Mithridates the Great (33 page)

However, as Appian remarks, ‘there was nothing mean or contemptible about him, even in misfortune’.
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Whilst he had been ill, his generals had been conquering outlying parts of the Chersonese and Bosporus, and the royal army was an impressive, though brittle, force of 36,000 men. With this force he was (allegedly) determined to press on with his plan to invade Italy. Amongst those who had grave reservations about the plan was Mithridates’ son and heir apparent, Pharnarces. By any standard, an invasion of Italy was a huge gamble against massive odds, and Pharnarces had little interest in going for death or glory. Rather Pharnarces reckoned that Pompey was showing so little interest in the Pontic remnant in the north that he had every chance of inheriting a tidy little kingdom on the death of his father. But this required that his father did not insist on ruining the place in pursuit of his doomed vendetta with Rome.

It is probable that the discontent of Pharnarces had not progressed far beyond the point of grumbling, because inevitably word of what was afoot reached Mithridates. Ever quick to scent a conspiracy, Mithridates rounded up the ‘ringleaders’ – that is, those whom he suspected were positioning themselves to best benefit from his death or deposition from power. However, he did not include his son amongst those condemned to death or exile. Possibly Mithridates felt that Pharnarces was genuinely guilty of no more than honest disagreement with his father’s policy, or maybe, as Appian suggests, he was dissuaded from violent action by genuine fondness for his son.
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If so, this was the first time Mithridates had turned from drastic action out of family considerations. This was after all, the man who had killed his mother (probably), brother (almost certainly), sister and sundry offspring (without doubt), and often on a very slight pretext.

Pharnarces did not intend to take the risk that his father’s uncharacteristic mercy was merely a passing moment of weakness. In this, as with his commitment to decisive action, Pharnarces was certainly his father’s son. He went first to Mithridates’ hardest core of supporters, the Roman exiles. Either these exiles, being better informed than most about the dangers of invading Italy, welcomed a leader who offered an alternative, or they simply understood that Mithridates was ageing fast and decided to transfer their allegiance to a younger man who could offer them decades of protection. In either case, the exiles were won over and with their support the tide turned in favour of
Pharnarces’ coup. Through the night, messengers were sent speedily to other units of the army, which generally welcomed the news that the current oppressive regime was at an end.

The collapse of Mithridates power came quickly. Even those loyal to him saw that they were in a rapidly decreasing minority and realized that their chances of survival depended on how swiftly and convincingly they changed sides. By early in the morning, when Mithridates was eventually awakened by the tumult, it was already over. He sent servants to find out what was going on and these brought the reply that the army had turned against him. Appian has them say ‘We want your son as king. We prefer a young king to an old one who rules through and is ruled by eunuchs, a man who has killed so many of his sons, generals and friends’.
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Undaunted, Mithridates went to rally his men, perhaps believing that even now the force of his personality combined with a few well-timed concessions might be enough to stop the revolt in its tracks. If so, he would have been shaken when his soldiers fled from him and tried to join the ranks of the advancing rebels. The rebels refused to accept these latest defectors, pointing to Mithridates and telling them to prove their worth. To avoid death or capture, Mithridates retreated to one of the towers of his fortress, and there, from one of the upper galleries he watched as his son was crowned king in a makeshift ceremony.

Even now Mithridates was scheming for a way out. He sent messengers to his son saying that he would not oppose the usurpation of his kingdom if he was given only the chance to flee with his life. None of the messengers returned. Mithridates must have known that they probably would not. The dearest ambition of Pharnarces was to be confirmed by the Romans in possession of the Bosporan kingdom; there was no surer way of gaining Roman goodwill than handing Mithridates over in chains. That at least Mithridates had in his power to prevent.

He sent his bodyguard, ostensibly to surrender themselves to the new regime. However, Pharnarces knew his father, and at the sight of Mithridates’ loyalists approaching him in a group he did not pause to reflect on their motives. The men were immediately cut down. This last desperate throw of the dice, if it had been that, failed. The kingdom of Mithridates consisted now of a few rooms and the battlements of his tower, and his subjects were two of his daughters and Bituitis, an officer in the Gallic bodyguard who had remained with his master.

