Along the northern shores of Asia Minor sprawled Bithynia and Pontus, mountainous in the interior, but rich in timber and minerals. Here a mixture of Thracians, Greeks, and Iranians overlay an antique Hittite stock. A line of Greco-Thracian kings ruled Bithynia, built a capital at Nicomedia (Is-nikmid), and major cities at Prusa and Nicaea (Is-nik). About 302 B.C. a Persian noble, piously called Mithridates, carved a kingdom for himself out of Cappadocia and Pontus, and founded a dynasty of virile Hellenizing monarchs, with capitals at Comana Pontica and Sinope. Their rule spread until it impinged upon Roman economic and political interests. The resulting Mithridatic Wars are fitly named from the redoubtable king who united western Asia and European Greece in a revolt which, if it had succeeded, would have changed the face of history.
Mithridates VI had inherited the throne of Pontus as a boy of eleven. His mother and his guardians, seeking to supplant him, tried to kill him. He fled from the palace, disguised himself, and for seven years lived in the woods as a hunter, dressed in skins. About 115 B.C.. a coup d’état deposed his mother and restored him to power. Surrounded by the conspiracies characteristic of Oriental courts, he took the precaution of drinking a little poison every day, until he had developed immunity to most of the varieties available to his intimates. In the course of his experiments he discovered many antidotes. From these his interest spread to medicine, on which he compiled data of such value that Pompey had them translated into Latin. His wild and exacting life had given him strength of body as well as of will; he grew to so large a frame that he sent his suit of armor to Delphi to amuse the worshipers. He was an expert horseman and warrior, could (we are assured) run fast enough to overtake a deer, drove a sixteen-horse chariot, and rode 120 miles in a day.65 He prided himself on being able to outeat and outdrink any man, and he attended to a numerous harem. Roman historians tell us that he was cruel and treacherous and slew his mother, his brother, three sons, and three daughters;66 but Rome has not transmitted his side of this tale. He was a man of some culture, could speak twenty-two languages, and never used an interpreter;67 he studied Greek literature, was fond of Greek music, enriched Greek temples, and had Greek scholars, poets, and philosophers at his court; he collected works of art and issued coins of surpassing excellence. But he shared in the sensuality and coarseness of his half-barbarian environment and accepted the superstitions of his time. He defended himself against Rome not with the far-seeing maneuvers of a great general or statesman, but with the impromptu courage of an animal at bay.
Such a man could not be content with the reduced kingdom relinquished by his mother. With the help of Greek officers and mercenaries he conquered Armenia and the Caucasus, passed over the Kuban River and the Strait of Kerch into the Crimea, and brought under his sway all the Greek cities on the east, north, and west coast of the Black Sea. As the collapse of Greek military power had left these communities almost defenseless against the barbarians of their hinterland, they received the Greek phalanxes of Mithridates as saviors. The subject cities included Sinope (Sinob), Trapezus (Trebizond), Panticapaeum (Kerch), and Byzantium; but Bithynian control of the Hellespont (Dardanelles) left the Mediterranean commerce of Pontus at the mercy of hostile kings. When Nicomedes II of Bithynia died (94 B.C.), his two sons contested the succession. One of them sought the aid of Rome, the other, Socrates, appealed to the Pontic king. Mithridates took advantage of the factional strife in Italy to invade Bithynia and enthrone Socrates. Rome, unwilling to see the Bosporus in hostile hands, ordered Mithridates and Socrates out of Bithynia. Mithridates complied, Socrates refused. The Roman governor of Asia deposed him and crowned Nicomedes III. The new ruler, encouraged by the Roman proconsul Manius Aquilius, invaded Pontus, and the First Mithridatic War began (88-84 B.C.).
Mithridates felt that his sole chance of survival lay in arousing the Hellenic East to revolt against its Italian overlords. He announced himself as the liberator of Hellas and sent troops to free the Greek cities of Asia, if necessary by force. Opposed by the business classes of the towns, he courted the democratic parties with promises of semisocialistic reforms. Meanwhile his navy of 400 ships destroyed the Roman Black Sea fleet, and his army of 290,000 men overwhelmed the forces of Nicomedes and Aquilius. To express his scorn of Roman avarice,68 the victorious king poured molten gold down the throat of the captured Aquilius—fresh from his triumph over the revolted slaves of Sicily. The Greek cities of Asia Minor, shorn of Roman defense, opened their gates to the armies of Mithridates and declared their allegiance to his cause. At his suggestion, on an appointed day, they slew all Italians—80,000 men, women, and children—whom they found within their walls (88 B.C.). Says Appian:
The Ephesians tore away the fugitives who had taken refuge in the Temple of Artemis and were clasping the images of the goddess, and slew them. The Pergamenes shot with arrows the Romans who had sought sanctuary in the Temple of Aesculapius. The people of Adramyttium followed into the sea those who sought to escape by swimming, and killed them and drowned their children. The inhabitants of Caunus (in Caria) pursued the Italians who had taken refuge about the statue of Vesta, killed the children before their mothers’ eyes, then the mothers, then the men. … By which it was made plain that it was as much hatred of the Romans as fear of Mithridates that impelled these atrocities.69
Doubtless the poorer classes, who had borne the brunt of Roman domination, took the lead in this mad massacre; the propertied classes, long protected by Rome, must have trembled at so wild an uprising of revenge. Mithridates sought to appease the well to do by exempting the Greek cities from taxes for five years and giving them complete home rule. At the same time, however, he “proclaimed the canceling of debts,” says Appian,70 “freed the slaves, confiscated many estates, and redistributed the land.” Leading men in the communities formed a conspiracy against him; he discovered it and had 1600 of them killed. The lower classes, aided by philosophers and university professors,71 seized power in many Greek cities, even in Athens and Sparta, and declared war against both Rome and wealth. The Greeks of Delos, in an ecstasy of freedom, slaughtered 20,000 Italians in one day. The fleet of Mithridates captured the Cyclades, and his armies took possession of Euboea, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace. The defection of rich “Asia” stopped the flow of tribute to the Roman treasury and of interest to Roman investors, and plunged Italy into a financial crisis that had something to do with the revolutionary movement of Saturninus and Cinna. Italy itself was divided, for the Samnites and Lucanians sent offers of alliance to the Pontic king.
Faced with war and revolution everywhere, the Senate sold the accumulated gold and silver of Rome’s temples to finance Sulla’s troops. We must not tell again how Sulla captured Athens, defeated the rebel armies, saved the Empire for Rome, and gave Mithridates a lenient peace. The King withdrew to his Pontic capital and quietly organized another army and fleet. Murena, the Roman legate in Asia, decided to attack him before he grew stronger. When, in this Second Mithridatic War (83-81), Murena was defeated, Sulla reprimanded him for violating the treaty and ordered hostilities ended. Six years later Nicomedes III bequeathed Bithynia to Rome. Mithridates realized that his own kingdom would soon be swallowed up if the Roman power, already controlling the Bosporus, should reach the borders of Paphlagonia and Pontus. In the Third Mithridatic War (75-63) he made a last effort, fought for twelve years against Lucullus and Pompey, was betrayed by his allies and aides, and fled to the Crimea. There the old warrior, now in his sixty-ninth year, tried to organize an army to cross the Balkans and invade Italy from the north. His son Pharnaces revolted against his authority, his army refused the venture, and the deserted king tried to kill himself. The poison that he took failed to work because he had inured his system to it, and his hands were too weak to press home the blade from whose point he invited death. His friends and protégés, commissioned by his son to kill him, ended his life with their swords and spears.