictatorship. The man so feared as a monstrous tyrant resumed his old lifestyle, drinking and carousing with musicians and prostitutes. At age sixty, Sulla succumbed to a mysterious, gruesome disease (78 BC). According to Plutarch, Sulla’s bowels rotted, corrupting his entire body into a mass of worms. Relays of servants worked to scrub away the teeming maggots. Sulla spent hours in the baths, “but the vermin defied all purification.” Upon Sulla’s death, his young associate Pompey took the body to Rome for cremation. To mask the stench, Sulla’s female friends contributed vast quantities of spices and perfumes: these alone required 210 litters in the funeral cortege. A large figure of Sulla himself was molded out of frankincense and cinnamon and placed next to the corpse on the pyre. On the day of the funeral, glowering clouds dumped heavy rains. According to Plutarch, everyone heaved a sigh of relief when the rain lifted long enough for the flames to consume the repulsive remains.40

  Mithradates’ reaction to the news of Sulla’s dreadful affliction and death is unknown, but his feelings must have swung between schadenfreude and apprehension. Mithradates’ envoys came home again with no official agreement with Rome. The Senate was too preoccupied to meet Mithradates’ ambassadors—or were they hostile? In fact, many in Rome considered the Mithradatic Wars unfinished. Mithradates may have compared his uncomfortable situation to the tragedy of Jugurtha in North Africa. Jugurtha had struggled in vain to reach a viable peace with Rome, but the Senate repeatedly refused to sign the terms of his surrender, and in the end he was betrayed to Sulla and murdered.

  By all accounts, Mithradates had lived up to the terms of the Peace of Dardanus. He had made good-faith efforts to formalize the treaty with the Senate in Rome.41 He complied with Sulla’s last demand to leave Cappadocia. His actions certainly appear to have been those of a man desirous of peaceful equilibrium. Trying to deal with the Republic as it was thrashing about in its death throes was frustrating, nerve-wracking. But the situation also presented interesting possibilities for a man as ambitious, resourceful, and opportunistic as Mithradates.

  FIG. 11.5. This Roman portrait of Sulla seems to express cruelty and corruption. Staatsliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich

  FIG. 11.6. Perfuming the corpse of Sulla. Caricature by John Leech, in The Comic History of Rome by Gilbert Abbott A Beckett, 1852.

  CAPPADOCIA

  Mithradates conferred with his old ally Tigranes. With Sulla dead, Rome was in no position to enforce the still-unsigned treaty. The two monarchs agreed that Tigranes should invade Cappadocia. This time, they intended to succeed.

  The Armenian army was massive. Tigranes drew up 120,000 foot soldiers and many ranks of war chariots. His general Mithrobarzanes led a hard-core cavalry, 12,000 strong. Tigranes’ Ayrudzi (“horsemen” in Armenian) were mostly Parthian-style cataphracts, knights in chain mail riding large, heavily armored Nisaean horses. The historian Sallust praised Armenia’s cavalry as “remarkable for the beauty of its steeds and armor.” Tigranes also commanded 12,000 mounted archers, deadly accurate at more than two hundred yards—and their arrows were tipped with poison for good measure.

  Jewish historian Josephus gave the figure of 500,000 for Tigranes’ entire army, which included all the camp followers: men who tended the camels and mules loaded with baggage, weapons, provisions, and chests of gold and silver; trailing families and servants; shepherds with herds of cattle, sheep, and goats to feed the thousands. Tigranes’ multitudes were likened to a “swarm of locusts or the dust of the earth.”

  Tigranes marched into Cappadocia: he met no resistance. According to the terms of Tigranes’ agreement of 95 BC with Mithradates, the land of Cappadocia fell to Pontus, while Tigranes seized all the spoils and captives. Tigranes’ army rounded up 300,000 Cappadocian men, women, and children. They were not harmed and families were kept intact; they were even allowed to keep a few possessions and animals. This great mass of uprooted people was herded south to populate Tigranes’ fabulous new city on the Tigris. Tigranes also moved captive populations of Greeks from Cilicia, Jews from Palestine, and nomadic Arabs to Tigranocerta. This forced transfer of whole populations was a very large-scale example of an age-old practice of powerful conquerors.42