Even the indomitable Mithridates could see that his long war was over. For
years he had carried in the sheath of his sword the potions with which to meet such an eventuality. As he mixed the concoction which would bring his life to a swift and painless end, his daughters insisted that they be allowed to share their father’s fate. Either they believed that Pharnarces had planned for them a fate literally worse than death, or they were driven by the powerful loyalty which Mithridates seems to have been capable of inspiring. In either case, they physically prevented Mithridates from taking the poison until they were allowed their share.

The poison slew the girls as quickly and easily as intended, but not the stubborn body of Mithridates. Years of taking antidotes had hardened his system to the extent where he could withstand potions which would kill three normal men, and he had already given a fatal dose to each of his daughters. Not enough remained to kill, or even seriously inconvenience him. Mithridates took a brisk walk about the borders of what remained of his kingdom in the hope that exercise would encourage the poison to work, but he finally had to accept that more direct action would be required.

It is highly probable that the eloquent farewell speech preserved in Appian is the historian’s own invention, but it would be remarkable if Mithridates did not comment bitterly on the irony of his precautions being so thorough that he was unable to kill himself even when he wanted to. He might well have included a few choice remarks on ungrateful sons, but the only witness was the faithful Bituitis, of whom Mithridates asked one last service. He, who had been monarch with absolute power over a great kingdom, now needed the help of his bodyguard to die and be saved from the disgrace of appearing as a captive in a Roman triumph. Bituitis did his king the service he requested.

Cassius Dio offers an alternative ending to the story, which is that Mithridates was not killed by the poison, but seriously incapacitated. Consequently he was helpless when followers of his son finally broke into his rooms, and killed him. Whichever version is correct, it seems certain that at the end Mithridates, the warrior king, died by the sword.

Epilogue

The news of the death of Mithridates reached Pompey in 62 BC, whilst he was campaigning in Judea. His troops welcomed the occasion with rejoicing and sacrifices, for they were well aware that no-one would consider their campaign over whilst their inveterate enemy still lived. As it was, Pompey was now able to begin closing down military operations and preparing to return home in the secure expectation of a Roman triumph for a mission well accomplished.

As Mithridates had no doubt expected, his corpse was pressed into service by his son as a peace-offering to the Romans. Pharnarces, now ruling as Pharnarces II, was eager to be confirmed as ruler of the Bosporan kingdom, and enthusiastically surrendered himself, his kingdom and the mortal remains of Mithridates to the mercy of Pompey.

The embalmed body of Mithridates was conveyed to Sinope by trireme. Pompey was aware that although his battles in Asia Minor were finished, he had still other battles to fight in the political arena of Rome. Therefore, the better to show his accomplishment in bringing about the downfall of Mithridates, he ordered that his former opponent should receive funeral honours appropriate for a great king. Mithridates was given a royal burial, his remains being interred among the tombs of his ancestors.

Only now, as word of his death spread to the far corners of Mithridates’ former kingdom, did those holding the last Pontic castles and strongholds finally contact the Romans and make arrangements for their surrender. Pontus did not survive as an independent kingdom, but was annexed to Bithynia and administered as a joint province. Pharnarces was allowed to reign in his Bosporan kingdom (with the exception of the town of Phanagoria, which was made independent as a reward for being the first to rebel against Mithridates). Asia Minor itself was now firmly under Roman control.

It is fascinating, though fruitless, to speculate whether a different person in Mithridates’ place might have succeeded where Mithridates failed. The Roman political and military systems were at their weakest in decades, with political misgovernment leading to military overstretch and the constant danger of civil war. Nor should we forget how close Mithridates had come to success at Orchomenos in Greece, when a crushing victory over Sulla might indeed have
united Rome’s enemies under the Pontic banner. Could a Pontic Alexander, with greater charisma and generalship have swept Sulla aside in Greece, re-ignited the embers of the Italian revolt and crushed Rome?

