Introduction
In 168 BC, the Seleukid king, Antiokhos IV, stood victorious at the head of an army which had breached Ptolemaic defences, ready to march through the Delta, besiege Alexandreia, and put an end, once and for all, to the centuries-old rivalry between the two dynasties. The two kingdoms united, a new Greek empire would rise in the East, of unprecedented power and wealth. It would not be so. The unthinkable happened. A Roman official, Caius Popilius Laenas, handed the king a senatus-consultum, ordering him to withdraw from Egypt, and, ignoring the latter’s wishes to discuss this in a war council, using a stick, drew a circle in the sand around the king. The king was not allowed to leave it, without giving Rome an answer. King Antiokhos IV, obeyed and, humiliated, withdrew from Egypt.[1] On this day, the ‘Day of Eleusis’, the hitherto notion of the Hellenistic king died, and was replaced by something else, what Gotter accurately describes as the ‘castrated king’, a meek, subdued ruler, content with being allowed to govern a diminished kingdom, doomed to eventually be absorbed into Rome’s burgeoning eastern empire.[2]
In the spring of 88 BC, eighty years later, the Roman and Latin-speaking residents of numerous cities across Anatolia and Asia Minor, largely under Roman dominion or influence for almost a century, were rounded up and massacred, seemingly in a single day, upon a given signal. In Pergamon, a city favoured by Rome due to its Attalid affiliations, the capital of their new province of Asia, the Roman population was slaughtered within the temple-sanctuary of Asklepios.[3] In Adramytion, they were pursued even as they fled into the waters of the Aegean and in Ephesos they were killed inside the magnificent temple of Artemis, as the rest of the citizenry smashed Roman statues.[4] Even in Kaunos, liberated by Rhodian influence almost a century before, by Rome, the same slaughter ensued, even as the victims clung onto a statue of Vesta.[5] Obedience to Mithradates’ orders was more important than obedience to the gods.
At the bloody day’s end, between 80,000 to 150,000 people had been killed, all at the behest of one man.[6] This was how, despite earlier and seemingly friendly interactions, King Mithradates VI of Pontos made his opposition to Rome’s imperialist project in Asia, known, as the first of three Mithradatic Wars began. The Pontic king had achieved nigh unbreakable silence regarding a plot spanning hundreds of kilometres, involving thousands of individuals who obeyed unflinchingly. King Mithradates was recognised and followed by the peoples of a highly diverse region, each with their own, often conflicting interests, and was before long joined by even more cities, now from the Greek mainland.
The King That Was Promised
Mithradates’ birth and coronation would be accompanied by the rare sightings of two comets, which the king took full advantage of later on in his life.[7] For Greeks and Romans, comets were portents of doom, bloodshed and war, whereas for the Persians, Skythians and indigenous Anatolians, a great fire in the sky meant the eventual coming of a powerful leader.[8] Mithradates would build his image on both, as a terrifying harbinger of ruin for the Romans and as the king that was promised for the peoples of the Near East. As for the Greeks, since the two comets in question had appeared in the constellation of Pegasos, he adopted this symbolism as well, in an effort to bridge East and West.[9] The winged horse bore Zeus’ lightning but had its origins in Mesopotamian mythology. Even more fittingly, the sun-god Mithra would bless and legitimise a new king by riding across the sky on a chariot drawn by white horses, and was furthermore invoked by soldiers before a great battle as the god of war.[10]
Mithradates presented himself as fully embodying his dynastic name as ‘Mithra’s given’, a king blessed by the god of war, come to deliver the peoples of the East from Roman oppression. Pegasos was also tied to the myth of the hero Perseus, whose son by Andromeda, Perses, was considered the mythological progenitor of the Persian people.[11]Perseus, a Greek hero marrying Andromeda, a woman of ambiguous provenance, and giving birth to the mythic father of Persia, was the perfect symbol for a ruler who wished to present himself as the link between East and West. All of this was reinforced by Mithradates’ participation in religious ceremonies of bicultural significance, such as the mountaintop fire ceremonies to syncretised Zeus Stratios/Ahura Mazda-Mithra.[12]
Beyond the use of mythology, prophecy was another weapon in the king’s arsenal. When the philosopher Athenion addressed the Athenians in 88 BC, telling them of the king’s great victories in Asia against the Romans, he mentioned oracles from all over the Hellenistic East, foretelling Mithradates’ final victory.[13] From the dead Syrian soldier of Antiokhos III at Thermopylai, coming back to life and spelling doom for Rome, to the Oracle of Delphoi and the Third Book of the Sibylline Oracles, as well as the Zoroastrian-inspired prophecy of Hystaspes, all the signs pointed to a huge calamity for Rome, delivered by a saviour-king from the East.[14] These were likely expressions of the festering anti-Romanism present in Greece, Asia Minor and wider Anatolia, following the atrocities committed by the Romans there in the decades before Mithradates’ rise, and the Pontic king masterfully took advantage of it. He employed these prophecies to present himself either as the dreadful manifestation of eastern vengeance, for the Romans, or as a saviour-liberator, favoured by the gods, for the peoples who had suffered under Roman occupation in the previous decades.
