WHAT happened in the tower after Pharnaces was acclaimed king? There was apparently only one witness, Mithradates’ bodyguard Bituitus, and it is not clear that he lived to tell the story. What we do know comes from Roman historians who pieced together the scene from the contradictory reports of people in Pantikapaion at the time, interpretations of the evidence found in the tower, and hearsay and popular traditions about Mithradates’ last hours. Let us look first at what the ancient writers tell us, and then consider how to read between the lines to reconstruct events and make sense of incomplete evidence.
THE MOST DEADLY OF ALL POISONS
Mithradates’ worst fear was that he would be turned over to Pompey for a degrading public display and death in Rome. He understood that he had lost the goodwill of his people; he acknowledged that his son was the new king. His only hope was to go into exile. He sent several messages to Pharnaces, requesting safe passage out of Pantikapaion. Not one of his messengers returned. Next Mithradates sent old friends to petition his son, but either they were killed by Pharnaces’ followers (according to Appian), or they were convinced to turn against the king (Cassius Dio’s report).1
His entreaties for safe passage unanswered, Mithradates found himself in the same straits as Hannibal had been in 182 BC, trapped in his palace in Bithynia. Like Hannibal, Mithradates had prepared for this situation. Mithradates thanked his bodyguard and other companions who had remained faithful. As in previous catastrophes, Mithradates directed his eunuchs to distribute poison to the courtesans and children in the seraglio. The two youngest princesses, Mithradatis and Nyssa, were being raised in the palace with their father, which explains how they came to be in the tower with him. (They were betrothed but had not yet reached the age of marriage, so they were perhaps between nine and thirteen.) According to the literary traditions, the king and his daughters took poison, while Bituitus stood guard.
FIG. 15.1. Mithradates poisons his young daughters (right) and requests his bodyguard Bituitus (left) to stab him. Illustration by Adrien Marie, in Church 1885.
FIG. 15.2. Mithridates, His Rash Act. An unsympathetic caricature by Punch artist John Leech, depicting the suicide pact of Mithradates and his daughters as a drawing room comedy. The Comic History of Rome by Gilbert Abbott A Beckett, 1852
Mithradates uncapped the secret compartment in the hilt of his dagger and tipped out the little golden vial, beautifully crafted by Scythian artists. The two girls entreated their father to share his poison with them, begging him to stay alive until they died. He held them in his arms while they sipped from the vial. The drug took immediate effect.2
When the girls were dead, Mithradates drank the rest. But the poison did not kill him. He paced energetically, to propel the toxin through his body. He became very weak, but death did not come. In the oft-repeated legend—heavy with irony and recounted in nearly every ancient version of Mithradates’ death—the king who had made himself invulnerable to poisoning by ingesting infinitesimal doses of poisons all his life, was in the end unable to poison himself. Mithradates’ last words were widely reported: “I—the absolute monarch of so great a kingdom—am now unable to die by poison because I foolishly used other drugs as antidotes. Although I have kept watch and guarded against all poisons, I neglected to take precautions against that most deadly of all poisons, which lurks in every king’s household, the faithlessness of army, friends, and children.”3
This pithy parable was taken up by medieval chroniclers and repeated by modern historians, because the moral seemed so poetically apt for the Poison King.
But logic raises objections. If the Mithridatium regimen was effective through what is now known as the process of hormesis—as Mithradates certainly believed—what would be the point of his lifelong precaution of carrying poison for suicide, unless it was a carefully calculated lethal dose of some special, fast-acting poison that was not included in his daily antidote? Over his lifetime, Mithradates had tested numerous poisons on human subjects and knew exactly how much he would require for a quick, private, dignified death.4 On the other hand, if the Mithridatium did not actually shield against poison, then why was the precisely measured dose ineffective?
There is a natural explanation that addresses both questions, overlooked by modern scholars but evident in the ancient reports. The king had shared his single dose with two others, at least halving the amount. There was not enough left to kill a man of Mithradates’ size and constitution. Like his unexpected mercy for his traitorous son Pharnaces, Mithradates’ compassion for his innocent daughters brought harm to himself. The true irony is that his sacrifice was repaid with his own suffering. Perhaps this was a fitting mythic ending after all, for one who had been hailed as a savior.
FIG. 15.3. Bituitus stabbing Mithradates, who was unable to poison himself because of his lifelong ingestion of antidotes. The illustration on this ornate sixteenth-century Mithridatium vessel was meant to advertise the potency of the theriac within—so strong that even self-poisoning fails. Annibale Fontana, 1570. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
FIG. 15.4. Tragic neoclassical view of Mithradates’ death, showing Pharnaces’ soldiers bursting into the tower, as described by Cassius Dio. The artist, Augustyn Mirys (1700–1790) depicts three dead daughters.
