Mithridatic Wars (89-63 BC): Rome Against Mithridates VI

The Mithridatic Wars were three wars fought between 89 and 63 BC by the Roman Republic against Mithridates VI Eupator, king of Pontus on the southern shore of the Black Sea. Mithridates briefly drove Rome out of Asia Minor and Greece and ordered the massacre of tens of thousands of Romans and Italians. The wars brought fame to Sulla, Lucullus and Pompey, and ended with Rome dominating the eastern Mediterranean.

Background: Pontus and Rome

Pontus was a Hellenistic kingdom in north-eastern Anatolia, ruled by a dynasty claiming descent from Persian royalty. Mithridates VI became king as a boy around 120 BC and took full power around 113 BC. He expanded his realm around the Black Sea, taking the Crimea and the Bosporan kingdom, Colchis and Lesser Armenia.

His ambitions in Anatolia clashed with Rome’s interests. Rome had held the province of Asia, the former kingdom of Pergamon, since 133 BC, and protected client kings in Bithynia and Cappadocia. Roman tax collectors and moneylenders were deeply resented there.

In 89 BC, encouraged by the Roman envoy Manius Aquillius, King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia raided Pontic territory. Mithridates responded with war while Rome was distracted by the Social War in Italy.

The First Mithridatic War (89-85 BC)

Mithridates swept through Asia Minor in 89-88 BC, defeating Roman and allied forces. Many Greek cities welcomed him as a liberator. Aquillius was captured, and ancient accounts say he was executed by having molten gold poured down his throat.

In 88 BC Mithridates sent secret orders from Ephesus to the cities of Asia to kill all Romans and Italians, including women, children and freedmen, on the same day. This massacre is known in modern times as the Asiatic Vespers. Ancient estimates of the dead range from 80,000 to 150,000.

Mithridates then sent armies into Greece, where Athens, under the philosopher-politician Aristion, joined him. In Rome, the struggle over who would command against Mithridates led to Sulla’s March on Rome in 88 BC.

Sulla landed in Greece in 87 BC, besieged Athens and its port, the Piraeus, and stormed Athens on 1 March 86 BC. He defeated the Pontic general Archelaus at Chaeronea in 86 BC and at Orchomenus soon after. Meanwhile a rival Roman army under Gaius Flavius Fimbria, sent by Sulla’s enemies in Rome, attacked Mithridates in Asia.

In 85 BC Sulla and Mithridates made peace at Dardanus. Mithridates gave up all his conquests, paid an indemnity and handed over part of his fleet, but kept his kingdom. Sulla imposed a crushing fine of 20,000 talents on the province of Asia and returned to Italy to fight a civil war.

The Second Mithridatic War (83-81 BC)

The Second War was a brief conflict provoked by Lucius Licinius Murena, Sulla’s governor in Asia, who raided Pontus without the Senate’s clear authority. Mithridates defeated him in 82 BC near the River Halys. Sulla, now in control of Rome, ordered Murena to stop, and the earlier peace was restored.

The Third Mithridatic War (73-63 BC)

In 74 BC King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia died and left his kingdom to Rome. Mithridates invaded Bithynia in 73 BC and besieged Cyzicus, a key city on the Sea of Marmara.

The consul Lucius Licinius Lucullus relieved Cyzicus, cutting off Mithridates’s huge army, which lost many men to hunger and disease. Lucullus then invaded Pontus, won at Cabira around 72 BC and drove Mithridates to seek refuge with his son-in-law, Tigranes II of Armenia.

When Tigranes refused to hand him over, Lucullus invaded Armenia and defeated a much larger army at Tigranocerta on 6 October 69 BC. However, his soldiers, worn out by long campaigns and stirred up by agitators including his brother-in-law Publius Clodius, mutinied. His reforms to ease the debts of Asian cities had also angered powerful Roman financiers.

Mithridates returned to Pontus and in 67 BC destroyed a Roman army under Lucullus’s legate Triarius at Zela. In 66 BC the lex Manilia, supported by a famous speech of Cicero, transferred the command to Pompey, already successful in Pompey’s War Against the Pirates.

Pompey defeated Mithridates in a night battle near the River Lycus in 66 BC. Tigranes submitted to Rome, and Mithridates fled to the Crimea, where he planned, according to ancient writers, to invade Italy from the north. In 63 BC his son Pharnaces rebelled and Mithridates died at Panticapaeum.

Key people

Mithridates VI Eupator was famed for his energy, his knowledge of many languages and his interest in poisons and antidotes. For Romans he became a symbol of the dangerous eastern king.

Lucullus was a brilliant general and administrator whose victories were overshadowed by mutiny and political attack. He retired to legendary luxury, giving his name to the adjective “Lucullan”.

Pompey reaped the final victory. His settlement of the East in 64-63 BC created the provinces of Pontus-Bithynia and Syria, and set up client kingdoms including Judea.

Why did the Greeks support Mithridates?

Many Greek cities in Asia welcomed Mithridates in 88 BC. Since the creation of the province of Asia, Roman tax-farming companies, the publicani, and moneylenders had extracted heavy payments, and Roman governors were often accused of extortion. Mithridates presented himself as a Hellenistic king and a liberator, cancelling debts and promising freedom from taxes.

Support was far from universal. Rhodes resisted a long siege by Mithridates in 88 BC, and some cities, such as Magnesia on the Sipylus, held out. As the war turned and Mithridates ruled more harshly, raising troops and money and deporting suspected opponents, many cities changed sides again.

The price of rebellion was high. Sulla punished the cities that had joined Mithridates, quartered troops on them and imposed his massive fine. To pay it, cities borrowed from Roman lenders at high interest, and the debt burden lasted for years until Lucullus intervened to cap interest rates.

Myths and facts

Mithridates’s fame as the “Poison King” rests on ancient reports that he studied toxins and antidotes and tested them on condemned prisoners. Later medical writers credited him with a complex universal antidote, mithridatium, which remained in European pharmacy books into the early modern period. The recipe attributed to him is uncertain and many later versions were invented.

Another popular story says that at Pompey’s capture of his treasures, notes on his medical research were found and translated into Latin on Pompey’s orders. Pliny the Elder reports this, but the details cannot be checked.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 89 BC: Nicomedes IV of Bithynia raids Pontus; the First Mithridatic War begins.
• 88 BC: The Asiatic Vespers massacre Romans and Italians in Asia.
• 86 BC, 1 March: Sulla storms Athens; later that year he wins at Chaeronea.
• 85 BC: Treaty of Dardanus ends the First War.
• 83-81 BC: Second Mithridatic War, after Murena’s attack.
• 73 BC: Mithridates invades Bithynia; Lucullus relieves Cyzicus.
• 69 BC, 6 October: Lucullus defeats Tigranes at Tigranocerta.
• 66 BC: Pompey takes command and defeats Mithridates at the Lycus.
• 63 BC: Mithridates dies in Panticapaeum in the Crimea.

Why it matters

The Mithridatic Wars ended the last major independent Hellenistic power in Anatolia and greatly increased Rome’s revenues from the East. They also fed the rise of the great generals whose rivalries destroyed the Republic: Sulla’s command led to civil war, and Pompey’s eastern triumph prepared the way for the First Triumvirate.