Both of these aspects had one thing in common: the element of supernatural inevitability Mithradates VI seemed to deliberately foster once conflict with Rome appeared unavoidable. The writing was on the wall: the Republic was weakened by a demanding war against Jugurtha in North Africa, uprisings of former Italian allies in its heartlands, widespread slave unrest which would culminate in the revolt of Spartakos, and the looming civil war between Marius and Sulla. Its actions in Greece and Asia would lead to a reckoning and Mithradates VI would be the one to carry it out. After all the signs, the prophecies, the warnings, one was compelled to either join him or be swept away. Hierarchies of obedience were deeply ingrained for the Greeks and the Romans and outright disobedience could take place only in certain contexts. For disobedience to assume such a blatant form and enter the realm of defiance, as in the bloody episode of the Asiatic Vespers, something or someone extraordinary would have to be involved, commanding vast forces of personal influence, intimidation and charisma.
Indeed, charisma had been the cornerstone of early Hellenistic kingship. The very integrity and survival of the kingdom depended on a ruler’s capacity to convey through personal ability and charisma the impression that he was favoured by the gods or fortune itself.[15] This involved achievements and victorious public displays in the realms of religion, politics and war, and as long as the people under him prospered, seemingly as a result of his actions, the king was seen as legitimate and was obeyed totally. Polybios, in describing the establishment of the Attalid monarchy in Pergamon, clearly sets out these criteria: ‘the largesse and favoured conferred on his [Attalos I] friends’ as well as ‘his success in war’.[16]Therefore, Attalos ‘having conquered the Gauls […] he built upon this foundation, and then first showed he was really a king.’.[17] In our case, and as demonstrated above, Mithradates’ charisma was built on multiple levels, meant to appeal to every subject of his growing empire, before he ever crossed swords with Rome.
The Conquest of the Northern Black Sea
To the Greeks, Mithradates’ status as Saviour was fostered early on in his reign when he aided in the protection of the Greek cities of the Black Sea from the nomadic Skythian and Sarmatian tribes to the north.[18] In doing so, he fulfilled the role of the Hellenistic monarch prior to the ‘Day of Eleusis’, that is, of protecting Greek cities against the barbarians and thus gaining their fealty and obedience, similar to how the Antigonids, a few centuries before, had established themselves in Makedonia through military victory against the Gallic horde. In this way, Mithradates revived the notion of what Gehrke coined ‘liberation politics’, in the Greek East[19], which he would then employ once more in acquiring the loyalty of the Greek cities of Asia Minor and Greece, against the barbarian Romans. The Skythian and Sarmatian nomads interpreted the victory differently, recognising, as they did in their own societies, the undeniable display of strength by the Pontic king, and offering him their fealty as tributaries.[20] In all three Mithradatic wars, Skythian and Sarmatian detachments formed an essential part of the Pontic forces.
