Mithradates stubbornly pursued his idea of invading Italy by land. After all, his feat of crossing the Caucasus surpassed Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps. He knew that Hannibal’s ability to attract insurgent Italians to join him had terrified Rome. Similar opportunities for an invader of Italy existed now. As Appian points out, Mithradates knew that “almost all of Italy had recently revolted because of hatred of Rome,” and that tens of thousands had joined the Thracian gladiator Spartacus. Mithradates had long cultivated the friendship of the Gauls of Europe, who resisted Rome, and he could count on the Scythians and other northern allies. In Mithradates’ grand vision, he and an enormous army of Rome-hating warriors from the Caspian Sea to Gaul would smash the empire once and for all.
It was, acknowledged Appian, a very bold plan. If he could succeed, Mithradates would cover himself with spectacular glory. His mind filled with these ideas, Mithradates hastened to contact the Gauls.52
But his officers and soldiers, even the Roman exiles, were taken aback by the sweeping design. They began to get cold feet. The awesome scale of Mithradates’ vision was intimidating. Many shrank from the idea of waging war in a distant foreign land, says Appian, against an enemy they had not been able to overcome in their own countries. His Bosporan subjects had enjoyed autonomy for the past twenty-five years; now heavy taxes and mandatory army service seemed to contradict Mithradates’ core values and former promises. Some soldiers who had served him for years were becoming disillusioned; they had hoped to retire in the wealthy Bosporan Kingdom. The two or three thousand who had come over the Caucasus with their king each had a full year’s pay; they had hoped to make a new life. And it is worth noting that half a century separated the septuagenarian Mithradates from his rawest recruits.
Some older followers perceived the king’s grandiose plan as a suicidal exit strategy. Not unreasonably, they believed it was a sign of despair. It offered a way for Mithradates to end his life honorably, fighting for a noble lost cause rather than surrendering. How much better to die on the battlefield than to be strangled at the end of Pompey’s Triumph! Yet Mithradates was still so deeply respected and beloved for his courage, his generosity, and his unbowed perseverance that the majority of his followers remained loyal and silent about their doubts. For even in his dire misfortunes, marveled Appian, “there was nothing petty or contemptible” about King Mithradates. He was the last independent monarch left standing in the new Roman world.53
But one key figure dared to act decisively on his fears and doubts. Pharnaces, Mithradates’ favorite son and successor, was alarmed and motivated. The kingdom he was to inherit would be ruined if his father really attempted to invade Italy. Pharnaces (in his thirties) believed he could bargain with Pompey, but he had to prevent his father from carrying out his crazy plan. Pharnaces began secret talks with friends about usurping his father’s crown.
PHARNACES’ REBELLION
Pharnaces’ treachery was discovered by the omniscient Mithradates, of course. The conspirators were tortured and killed. Except for Pharnaces. According to Appian, Pharnaces was spared thanks to Mithradates’ old friend General Metrophanes. He persuaded Mithradates that it would be wrong and inauspicious to put to death the son he loved most, his designated heir. Disagreements were common in wartime, counseled the old general, but they healed once the wars were over. Perhaps Metrophanes spoke of the sorrow such an act would bring to Mithradates’ grand children, Pharnaces’ children Darius and Dynamis (“Power”).54 It seems that affection for Pharnaces and concern for the future of his kingdom overcame Mithradates’ instinct for self-preservation. Mithradates, who had lost so many and so much, pardoned his son. It was the first time he had ever forgiven a traitor. As the king retired to his bedchamber, did he have second thoughts? Or was he already reconciled to the reality that Pharnaces would become king either now or in the near future?
Pharnaces, perhaps thinking of the fate of so many of his brothers, most recently the murders of Xiphares and Exipodras, and Machares’ suicide, could not believe his father could ever truly forgive him. He sneaked to the camp of the Roman exiles and “magnified the dangers—which they well knew—of invading Italy.” Promising great rewards, Pharnaces convinced them to desert Mithradates. Then he sent emissaries to other camps and ships in the harbor and won them over too. All agreed that the next morning they would rise up and demand that the king abdicate in favor of Pharnaces.
