General Notes

[2280151.ged]
ALIA: /Mithradates the Great, King of Pontus/
Birth: in 131 BC, Sinope, Pontus [Turkey] 1
Death: in 63 BC, Panticapaeum [Ukraine] 2
Burial: Royal Sepulchre, Sinope, Pontus [Turkey] 2
Event: Ancestor M
Event: Ruled 120 - 63 BC, King of Pontus 3 2
Note:
Mithradates VI EUPATOR, byname MITHRADATES THE GREAT (d. 63 BC,
Panticapaeum [now in Ukraine]), king of Pontus in northern Anatolia
(120-63 BC). Under his energetic leadership, Pontus expanded to absorb
several of its small neighbours and, briefly, contested Rome's hegemony
in Asia Minor.
Life.
Mithradates the Great was the sixth--and last--Pontic ruler by that name.
Mithradates (often misspelled Mithridates and meaning "gift of [the god]
Mithra") was a common name among Anatolian rulers of the age. When
Mithradates VI succeeded his father, Mithradates Euergetes, in 120 BC, he
was then only 11 years of age, and for a few years his mother ruled in
his place. About 115 BC, she was deposed and thrown into prison by her
son, who thereafter ruled alone. Mithradates began his long career of
conquest by dispatching successful expeditions to the Crimea and to
Colchis (on the eastern shore of the Black Sea). Both districts were
added to the Pontic kingdom. To the Greeks of the Tauric Chersonese and
the Cimmerian Bosporus (Crimea and Straits of Kerch), Mithradates was a
deliverer from their Scythian enemies, and they gladly surrendered their
independence in return for the protection given to them by his armies. In
Anatolia, however, the royal dominions had been considerably diminished
after the death of Mithradates V: Paphlagonia had freed itself, and
Phrygia (c. 116 BC) had been linked to the Roman province of Asia.
Mithradates' first move there was to partition Paphlagonia and Galatia
between himself and Nicomedes III of Bithynia, but next he quarreled with
Nicomedes over Cappadocia. Successful at first on two occasions, he was
on both deprived of his advantage by Roman intervention (c. 95 and 92).
While appearing to acquiesce, he resolved to expel the Romans from Asia.
A first attempt to depose Nicomedes IV of Bithynia, who was completely
subservient to the Romans, was frustrated (c. 90). Then Nicomedes,
instigated by Rome, attacked Pontic territory, and Mithradates, after
protesting in vain to the Romans, finally declared war (88).
Nicomedes and the Roman armies were defeated and flung back to the coasts
of the Propontis and the Aegean. The Roman province of Asia was occupied,
and most of the Greek cities in western Asia Minor allied themselves with
Mithradates, though a few held out against him, such as Rhodes, which he
besieged unsuccessfully. He also sent large armies into Greece, where
Athens and other cities took his side. But the Roman generals, Sulla in
Greece and Fimbria in Asia, defeated his forces in several battles during
86 and 85. In 88 he had arranged a general massacre of the Roman and
Italian residents in Asia (80,000 are said to have perished), in order
that the Greek cities, as his accessories in the crime, should feel
irrevocably committed to the struggle against Rome. As the war turned
against him, his former leniency toward the Greeks changed to severity;
every kind of intimidation was resorted to--deportations, murders,
freeing of slaves. But this reign of terror could not prevent the cities
from deserting to the victorious side. In 85, when the war was clearly
lost, he made peace with Sulla in the Treaty of Dardanus, abandoning his
conquests, surrendering his fleet, and paying a large fine.
In what is called the Second Mithradatic War, the Roman general Lucius
Licinius Murena invaded Pontus without provocation in 83 but was defeated
in 82. Hostilities were suspended, but disputes constantly occurred, and
in 74 a general war broke out. Mithradates defeated Marius Aurelius
Cotta, the Roman consul, at Chalcedon, but Lucullus worsted him outside