As Gotter suggests, poleis could only obey a foreign monarch by awarding him divine honours, earned through supra-human victories, thus rendering him a benevolent god rather than a human tyrant.[21] Mithradates, who assumed both the title of ‘Soter’, Saviour, as well as that of ‘Neos Dionysos’, used his military victories against the barbarians, to earn the loyalty of the Greek cities within and without his domain.[22] Dionysos in particular, often seen as the god of upheavals and freedom, was a fitting symbol for how the Pontic king wished to present himself to Greeks and Romans alike, as a usurper of the Roman status quo and a restorer and guarantor of Hellenic liberty. Mithradates widely celebrated and circulated his Bosporan triumph, particularly as neither his purported Greek ancestor, Alexander, nor his Persian one, Kyros the Great, had managed to subdue the Skythians, and he used it as yet further evidence of his military prowess and victorious destiny. Furthermore, he also fulfilled his role as a proper Persian king, modelled after Kyros the Great, who also had a responsibility to ensure the safety and prosperity of his lands from outside threats.[23]
The Akhaimenid and Alexandrian Connection
The comparisons did not end there, as Mithradates made full use of his Akhaimenid and Alexandrian provenance, appearing as a new Kyros to the Persians and as a new Alexander to the Greeks, come to liberate them all from the Roman yoke. On the Persian side, the connection was established due to the fact that King Dareios I had granted Mithradates’ ancestors their fiefdom in Pontos, centred around Amaseia, which became the satrapy that would one day evolve into the Pontic kingdom. It was convenient for the Mithradatids to assume that this satrapal appointment had been accompanied by the marriage between a Pontic prince and an Akhaimenid princess.[24]
On the Greek side, the Mithradatids claimed a connection to Alexander through the Persian princess Barsine, whom Alexander captured after the Battle of Issos in 333 BC, subsequently married and supposedly had a child with, and who was settled in Pergamon, a city with, albeit tenuous, connections to the Mithradatid monarchy.[25] Furthermore, Mithradates VI’s mother, Laodike who hailed from Antiokheia in Syria, was herself a scion of the illustrious Seleukid dynasty, established by Alexander’s general, Seleukos I Nikator, who also claimed connection to the Argeads through assumed intermarriage between the upper echelons of the Makedonian monarchy and its potentates.[26] Mithradates’ portraits on Pontic coinage are often idealised and youthful-looking, with long flowing hair, in imitation of Alexander’s famous anastole. These coins were minted during Mithradates’ campaigns in Asia Minor and Greece, and were used to pay mercenaries and allies from the Greek city-states, who were thus encouraged to see him as a second Alexander.[27]Lastly, Mithradates VI was said to have possessed a cloak which once belonged to the Makedonian king himself, which he displayed as a direct, physical link to the great conqueror, and it was a Persian and wider Near Eastern belief that royal cloaks and robes could grant their new wearer the original owner’s personal qualities and legitimacy.[28]
In the end, it did not matter whether the nebulous origins of Mithradates VI’s dynasty were anywhere close to the greatest of the Persian and Greek monarchies, but that by and large, the king’s Greek and Asian followers as well as his Roman enemies, believed in their validity and the implications associated with it. The Mithradatic legendary origins became a potent weapon for the Pontic king, as Alexander himself, by this point, had assumed cultic importance not just for the Greeks but for the indigenous Anatolians and Persians as well, and in associating himself with him, Mithradates could appeal to all the inhabitants of his diverse Anatolian kingdom.
Focusing on Mithradatic coinage for a bit longer, Fleischer suggests that the early Hellenistic kings, the diadokhoi in particular, minted coins with dynamic portraits, reminiscent of Alexander, in an attempt to project strength and leadership qualities, something that the Greeks and non-Greeks alike in their realms could understand and respect.[29] The divine connections they fostered, according to Fleischer were not yet sufficient by themselves. In contrast, the epigonoi, appear reserved, quiet and distant. In minting coins in the likeness of Alexander, Mithradates, apart from emphasising his Alexandrian heritage, perhaps sought to imitate the early Hellenistic kings, rather than their subdued descendants like Antiokhos IV, thus reviving the model of the victorious Hellenistic king and drawing legitimacy from military strength rather than divine honours alone.