  SERTORIUS AND THE WHITE FAWN

  The disintegration of Rome’s foreign policy during the civil wars had allowed the pirate fleets to “multiply by tens of thousands” in the Mediterranean Sea. The pirates—always seeking loot and now a great military force—were allied with Mithradates and with Sertorius in Spain. No Roman ships were safe, a significant advantage for both men. In one of his orations in Rome, Cicero described how Mithradates and Sertorius corresponded through intelligence couriers aboard pirate corsairs.43

  Sertorius sent two military strategists to Pontus, Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius. They encouraged Mithradates to imagine a scenario in which the rebellions in Spain and Anatolia could succeed. They painted a rosy future of a reasonable Roman empire, led by Marius’s moderate Populars, an empire that would be content to rule the western Mediterranean while Mithradates ruled his Black Sea Empire.

  The last hope of the Populars, Sertorius was a master of ambush, disguise, and guerrilla warfare. He had won military honors (and lost an eye) in Gaul and helped put down the Marsi revolt in Italy. As rebel governor of Spain, Sertorius established a Senate-in-exile for fugitive Marius supporters. Even though he dreamed of retiring to the idyllic Canary Islands, “far from tyranny and endless wars,” he agreed to head the Spanish resistance movement and was winning battles against legions sent from Rome. Good at languages, Sertorius was a courageous revolutionary leader beloved by his soldiers and the Spaniards.

  One day, a Spanish hunter presented Sertorius with a pure white fawn. Wearing a garland of blossoms, the fawn followed the stern general around camp, to the delight of his men. This little albino doe was sent by the goddess of war, Diana (Artemis), declared Sertorius. She slept in his tent and whispered to him, warning him of dangers. Whenever his spies reported a victory, Sertorius kept it secret. He brought out his white doe, assuring his soldiers that she had predicted success. The next day, he would publicly announce the victory to his men, thereby fulfilling her forecast.44

  THE THIRD MITHRADATIC WAR BEGINS

  Sertorius was in many ways a Roman counterpart to Mithradates. The civil wars had “filled Sertorius with venom” against oligarchic Rome. As governor of Spain, Sertorious had become disillusioned with the greed and harshness of Roman tax officials. Like Rutilius Rufus in Anatolia, Sertorius sympathized with the native peoples embittered and oppressed by Rome’s administration of the province. Because he reduced taxes and governed mildly, the Spaniards invited him to lead their revolt against Sulla. As Plutarch described Sertorius, his charismatic personality mirrored that of Mithradates. Sertorius “inspired his followers with fresh hopes, offered them new adventures, and kept them united in spite of hardships.”

  Sertorius’s prestige had spread throughout the Mediterranean world. Traders, pirates, and envoys from Spain regaled Mithradates with tales of Sertorius’
s victories. Mithradates’ Roman advisers compared Sertorius to Hannibal and convinced Mithradates to ally with him. “If you, the most powerful king in the world, were to combine your strength with the world’s most successful general,” they promised, then Rome, destabilized by civil wars and slave uprisings in Italy, would be paralyzed by an unstoppable attack on two fronts.45

  In 76 BC a severe earthquake shook Italy. That year Sertorius won great victories over Roman armies. The next year, 75 BC, Sertorius and Mithradates began negotiating in earnest. Mithradates promised to supply ships and money for a joint war on Rome. In return, Mithradates asked Sertorius to confirm him as sovereign over the former Province of Asia, restoring the land he had given up under the treaty with Sulla. Sertorius told Mithradates that he was welcome to Bithynia, Cappadocia, Galatia, and Paphlagonia, but insisted that western Anatolia should remain a Roman province. Sertorius’s audacity surprised Mithradates. Plutarch records the king’s response: “This Sertorius was driven to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, and yet he dares to mark out the frontiers of our kingdom! Can you imagine what he will demand when he is master of Rome?”46

  Despite some arm wrestling over Anatolia, Sertorius and Mithradates drew up a treaty and swore oaths to uphold it. Sertorius agreed that Mithradates should resume possession of eastern Anatolia, and sent his general, Marcus Varius, with an army to Pontus. Mithradates sent Sertorius forty ships bearing 3,000 talents of silver—half again the penalty of 2,000 talents he had paid Sulla in 85 BC. In 76–74 BC, Mithradates’ mints issued gold and silver coins at a great rate, in anticipation of war.

