Mithridates: The Greco-Persian King Immune to Poison

Mithridates was an ambitious Greco-Persian king who left his mark in history as a result of his fierce war against the Romans and his immunity to poison.

Mithridates VI Eupator (132-65 BC), was surnamed Eupator (meaning noble father in Greek) and Dionysus to distinguish himself from his father, Mithridates V Euergetes (meaning benefactor in Greek), who had been king of Pontus between approximately the years 151 and 120.

As soon as he inherited the throne, Mithridates declared himself an enemy of Rome and fought three separate wars with the Romans. These came to be known as the Mithridatic Wars and took place between 89 and 63 BC.

During his reign, he won several major battles against the Roman legions and developed immunity to poison by ingesting small doses at a time. He was eventually defeated by General Pompeius the Great after his son Pharnaces rose up against him and betrayed him. Facing certain defeat and humiliation by his sworn enemies, Mithridates killed himself.

Descent from King Darius and Alexander the Great

Mithridates was eleven years old when his father was poisoned and assassinated in the palace. As the oldest son, he was too young to take the throne, and his mother, Laodice VI, reigned as regent, surrounded by conspirators.

Ever since he was a young child, Mithridates was strong-willed, while his younger brother was more compliant. The advisors to Laodice and the queen herself preferred the younger son for succession because he would be easier to manipulate. Hence, Mithridates grew up in a dangerous environment.

As a teenager, Mithridates sensed imminent danger, no doubt strengthened by his father’s demise, so he feigned a love for hunting and left the palace in Amaseia to spend the rest of his teenage years in remote parts of the country. There, he came in contact with new acquaintances and introduced himself as the prince who had fled to escape conspiring assassins.

In his self-imposed exile, he managed to win many supporters. Upon his return to the palace as a prince, Mithridates had his mother, brother, and all those implicated in his father’s death arrested and imprisoned. According to some reports, they were executed, yet others said they died in prison.

Being an ambitious man, from early on, Mithridates claimed he was the descendant of Persian King Darius and Alexander the Great. Some historians reject his claim, however, arguing he came from a lower status dynasty, namely from the northern Asia Minor town of Cius, which was under the control of the Seleucid Empire. He fled from there and settled in Pontus where he established his own kingdom and dynasty.

Mithridates purposefully emphasized his lineage from Darius and Alexander to link himself directly to a glorious past and give his reign the glamor that he would not have otherwise had. Using the names of Darius and Alexander did indeed help him establish his authority and attain the love of his people.

The Mithridatic Wars

Having eventually won the throne and the support of his people, Mithridates expanded his kingdom from northern Asia Minor to Crimea. Taking advantage of the resentment against Roman rule over the region’s people and the Social War (91-88 BC) raging in Italy, Mithridates intended to overthrow the Romans and establish his empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. First, he annexed Cappadocia and Bithynia, two states bordering Roman territory.

In 89 BC, the Romans and allied troops marched against Pontic forces in Bithynia and Cappadocia. The army of Mithridates repelled the Romans and chased them through the province of Asia, where secret arrangements were made with local people for the massacre of some eight thousand resident Italians and Romans a year later.

After that, the people of Asia proclaimed their independence. The revolt against the Romans caught on in Greece, where Pontic General Archelaus liberated Athens and quickly secured Central Greece for Mithridates.

In 87 BC, the Romans launched a counterattack with General Sulla who led his five legions to besiege Athens. He succeeded, and Archelaus withdrew to Northern Greece, where he met up with reinforcements. After two costly defeats at Chaeronea and Orchomenus in 86 BC, the Pontic general began negotiations for peace.

Meanwhile, Roman troops commanded by Lucius Valerius Flaccus invaded Asia Minor, and Mithridates was forced to accept terms of peace and withdrew his forces to Pontus in 85 BC. That was the end of the First Mithridatic World.

From 83 to 81 BC, the Romans launched a series of raids against the Pontic kingdom. These attacks were known as the Second Mithridatic War. Roman General Lucius Licinius Murena advanced north of Cappadocia and overran four hundred villages, thus reinstating the status quo of the peace treaty.

When the kingdom of Bithynia was bestowed to the Roman people in 75 BC, Mithridates began the Third Mithridatic War that lasted until 65 BC. First, he allied with the Sertorian rebels in Spain and then invaded Bithynia to prevent Rome’s expansion. However, the Roman army under Commander Lucius Licinius Lucullus stopped him from capturing the strategic city of Cyzicus in 74 BC. The Romans took the offensive and captured all of Pontus by 70 BC.

Mithridates fled to the court of his son-in-law, Tigranes the Great of Armenia. Lucullus followed him and won a battle against Tigranes. He then captured the capital Tigranocerta in 69 BC. However, Lucullus had political opponents in Rome who did not recognize his great victory and stripped him of much of his power.

Mithridates snatched the opportunity, rallied his forces, and returned to Pontus in 68 BC, but this time, he had to face Commander Pompeius the Great, who assumed the command of the Roman forces in 66 BC and took over Tigranocerta. Tigranes surrendered to the Romans, and the war ended the following year when Mithridates abandoned Pontus for his Crimean kingdom.

For Rome, the outcome of the Mithridatic Wars was the elimination of its most dangerous threat in the eastern parts of the empire. Rome was thus empowered to acquire new provinces in Asia Minor and expand the empire across the Eastern Mediterranean.

 

Mithridates, the Poison King

Roman author, philosopher, and military commander Pliny the Elder (23/24-79 AD) had called Mithridates “the greatest king of his time” and wrote about his peculiar way of defending himself against poisoning by drinking small doses of poison daily in order to build up immunity.

“For it was Mithridates, the greatest king of his time, whom Pompeius 
vanquished, that was, we know by evidence as well as by report, a more 
attentive investigator of life’s problems than any of those born before him. By
his unaided efforts he thought out the plan of drinking poison daily, after
first taking remedies, in order that sheer custom might render it harmless
he was the first to discover the various antidotes, one of which is 
even known by his name; he also discovered the mixing with antidotes
of the blood of Pontic ducks, because they lived on poison addressed 
to him were treatises, still extant, written by the famous physician
Asclepiades, who when urgently invited to come from Rome sent 
instructions instead. He then, with his brilliant intellect and wide interests, was an especially diligent student of medicine, and collected detailed knowledge from all his subjects who comprised a great part of the world, leaving among his private 
possessions a bookcase of these treatises (commentationum) with specimens
and the properties of each. Pompeius however on getting possession
of all the royal booty ordered his freedman Lenaeus, a man of letters
to translate these into Latin. This great victory therefore was as beneficial
to life as it was to the State.”

In her book History of Toxicology and Environmental Health, author Adrienne Mayor, historian of ancient science and a classical folklorist, says that Mithridates is recognized as the first experimental toxicologist for his extensive investigations into different poisons and antidotes. His fear of assassination by poison led him to gather a team of botanists, physicians, and shamans who sought to create a “universal antidote” that would protect him from all poisons.

Influenced by traditional theriacs and previous investigators and with access to rich natural resources, Mithridates’ experiments resulted in a formulation of more than fifty ingredients combining animal, plant, and mineral toxins with antidotes. He made himself immune to normally fatal amounts of arsenic and enjoyed robust health until forced to commit suicide in his seventies. Efforts to replicate his famous Mithridatium made his antidote the most popular and long-lived prescription in history.