The Victorious Hellenistic King
Therefore, Mithradates was not, on the surface, doing anything new, but was rather drawing inspiration from older models of Greco-Persian kingship, familiar to the peoples of the Near East after centuries of such rule, in order to secure their approval and their obedience. Far from the timid late Attalids, constrained by their alliance with Rome, unable to engage in military victories, resorting rather to euergesiai, or the Bithynian monarchy of Mithradates’ day, propped up by Roman arms alone, he won the obedience of the peoples of the Near East by reviving a system they had perhaps considered defunct since the humiliation of Antiokhos IV. No longer did they need to suffer the Roman alternative, Mithradates represented a triumphant return to form, freeing slaves, many willingly joining his forces, cancelling debts, lifting taxes, and performing other acts of euergesia such as returning the treasury of Delos to Athens.[30] As ever, Mithradates was a master of the theatrical and the symbolic. Even for his Anatolian subjects, this would have seemed like a return to an older age of prosperity, as the Pontic king reinstated the satrapal system of administration, hearkening back to Akhaimenid glories.[31]
Through meaningful self-presentation, propaganda, but most importantly, consecutive victories against the reguli of Kappadokia and Bithynia, the nomads of the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and the hated Roman enemy, Mithradates breathed new life into a system all the peoples of the Near East recognised as familiar: a triumphant king, blessed by the gods, by whose will the barbarians were repelled as the land prospered under a just, charismatic, and divinely mandated leadership. This would have fit in with the saviour persona he was cultivating for his Greek and Asiatic subjects. Decades after the cultural shock of the greatest of the Greek monarchies, the Antigonids and the Seleukids, having been defeated, reduced and conquered by the barbarian upstarts across the Adriatic, Mithradates had demonstrated to the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean that their conception of the world and their place in it, was not in the process of disintegration. There were still adventurer Alexander-like god-kings who achieved magnificent victories only one favoured by Zeus and Mithra could, who showered the cities with benefactions and guaranteed their autonomy, who earned their rule rather than inherit it. Mithradates VI as a Hellenistic restitutor orbis, an epanorthotes, created willing obedience in many grateful populations, struggling under the new Roman status quo.
Anti-Roman Hatred
Even so, perhaps the greatest unifying factor of all for his prospective subjects in Asia Minor and in Greece, was their hatred towards Rome. Here, Mithradates did not need to do much, save to give it form and direction. In Greece and in Asia Minor, Rome was widely hated, for its conduct during its wars of conquest, in the case of the former, and its ruthless and exploitative administration in the case of both. Publicani had flooded Asia Minor and imposed harsh taxes on its inhabitants, Greeks and non-Greeks, forcing many into debt-bondage and slavery. Quite telling is the incident of the Bithynian king, Nikomedes who at one point refused to send armed help to the Romans, citing the fact that a significant part of his kingdom’s population had been enslaved by Roman debt collectors.[32] Indeed, for those populations most influenced by Akhaimenid Persian culture and Iranian religion in the preceding centuries, slavery and debt-bondage in particular were seen as horrid and unjust practices, leaving one unable to fight against the Iranian notions of Darkness and Lies (Druj)[33], and they were now booming under Rome. Mithradates’ fight against the Romans, carefully presented within a Mithraic context, would be interpreted as a fight on the side of Light and Truth. Rome’s exploitative tactics and over-dependence on slavery, would result in Spartakos’ revolt in Italy, but in Asia, a quiet resentment bubbled beneath the surface. The violent manner alone in which Rome had acquired its Asian province, bequeathed to it by Attalos III, but contested by Aristonikos-Eumenes III, had created further hostility in the inhabitants of Asia Minor.