In his castle, Mithradates was awakened by angry voices. Many citizens joined the army’s revolt because, in Appian’s view, they were fickle and worried about the king’s string of bad luck, or because they feared being the only outsiders in an overwhelming rebellion. Mithradates sent retainers to find out what the commotion was about. The mob surrounded the castle. Soon he could hear for himself the people shouting out their grievances and demands:
We don’t want a king ruled by eunuchs!
We don’t want a king who kills his own sons, his generals, and his friends!
We want a young king instead of an old one!
We want Pharnaces to be king!
Mithradates went down to the square to reason with the people. At the same time, some fearful guards from the palace ran to join the mob. But rabble-rousers in the crowd pointed at the king, refusing to welcome the guards until they proved their commitment by “doing something irreparable.” Some of the mob ran to the royal stables and killed Mithradates’ horses. Mithradates quickly returned to his castle. He climbed the spiral stone stairs to the highest tower.55
From the tower window, Mithradates saw Pharnaces appear in the square below. He heard the people hail his son as their new king. Someone rushed up with a sacred papyrus leaf from the temple garden and offered Pharnaces this makeshift crown. A great roar of approval went up from the crowd.
15
In the Tower
WHAT happened in the tower after Pharnaces was acclaimed king? There was apparently only one witness, Mithradates’ bodyguard Bituitus, and it is not clear that he lived to tell the story. What we do know comes from Roman historians who pieced together the scene from the contradictory reports of people in Pantikapaion at the time, interpretations of the evidence found in the tower, and hearsay and popular traditions about Mithradates’ last hours. Let us look first at what the ancient writers tell us, and then consider how to read between the lines to reconstruct events and make sense of incomplete evidence.
THE MOST DEADLY OF ALL POISONS
Mithradates’ worst fear was that he would be turned over to Pompey for a degrading public display and death in Rome. He understood that he had lost the goodwill of his people; he acknowledged that his son was the new king. His only hope was to go into exile. He sent several messages to Pharnaces, requesting safe passage out of Pantikapaion. Not one of his messengers returned. Next Mithradates sent old friends to petition his son, but either they were killed by Pharnaces’ followers (according to Appian), or they were convinced to turn against the king (Cassius Dio’s report).1
His entreaties for safe passage unanswered, Mithradates found himself in the same straits as Hannibal had been in 182 BC, trapped in his palace in Bithynia. Like Hannibal, Mithradates had prepared for this situation. Mithradates thanked his bodyguard and other companions who had remained faithful. As in previous catastrophes, Mithradates directed his eunuchs to distribute poison to the courtesans and children in the seraglio. The two youngest princesses, Mithradatis and Nyssa, were being raised in the palace with their father, which explains how they came to be in the tower with him. (They were betrothed but had not yet reached the age of marriage, so they were perhaps between nine and thirteen.) According to the literary traditions, the king and his daughters took poison, while Bituitus stood guard.
FIG. 15.1. Mithradates poisons his young daughters (right) and requests his bodyguard Bituitus (left) to stab him. Illustration by Adrien Marie, in Church 1885.
FIG. 15.2. Mithridates, His Rash Act. An unsympathetic caricature by Punch artist John Leech, depicting the suic
ide pact of Mithradates and his daughters as a drawing room comedy. The Comic History of Rome by Gilbert Abbott A Beckett, 1852
Mithradates uncapped the secret compartment in the hilt of his dagger and tipped out the little golden vial, beautifully crafted by Scythian artists. The two girls entreated their father to share his poison with them, begging him to stay alive until they died. He held them in his arms while they sipped from the vial. The drug took immediate effect.2
When the girls were dead, Mithradates drank the rest. But the poison did not kill him. He paced energetically, to propel the toxin through his body. He became very weak, but death did not come. In the oft-repeated legend—heavy with irony and recounted in nearly every ancient version of Mithradates’ death—the king who had made himself invulnerable to poisoning by ingesting infinitesimal doses of poisons all his life, was in the end unable to poison himself. Mithradates’ last words were widely reported: “I—the absolute monarch of so great a kingdom—am now unable to die by poison because I foolishly used other drugs as antidotes. Although I have kept watch and guarded against all poisons, I neglected to take precautions against that most deadly of all poisons, which lurks in every king’s household, the faithlessness of army, friends, and children.”3
This pithy parable was taken up by medieval chroniclers and repeated by modern historians, because the moral seemed so poetically apt for the Poison King.