When it became obvious that the poison was inadequate, Mithradates drew his sword and attempted to stab himself, but physical weakness and mental distress interfered with his ability to drive the sword home. At that point, he called upon his faithful guard, Bituitus, who faltered before his king’s “majestic countenance.” According to Appian’s version of the tradition, Mithradates encouraged Bituitus: “Your strong right arm has kept me safe from my enemies many times in the past. Now, I shall benefit most of all if you will kill me, to save me—for so many years the ruler of so great a kingdom—from being a captive led in a Roman triumph.” Deeply moved, Bituitus “rendered the king the service he desired.” Cassius Dio gives an alternate version: Pharnaces’ soldiers “hastened his end with their swords and spears.” But Reinach reasonably suggested that Pharnaces’ soldiers burst into the tower too late to capture the king alive and in frustration mutilated his body.5
The ancient historians agree that after the bodies were discovered in the tower, Pharnaces sent a message to Pompey, now far away in Petra (Jordan), requesting permission to rule his father’s kingdom as a Friend of Rome. Pharnaces embalmed his father’s corpse, clothed it in Mithradates’ kingly raiment and armor, and sent it, along with the royal weapons, scepter, and other treasures, across the Black Sea to Pontus. Other triremes carried the dead bodies of the royal family (including Nyssa and Mithradatis) and the surviving children (Artaphernes, Eupatra, Orsabaris, and little Darius, Oxathres, Xerxes, and Cyrus). Pharnaces also turned over numerous Greeks and barbarians who had served Mithradates—including the men responsible for capturing Manius Aquillius, executed by molten gold for starting the Mithradatic Wars twenty-five years earlier. The presence of these men with their king, after such a tumultuous quarter century, is a testament to the remarkable loyalty of some of Mithradates’ followers.6
POMPEY’S VICTORY
Months later, Pompey received the news in camp somewhere between Petra and Jericho. Messengers flourishing javelins wrapped in victory laurels arrived, exulting that Mithradates had been forced by his son Pharnaces to commit suicide in Pantikapaion. Pompey clambered to the top of a hastily constructed mound of packsaddles to announce the tidings to his troops. Great feasts and sacrifices followed—just as though they had won a great battle and killed huge numbers of the enemy.
Pompey’s biographer Plutarch hints at a whiff of resentment and annoyance in Pompey’s awkward situation. Indeed, what in the world was Pompey doing nearly a thousand miles south of the Black Sea? He had been sent to kill or capture Mithradates in 66 BC—yet Mithradates not only had escaped but had ruled the Bosporan Kingdom in peace for the past three years, and had been preparing to invade Italy. Now, the elimination of Mithradates terminated Pompey’s legal justification for continuing to win personal glory in the Near East. Pompey sent an official letter to the Senate in Rome. The news was greeted with great relief and joy, and Cicero, as consul, proclaimed ten days of thanksgiving. Meanwhile, Pompey took his time traveling to Pontus to receive the remains of his adversary.7
But when Pompey’s soldiers opened the royal coffin on the beach, the dead man’s face was totally unrecognizable! Everyone knew, from widely publicized portraits on coins and statues, what Mithradates looked like—but decomposition made identification of the corpse impossible. According to Plutarch, the embalming was poorly done: the face had rotted because the brain had not been removed. But the long, damp sea voyage and exposure at Amisus in summertime, the effects of poison, the ravages of Mithradates’ recent facial ulcerations, and any mutilations by Pharnaces’ soldiers would also have done their work.8
The obliterated face immediately raised suspicion: was this really the body of Mithradates the Great? Had Mithradates’ brilliant halo of xvarnah (spirit or luck) truly been extinguished at last?
“For superstitious reasons,” Pompey averted his eyes (or perhaps did not care to look on the corpse after hearing that the face was not worth seeing). Those who did examine the corpse claimed to recognize it “by the scars.” Modern scholars have accepted this claim without careful analysis. Mithradates’ most distinguishing scar, of course, was the mark on his forehead from the lightning strike in infancy, but that would not have been visible on the decomposed face. For the same reason, the scar from his cheek wound in the battle of 67 BC could not be seen. That leaves the scar from the sword gash on his thigh, from the same battle, and the recent fatal stabbing wound dealt by Bituitus (with no witnesses). If the body had been mutilated by soldiers, as Cassius Dio reported, old scars would be difficult to read. A former friend of Mithradates, Gaius, was part of Pharnaces’ delegation, according to Plutarch. Perhaps he was one of those who identified the body by the thigh scar. But thigh wounds were commonplace for anyone who rode a horse in battle, and Mithradates’ distinctive facial scars were obliterated. This means that the royal paraphernalia in the coffin was the only physical evidence that the dead man was King Mithradates (see plate 9).