Or did Mithridates never have a chance? Certainly he always acted as if he did. Nothing in his conduct suggests that he saw himself as a plucky hero fighting a doomed battle against overwhelming odds. Mithridates regarded himself as a rival of Rome, not a victim. No-one now can know how firmly he believed that Rome had over-reached itself, and was about to be brought crashing down, undermined from within by rebellious subjects and seditious generals, and attacked from outside by kings such as himself and Tigranes. Mithridates’ best hope was that Rome had become as rotten as the Seleucid empire in its final days, and he worked tirelessly for himself and his kingdom to take maximum advantage should Rome begin to crumble, as for a while in the early 80s BC it looked as though it might.

The bumbling foreign policy of the senate, combined with the greed of its individual members, certainly showed Rome at its worst. Despite the experience of the Seleucid wars, Rome was still not fully capable of fighting overseas campaigns, and it was Rome’s flawed political system as much as Mithridates’ ability which allowed him to survive as long as he did. Nevertheless, the durability of Mithridates, in what could be mildly understated as trying circumstances, was truly remarkable. The fact that he was militarily defeated time and again meant that his political credibility was immensely damaged. Yet, right until the end, he remained firmly master of whatever dominions he controlled. At the same time, his constant probing for Roman weaknesses, be they military or political, meant that he was able to make the most of the few opportunities which he found. And even when down, he was never out, but was constantly seeking means - such as by subsidizing the pirates – of making his Roman enemies share his pain. It is quite possible that as the final levies went east to join the Pompeian army, some of the younger recruits were sped on their way by grandfathers reminiscing how they too had fought Mithridates when they were that age.

Also it was Mithridates’ misfortune that he was matched against some of the best generals of his day. Pompey, Lucullus and Sulla were generals of the first class – and they, like the soldiers under their command, had been hardened in combat against the finest troops in the world in the course of fighting civil wars against their own armies. Yet, when Mithridates fought these same troops under lesser generals such as Murena or Triarius, he defeated them handily. Also of course, it goes without saying, that in fighting the Roman army of the
late republic, the forces of Pontus were comprehensively outmatched in terms of training, experience and (usually) morale.

Under these circumstances, the performance and tenacity of the Pontic troops was admirable, and certainly superior to that offered by the levies of Tigranes of Armenia. However, the Pontic infantry lacked both the ferocity and the staying power, not to mention the battle-hardened experience of the Roman legionaries; it was this, particularly in the crucial battles in Greece, which eventually turned the tide. Had Mithridates succeeded in his later idea of creating a force of pseudo-legionaries to match against the Romans, the results would have been interesting, though perhaps not in a way which the Romans would have appreciated.

It is difficult to evaluate Mithridates as a general. As a strategist he seems to have had both the vision to conceive of plans on a regional, or even Mediterranean-wide scale, and he had both the daring and the decisiveness to carry these plans out. This, and his characteristic ruthlessness, was seen in his order for the murder of tens of thousands of Romans and Italians in the First Mithridatic War. The massacre was intended to commit the cities of Asia firmly to enmity with Rome, but in the end the perpetrators made their peace with Rome, while Mithridates, the planner, committed himself to a lifelong war against an enemy which seldom forgave, and never forgot. Again we will never know if Mithridates ever regretted this.

During the same war, the king’s foresight in developing a navy gave him a major advantage over the Romans who had not done so, and who, indeed, only realized that one was necessary because of the use Mithridates made of his. Mithridates certainly botched the siege of Rhodes, but to be fair, this was his first experience of direct command of military operations. He learned fast, and by the time of the Armenian campaign against Lucullus, though his men were outnumbered and outclassed, Mithridates hardly put a foot wrong.

Strategically, Mithridates might be condemned for undertaking his Greek adventure and losing armies at Chaeronea and Orchomenos. But Mithridates was a gambler, and when he saw the tide turning against Rome he could hardly be expected not to see how far his luck would ride. Less excusable was his refusal to cut his losses at Cyzicus during his final push into Bithynia, when he should have abandoned the siege as soon as it became plain that his supply lines were endangered.