But logic raises objections. If the Mithridatium regimen was effective through what is now known as the process of hormesis—as Mithradates certainly believed—what would be the point of his lifelong precaution of carrying poison for suicide, unless it was a carefully calculated lethal dose of some special, fast-acting poison that was not included in his daily antidote? Over his lifetime, Mithradates had tested numerous poisons on human subjects and knew exactly how much he would require for a quick, private, dignified death.4 On the other hand, if the Mithridatium did not actually shield against poison, then why was the precisely measured dose ineffective?
There is a natural explanation that addresses both questions, overlooked by modern scholars but evident in the ancient reports. The king had shared his single dose with two others, at least halving the amount. There was not enough left to kill a man of Mithradates’ size and constitution. Like his unexpected mercy for his traitorous son Pharnaces, Mithradates’ compassion for his innocent daughters brought harm to himself. The true irony is that his sacrifice was repaid with his own suffering. Perhaps this was a fitting mythic ending after all, for one who had been hailed as a savior.
FIG. 15.3. Bituitus stabbing Mithradates, who was unable to poison himself because of his lifelong ingestion of antidotes. The illustration on this ornate sixteenth-century Mithridatium vessel was meant to advertise the potency of the theriac within—so strong that even self-poisoning fails. Annibale Fontana, 1570. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
FIG. 15.4. Tragic neoclassical view of Mithradates’ death, showing Pharnaces’ soldiers bursting into the tower, as described by Cassius Dio. The artist, Augustyn Mirys (1700–1790) depicts three dead daughters.
When it became obvious that the poison was inadequate, Mithradates drew his sword and attempted to stab himself, but physical weakness and mental distress interfered with his ability to drive the sword home. At that point, he called upon his faithful guard, Bituitus, who faltered before his king’s “majestic countenance.” According to Appian’s version of the tradition, Mithradates encouraged Bituitus: “Your strong right arm has kept me safe from my enemies many times in the past. Now, I shall benefit most of all if you will kill me, to save me—for so many years the ruler of so great a kingdom—from being a captive led in a Roman triumph.” Deeply moved, Bituitus “rendered the king the service he desired.” Cassius Dio gives an alternate version: Pharnaces’ soldiers “hastened his end with their swords and spears.” But Reinach reasonably suggested that Pharnaces’ soldiers burst into the tower too late to capture the king alive and in frustration mutilated his body.5
The ancient historians agree that after the bodies were discovered in the tower, Pharnaces sent a message to Pompey, now far away in Petra (Jordan), requesting permission to rule his father’s kingdom as a Friend of Rome. Pharnaces embalmed his father’s corpse, clothed it in Mithradates’ kingly raiment and armor, and sent it, along with the royal weapons, scepter, and other treasures, across the Black Sea to Pontus. Other triremes carried the dead bodies of the royal family (including Nyssa and Mithradatis) and the surviving children (Artaphernes, Eupatra, Orsabaris, and little Darius, Oxathres, Xerxes, and Cyrus). Pharnaces also turned over numerous Greeks and barbarians who had served Mithradates—including the men responsible for capturing Manius Aquillius, executed by molten gold for starting the Mithradatic Wars twenty-five years earlier. The presence of these men with their king, after such a tumultuous quarter century, is a testament to the remarkable loyalty of some of Mithradates’ followers.6
POMPEY’S VICTORY
Months later, Pompey received the news in camp somewhere between Petra and Jericho. Messengers flourishing javelins wrapped in victory laurels arrived, exulting that Mithradates had been forced by his son Pharnaces to commit suicide in Pantikapaion. Pompey clambered to the top of a hastily constructed mound of packsaddles to announce the tidings to his troops. Great feasts and sacrifices followed—just as though they had won a great battle and killed huge numbers of the enemy.