  Sertorius’s general M. Varius and Mithradates together “captured certain cities in Asia.” Plutarch does not name the towns, but presumably they were places that had been harshly punished by Sulla for supporting Mithradates, yet without Roman garrisons. Mithradates graciously—wisely—allowed Sertorius’s general to enter these Anatolian cities as their liberator. The towns were declared free and exempt from taxation, on the authority of Sertorius, Mithradates’ new, compassionate Roman ally. Suddenly, wrote Plutarch, the downtrodden people of Anatolia “were inspired anew by the prospect of better days to come,” and they longed for the benign rule of Mithradates and Sertorius to begin.47

  In Bithynia, Rome’s “miserable puppet” Nicomedes IV died childless in 75/74 BC. In a suspicious déjà vu move—calling to mind the last testament of Attalus III willing Phrygia to Rome—Nicomedes bequeathed his kingdom to Rome. The Senate sent a governor, Cotta, to organize the new province. This was the spark that kindled the Third Mithradatic War. Mithradates immediately declared the will phony. The alliance with Sertorius had given Mithradates new capacities and new hope. The unilateral Roman takeover of Bithynia was, as Reinach commented, “tantamount to a declaration of war—it ruptured the equilibrium established by the Peace of Dardanus.”48

  The king of Pontus threw himself into feverish preparations to recover his empire. He stored a huge amount of grain from the steppes in granaries all around the Black Sea. Scythia normally sent 180,000 medimni of grain and 200 talents of silver a year as tribute. But this year, according to records cited by Appian, Mithradates received an astonishing 2 million medimni of grain, enough to feed about 300,000 people for a year. All summer, fall, and winter, Mithradates cut great swathes of timber to build ships and purchased well-trained, strong horses. His arms-makers forged Roman-style spears, swords, and shields; his engineers constructed siege engines; his recruiters gathered up mobs of new soldiers to be trained by Roman officers.49

  Mithradates called up armies from Cappadocia, Colchis, Armenia, and Scythia and beyond. From the remote territories of the Amazons, along the Thermodon and Don rivers to the Caspian Sea, mounted women warriors joined their male counterparts, the iron-mining Chalybes and Heniochi, Taurians of the Crimea, and Leucosyrians of eastern Cappadocia. Sarmatian men and women warriors joined the warlike tribes of the Basilidae, Dandarians, and the Iazyges around the Sea of Azov, the Coralli and hordes of Thracians of the Danube and Rhodopi and Haemus mountains. The ancient sources agree that the bravest of Mithradates’ barbarians were the Bastarnae of Carpathia.

  Altogether, says Appian, Mithradates recruited a fighting force of 140,000 infantry and 16,000 cavalry, attended by milling crowds of beasts of burden, baggage carriers, road makers, supply agents, and other camp followers. He had doubled his navy to 400 ships. Archelaus, Mithradates’ former mercenary general, had gone over to Rome. But Mithradates’ lineup of commanders was impressive: the Romans M. Varius, L. Magius, and L. Fannius joined Dorylaus, Gordius, Neoptolemus, Diophantus, Taxiles, Hermocrates, Alexander of Paphlagonia, Dionysius the Eunuch, Eumachus (former satrap of Galatia), Konnakorix (a Galatian), Metrophanes, and Aristonicus.50

  Sertorius was about fifty years old and Mithradates was about sixty in 74 BC. Without ever meeting in person, they had recognized their similar spirits and common interests. Despite their personal longing for peace and security, the two leaders swore to make war on the mighty Roman juggernaut. A very great deal was at stake for each man.

  12

  Falling Star

  FOUR snow-white horses pulled the golden chariot, encrusted with gems flashing in the sun’s first rays. There was no driver. The beautiful horses galloped at full speed across the windswept cliff and plunged into the sparkling sea below.

