Mithridates VI fought Rome through three wars and outlasted Sulla and Lucullus
For nearly half a century, the king of Pontus on the Black Sea kept defying the Roman Republic. Mithridates VI drove Rome out of Asia Minor, won Athens to his side, survived defeats by Sulla and Lucullus, and was still plotting a fresh war in Crimea when his own son finally turned against him.
He was born in Sinope, on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia, around 135 BC, a prince of mixed Iranian and Greek descent who claimed Cyrus the Great and Alexander's generals among his ancestors. His name is the Greek form of an Iranian one meaning given by Mithra. When his father was poisoned at a banquet around 120 BC, his mother Laodice VI ruled as regent and favoured his younger brother, and the teenage heir went into hiding. He returned between 116 and 113 BC, was acclaimed king, and imprisoned both mother and brother, who died in captivity.
Mithridates then built an empire around the Black Sea. He took Colchis, in what is now Georgia, and the Greek cities of Crimea, which accepted his rule in exchange for protection from the Scythians. Pushing west into Anatolia brought him up against Bithynia and its Roman backers. In 89 BC Rome, distracted by the Social War with its Italian allies, joined a Bithynian invasion of Pontus with only two legions available; Mithridates scattered them. The next year he ordered the killing of Roman and Italian settlers across Anatolian cities, an episode called the Asiatic Vespers, with as many as 80,000 said to have died. Presenting himself as the defender of Hellenism, he drew Athens and other Greek cities to his side, and Tigranes the Great of Armenia became his ally and son-in-law.
Rome struck back in three rounds. Sulla pushed him out of Greece between 88 and 84 BC but, needing to deal with Marius at home, granted lenient terms. A Roman commander, Murena, reopened hostilities in 83 BC and lost at the Halys. The third war began in 73 BC over Bithynia, which its last king had willed to Rome. Lucullus beat Mithridates at Cabira and chased him into Armenia, yet in 67 BC he returned to crush Roman legions at Zela and retake Pontus.
Pompey finally broke him at the Lycus in 66 BC. Mithridates escaped over the Caucasus to Crimea, seized the Bosporan throne from a reluctant son, and began conscripting again. In 63 BC another son, Pharnaces, rebelled with army support, and the old king took his own life in the citadel of Panticapaeum. Pompey had him buried among his ancestors at Sinope.
Source: Mithridates VI Eupator