Pompey’s biographer Plutarch hints at a whiff of resentment and annoyance in Pompey’s awkward situation. Indeed, what in the world was Pompey doing nearly a thousand miles south of the Black Sea? He had been sent to kill or capture Mithradates in 66 BC—yet Mithradates not only had escaped but had ruled the Bosporan Kingdom in peace for the past three years, and had been preparing to invade Italy. Now, the elimination of Mithradates terminated Pompey’s legal justification for continuing to win personal glory in the Near East. Pompey sent an official letter to the Senate in Rome. The news was greeted with great relief and joy, and Cicero, as consul, proclaimed ten days of thanksgiving. Meanwhile, Pompey took his time traveling to Pontus to receive the remains of his adversary.7
But when Pompey’s soldiers opened the royal coffin on the beach, the dead man’s face was totally unrecognizable! Everyone knew, from widely publicized portraits on coins and statues, what Mithradates looked like—but decomposition made identification of the corpse impossible. According to Plutarch, the embalming was poorly done: the face had rotted because the brain had not been removed. But the long, damp sea voyage and exposure at Amisus in summertime, the effects of poison, the ravages of Mithradates’ recent facial ulcerations, and any mutilations by Pharnaces’ soldiers would also have done their work.8
The obliterated face immediately raised suspicion: was this really the body of Mithradates the Great? Had Mithradates’ brilliant halo of xvarnah (spirit or luck) truly been extinguished at last?
“For superstitious reasons,” Pompey averted his eyes (or perhaps did not care to look on the corpse after hearing that the face was not worth seeing). Those who did examine the corpse claimed to recognize it “by the scars.” Modern scholars have accepted this claim without careful analysis. Mithradates’ most distinguishing scar, of course, was the mark on his forehead from the lightning strike in infancy, but that would not have been visible on the decomposed face. For the same reason, the scar from his cheek wound in the battle of 67 BC could not be seen. That leaves the scar from the sword gash on his thigh, from the same battle, and the recent fatal stabbing wound dealt by Bituitus (with no witnesses). If the body had been mutilated by soldiers, as Cassius Dio reported, old scars would be difficult to read. A former friend of Mithradates, Gaius, was part of Pharnaces’ delegation, according to Plutarch. Perhaps he was one of those who identified the body by the thigh scar. But thigh wounds were commonplace for anyone who rode a horse in battle, and Mithradates’ distinctive facial scars were obliterated. This means that the royal paraphernalia in the coffin was the only physical evidence that the
dead man was King Mithradates (see plate 9).
The armor, cuirass, and greaves matched Mithradates’ reputedly large proportions; the helmet was ornate (perhaps with a hyacinth-dyed plume like that of Cyrus the Great). There were other rich trappings of royalty: the purple cloak, Mithradates’ opulent sword—the scabbard alone worth four hundred talents—his gem-encrusted scepter, a golden crown. Plutarch says Pompey admired these marvelously wrought things and was “amazed at the size and splendor of the arms and raiment that Mithradates used to wear.” After Pompey left the scene, the Roman officers and some men who had once served Mithradates circled the loot like jackals—grabbing up the scabbard, haggling over the crown and other treasures.9
Pompey’s true feelings are unknown. Foremost must have been awe at this momentous occasion, the end of an era, the passing of a charismatic, grandly ambitious and independent monarch who had been Rome’s relentless, elusive enemy for as long as Pompey had been alive. But Plutarch also suggested there was a sense of anticlimax at the “unexpectedly easy completion” of Pompey’s campaign, which he had been prolonging to great advantage. Frustration, too: Mithradates had slipped away yet again, ever defiant and now forever immune to revenge, denying Pompey the glory of personally delivering to the Roman People and Senate the perpetrator of so many outrages and decades of warfare. Suicide, in antiquity as in modern times, could be a noble escape from tyranny or capture by the enemy. It also robs the victor of the satisfaction of killing his enemy or bringing him to justice.10
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy Page 41