  It was dawn, the first day of spring, 74 BC. Mithradates’ magnificent sacrifice, reported by Appian, to the Sun gods Mithra and Helios, and to Poseidon god of sea and earthquakes, was performed to ensure success in the new war on Rome. The vivid image of the majestic white horses plunging into the sea persisted in the later Roman, Byzantine, medieval, and modern imagination. Some five hundred years later, for example, the early Christian writer Sidonis Apollinaris described a splendid castle in Gaul adorned by a dramatic painting of Mithradates’ sacrifice. In 1678, the English playwright Nathaniel Lee pictured Mithradates sending “a chariot, all with emeralds set, and filled with coral tridents, [and] a hundred horses, wild as wind” over the precipice.1

  The grandiose ritual is ignored by modern historians, but its multicultural significance was not lost on Mithradates’ followers. Horse sacrifices to the Sun were practiced by the ancient Greeks, Trojans, Scythians, and Persians. Ancient kings of Persia sacrificed horses to honor the Sun; the Magi traditionally killed fine white horses at the Euphrates River; and when Xerxes invaded Greece, they sacrificed horses at the River Strymon in Thrace. Mithradates must also have been influenced by—and perhaps even witnessed—the great horse sacrifice of Rhodes. Each spring the Rhodians—those brilliant seafarers who had bested Mithradates’ fleet—drove a chariot and four horses into the sea to honor Helios, who guided his sun-chariot across the skies.2

  For good measure, Mithradates also performed the great fire sacrifice, as he had done after his victory over Murena. After the rituals to appease these powerful male deities, Mithradates marched into Paphlagonia at the head of his army. There he delivered a rousing speech to his soldiers.

  FIG. 12.1. Portrait of Mithradates, silver tetradrachm, 75/74 BC. His open mouth and manelike hair, even more windblown than previous coin images, evoke a kinetic sense of forward movement at great speed. 1944.100.41480, bequest of E. T. Newell, courtesy of the American Numismatic Society.

  GROUNDS FOR WARM.

  Mithradates expounded on his illustrious ancestry and described with pride how his small kingdom had grown great under his rule. Pointing out that his armies had never been defeated by Romans when he was present to lead them, Mithradates extolled his vast resources and strong defenses. The Romans, he declared, were driven by “boundless greed” to enslave everyone. “Why did the Senate refuse to sign the Peace of Dardanus? Because Rome never intended to give us peace! They intended to break the treaty all along! Now this phony will of Nicomedes of Bithynia reveals their lust to dominate us.”

  MAP 12.1. The Second and Third Mithradatic Wars: campaigns in Anatolia, Armenia, and Mesopotamia. Map by Michele Angel


  Mithradates emphasized Rome’s troubles at home and abroad. “The Romans are losing the war with our new ally Sertorius in Spain. Italy is ravaged by civil strife and slave uprisings. Because of their wickedness, the Romans have not a single ally and not one of their subjects obeys them willingly!” Gesturing to his three Roman generals, Varius, Fannius, and Magius, Mithradates shouted, “Look! Some of Rome’s noblest citizens are at war with their own country and allied with us!”

  After this stirring speech, Mithradates marched into Bithynia. The Roman governor Cotta fled to Chalcedon. Cyzicus sent 3,000 hoplites to Cotta, but the people of Bithynia overwhelmingly welcomed Mithradates as their liberator—they had been crushed under the heel of Sulla’s tax collectors. At Mithradates’ approach, fearful Romans rushed to Chalcedon, crowding around the city’s gates. But the gates were bolted shut by Cotta, huddling inside. When Mithradates’ army arrived, there was a pitiless slaughter. The Roman civilians and Cyzicene soldiers stranded outside the gates “perished, caught between their friends and their foes, beseeching both for mercy.”3

  Meanwhile, Mithradates’ Bastarnae smashed through the massive bronze chain protecting the harbor of Chalcedon, burning 40 boats and capturing 60. Only 30 Bastarnae died in the naval battle, but more than 3,000 Roman, Chaceldonian, and Cyzicene sailors lost their lives. On land, Mithradates lost 700 men, but more than 5,000 Romans were killed and 4,500 were taken prisoner in this first battle of the Third Mithradatic War. The Roman general Lucius Licinius Lucullus, encamped on the Sangarius River, struggled to encourage his legions after this great disaster.4