Mithridātēs

Mithridātēs or Mithradates VI, Eupator (reigned 120–63 BC), king of Pontus (on the south shore of the Black Sea), during his lifetime Rome's most formidable antagonist in the East and a permanent threat to her control over client kingdoms in Asia Minor. The kings of Pontus were of Persian noble birth, claiming descent from Darius; the population was Hellenized. Mithridates shared the throne with his brother for about six years under his mother's regency; he then imprisoned his mother, murdered his brother, married his sister Laodicē, and proceeded to extend his power around the Black Sea area. He fought three wars against Rome—the Mithridatic Wars—in 89–85, 83–82, and 74–63. During the first, when he quickly overran Bithynia and most of Asia, on a set date in 88 he had Roman and Italian residents in Asia put to death (the number killed was said to have been 80, 000). He captured and sacked Athens in 86, but in the same year his army was twice defeated by Sulla and he withdrew from Europe. In the second war Mithridates was attacked by Lucius Murena, proconsul of Asia but easily repelled the attacks and again Sulla made peace. Mithridates opened the third war by invading Bithynia, which had been bequeathed to Rome by Nicomedes in 75. He was defeated and driven back from his conquered territory first by Lucullus, then by Pompey, and took refuge eventually in the Crimea. Here he failed to raise a new fleet and army, and a revolt against him was led by his son Pharnacēs. He preferred death to captivity, but found that, having taken so many antidotes, he was immune to poison, and had to get a slave to stab him (63 BC).