Mithradates masterfully took advantage of this hatred, not only to build up his image, but to virtually bind the populations of Asia Minor to his cause. Greeks and non-Greeks could now unite against a common ‘Other’ who not only had no place in the Hellenistic East, but who had devastated and exploited them indiscriminately. When the cities of Asia Minor were purged of their Roman populations, there was no turning back for most of them. Their complicity and thus, their obedience were sealed in blood and now they were committed to the Mithradatic cause until the very end, out of fear for Roman reprisals should Mithradates lose. Interestingly, the only city in the Greek mainland to replicate this purge and join with Mithradates, Athens, fought the Romans to the very last, unwaveringly; a telling example of the effectiveness of Mithradates’ blood-soaked strategy[34]. In this manner, the Pontic king had acquired the obedience of the cities and inhabitants of Asia Minor by exploiting their hatred for Roman administration, and then, as mentioned above, taking steps to ensure his own administration was radically different.
Terror Tactics
Those who strayed, be they entire cities or the sons Mithradates notoriously suspected of treachery, were dealt with harshly and decisively. Even as he invaded Greece as liberator, those cities and regions which refused to be liberated, were ravaged and punished. When the tides of fortune turned, and the loyalty of some of his followers began wavering, Mithradates did not hesitate to march upon former allies in Asia, such as Ephesos, one of the cities which had taken part in the Asiatic Vespers.[35] In one fell swoop he attempted to poison the entire Galatian leadership, whose obedience could no longer be guaranteed.[36] Any son who acted against his wishes or appeared to harbour ambitions of his own, was also swiftly and mercilessly dispatched. Terror such as the one displayed in the butchery of the Roman population of Asia, was part of Mithradates’ arsenal and persona. As the manifestation of divine vengeance and restoration, the king could swiftly change from magnanimous benefactor to furious executioner, and it only added to his regal mystique and charisma. His followers were only too pleased to see his wrath directed towards their Roman enemies and their collaborators, in impressive and terrifying displays, such as the pouring of molten gold down a Roman official’s throat by the king at Pergamon[37], but they were also all too cognisant of the fact that they could find themselves at the receiving end of this wrath as well, as in the case of the enslavement of the entirety of Khios’ free population, suspected of treachery.[38] Both of these expressions of the king’s mercurial temperament ensured an obedience characterised in equal parts by awe and dread.
Consequences of Defeat
In the end, however, the reason behind the success of the system Mithradates sought to revive was also the one behind its downfall. As defeats accumulated, his allies, especially the Greek poleis, in Greece and Asia Minor, began turning to the Romans once more, as the victorious Hellenistic god-king they had gladly followed previously, was no longer victorious. More widely, it was the reason why Rome could lose battle after battle and still win wars, such as during the First Punic War, but entire Hellenistic kingdoms capitulated after one decisive engagement, and Mithradates’ own Anatolian empire was feeling the pressure, as he was expelled from Greece and constrained to a defensive war in Asia. Obedience faltered when the king’s own fortunes faltered, and soon enough Mithradates’ total war against Rome, in the name of justice and freedom, had to come to an end, and an albeit temporary compromise with the Romans.
Conclusion
Even so, where Mithradates stands out, is in his constant resurgence, with fresh armies of thousands willing to follow him back into the fray, despite the previous setbacks. It is in this that he perhaps transcended the struggles of the traditional Hellenistic monarch, and was able to continue fighting a war against the Romans even after numerous defeats. Was this because he provided or promised riches to his followers?[39] Other Hellenistic rulers had possessed riches before him, and more, such as his ally, Tigranes II of Armenia, who eventually capitulated to the Romans. In leaving his kingdom vulnerable to Roman attacks, having lost Asia Minor and gone on the defensive, Mithradates could have been perceived as failing in his traditional role of Hellenistic and Persian king. However, it took three separate wars for his Greek subjects to lose faith in him and support his son, Pharnakes II’s claim to the throne, while the king was busy preparing yet another army of Skythians and Sarmatians, to lead against Rome.[40]
Ultimately, one did not follow a king for a singular reason. One doubts, for instance, that a Sarmatian nomad would have an axe to grind against Rome…this early at least. It was rather the combination of Mithradates’ personal charisma, magnetism, and impressive and terrifying displays of regal power, a language all of his diverse followers could understand, his expert use of propaganda, psychology, religion, and oracles to create an image of fateful invincibility, his revitalisation or perhaps even reinvention of Hellenistic kingship in a time of humbled kings, all under the veneer of staunch anti-Romanism, which inspired such obedience among his subjects and allies. Mithradates’ was the swan song of the victorious Hellenistic monarch, and the obedience he instilled in his followers was perhaps a recognition of that very fact. In an era of frail rulers, meekly bequeathing their kingdoms to Rome, such as Pergamon and Bithynia, or ruling diminished as client-kings, following Mithradates held a much greater significance for the populations of the Near East. With his death, the era of the victorious Hellenistic king truly ended, and the castrated kings now ruled.
Xenofon Kalogeropoulos is currently pursuing a DPhil in Ancient History at the University of Oxford (St. Anne's College)
Notes: [1] Polybios. The Histories, W.R. Paton (trans.), Loeb Classical Library 128. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), Book XXIX, 27. [2] U. Gotter, ‘The Castrated King or: the Everyday Monstrosity of Late Hellenistic Kingship’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Splendors and Miseries of Ruling Alone: Encounters with Monarchy from Archaic Greece to the Hellenistic Mediterranean, (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2013), p. 207. [3] Appianos, Roman History, Volume III, B. McGing (trans.), Loeb Classical Library 4, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), Book XII, 22. [4] Ibid. [5] Ibid. [6] A. Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 13. [7] Justinus, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, J.S. Watson (trans.), (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), Book XXXVII, 2. [8] Mayor, The Poison King, p. 30. [9] Ibid., p. 32. [10] B.C. McGing, The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus, Mnemosyne Supplements, vol. 89, Bibliotheca Classica Batava, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986), p. 44. [11] D.W. Roller, Empire of the Black Sea: The Rise and Fall of the Mithridatic World, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 204. [12] Appianos, Roman History, Book XII, 66. [13] Phlegon of Tralles, Book of Marvels, W.F. Hansen(trans.), (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), 3.4-3.5. [14] Unknown, The Sibylline Oracles, M.S. Terry (trans.), (1899), Book III. [15] Gehrke, ‘The Victorious King: Reflections on the Hellenistic Monarchy’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Splendors and Miseries of Ruling Alone, p. 76. [16] Polybios, Histories, Book XVIII, 41. [17] Ibid. [18] B.C. McGing, The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, pp. 47-51. [19] Gehrke, ‘The Victorious King, pp. 80-81, 84. [20] B.C. McGing, The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, pp. 61-64. [21] U. Gotter, ‘The Castrated King or: the Everyday Monstrosity of Late Hellenistic Kingship’, in N. Luraghi, (ed.), The Splendors and Miseries of Ruling Alone, p. 204. [22] B.C. McGing, The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, pp. 100-102. [23] A. Mayor, The Poison King, p. 49. [24] Ibid., p. 37. [25] Mayor, The Poison King, p. 37. [26] Ibid. [27] J.M. Hojte, ‘Portraits and Statues of Mithridates VI’, in J.M. Hojte, (ed.), Mithridates VI and the Pontic Kingdom, Black Sea Studies 9, Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Black Sea Studies, (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009), pp. 148-149. [28] Mayor, The Poison King, p. 38. [29] R. Fleischer, ‘Hellenistic Royal Iconography on Coins’, in T. Engberg, L. Hannestad, J. Zahle (eds.), Aspects of Hellenistic Kingship, (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1996), pp. 29-31. [30] Appianos, Roman History, Book XII, 28. [31] Ibid., 21. [32] Mayor, The Poison King, p. 20. [33] Ibid., p. 47. [34] Appianos, Roman History, Book XII, 38. [35] Ibid., 48. [36] Ibid., 22. [37] Ibid., 21. [38] Ibid., 46-47. [39] Justinus, Epitome, Book XXXVIII, 3,7. [40] Appian, Roman History, Book XII, 108-109.
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