The armor, cuirass, and greaves matched Mithradates’ reputedly large proportions; the helmet was ornate (perhaps with a hyacinth-dyed plume like that of Cyrus the Great). There were other rich trappings of royalty: the purple cloak, Mithradates’ opulent sword—the scabbard alone worth four hundred talents—his gem-encrusted scepter, a golden crown. Plutarch says Pompey admired these marvelously wrought things and was “amazed at the size and splendor of the arms and raiment that Mithradates used to wear.” After Pompey left the scene, the Roman officers and some men who had once served Mithradates circled the loot like jackals—grabbing up the scabbard, haggling over the crown and other treasures.9
Pompey’s true feelings are unknown. Foremost must have been awe at this momentous occasion, the end of an era, the passing of a charismatic, grandly ambitious and independent monarch who had been Rome’s relentless, elusive enemy for as long as Pompey had been alive. But Plutarch also suggested there was a sense of anticlimax at the “unexpectedly easy completion” of Pompey’s campaign, which he had been prolonging to great advantage. Frustration, too: Mithradates had slipped away yet again, ever defiant and now forever immune to revenge, denying Pompey the glory of personally delivering to the Roman People and Senate the perpetrator of so many outrages and decades of warfare. Suicide, in antiquity as in modern times, could be a noble escape from tyranny or capture by the enemy. It also robs the victor of the satisfaction of killing his enemy or bringing him to justice.10
The historian Cassius Dio stressed that Pompey did not subject the body of Mithradates to any indignities or desecration. Instead, Pompey consciously copied Alexander’s chivalrous treatment of the remains of his Persian enemy King Darius. Treating the corpse with respect, Pompey commended Mithradates’ bold exploits and declared him the greatest king of his time. He paid for a royal funeral and ordered that the body be placed with Mithradates’ forefathers. No other enemy of Rome had ever been accorded such honors. As historian Jakob Munk Høtje points out, by treating Mithradates as Darius had been treated, Pompey contrived to demote “the philhellene king to an oriental despot” while he himself appeared as the new Roman Alexander.11
MORE QUESTIONS
Where was the body buried? According to Cassius Dio, Mithradates was placed “in the tombs of his ancestors.” Plutarch and Appian believed that he was laid to rest “in the tombs of the kings at Sinope,” because that had become the royal residence of Pontus. In 1890, Reinach assumed that a new royal necropolis must have existed in Sinope. But the traditional mausoleum of Mithradates’ forefathers was the set of rock-cut tombs at Amasia, above the Iris River (see fig. 4.4). Extensive modern archaeology in Sinope has failed to turn up any tombs that would qualify as those of Mithradates or his royal ancestors. So the ambiguity surrounding the identity of Mithradates’ body is further compounded by uncertainty about his gravesite. Ambiguity over a venerated figure’s final resting place is one of the hallmarks of a mythic hero, a sure sign that Mithradates had passed into the realm of legend (see appendix 1).12
The legendary aura and mystery surrounding Mithradates’ demise raises other questions unanswered in the ancient histories. What, for example, became of his devoted Amazon companion Hypsicratea?
Fig. 15.5. Mithradates and Hypsicratea take poison together, with Mithradates’ daughters and Bituitus. Boccaccio, Des cleres et nobles femmes, ca. 1450. Spencer Collection, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
If it was known or even rumored that Hypsicratea had been poisoned, killed, or captured, one would expect this to be included in the accounts of the fates of other members of Mithradates’ family and entourage. The disappearance from the historical record of this appealing figure, the brave horsewoman who was so intimately involved with Mithradates in his last years, leaves a blank page too tempting to ignore. “Queen Hypsicratea’s love for Mithradates knew no bounds,” declared Valerius Maximus; she was devoted to him “body and soul.” Her “extraordinary fidelity was Mithradates’ greatest solace and comfort in the most bitter and difficult conditions, for he considered that he was ‘at home’ even when wandering in defeat, because she was in exile with him.” Even Théodore Reinach fell under the spell of this romantic “passion sincère.” Reinach pictured Hypsicratea, “the last living embodiment of his lost kingdom,” tenderly comforting Mithradates in defeat.13
The novelist Michael Curtis Ford accounted for Hypsicratea’s disappearance by imagining that she had been swallowed by a crevasse in the ice during the Caucasus crossing, leaving Mithradates in true mourning for the first time in his life. Medieval and Renaissance authors also speculated about Hypsicratea’s fate. In an illustrated manuscript (ca. 1450) of Boccaccio’s Famous Women, the artist depicted Mithradates and Hypsicratea drinking chalices of poison together with the king’s two daughters and their retainer Bituitus. Some French dramas of the 1600s about Mithradates also placed Hypsicratea in the tower, succumbing to poison with the king and princesses.
Hypsicratea did possess the poison that Mithradates had given her after the defeat in the Moonlight Battle, and she could have committed suicide. But she was young, strong, resourceful, and free, not compelled to accept death like a courtesan trapped in the harem. An alternative story, in which Hypsicratea survived, is just as plausible.
No ancient account speaks of Hypsicratea after the winter of 63 BC. But an exciting recent discovery by Russian archaeologists in Phanagoria proves that Hypsicratea did survive the Caucasus crossing and was with Mithradates after he regained the Kingdom of the Bosporus. An inscription, on the base for a statue of Hypsicratea, honors her as the wife of King Mithradates Eupator Dionysus. Unfortunately, the statue itself is missing, but the inscription tells us that Hypsicratea was commemorated as Mithradates’ queen in the Bosporan Kingdom. The inscription holds another extraordinary surprise, as we will see.14
So Hypsicratea was in the Bosporus before Pharnaces’ revolt. But an idle life at Mithradates’ court in Pantikapaion might not have suited the independent horsewoman-warrior. It would not be unreasonable for Mithradates to assign her military duties associated with his war preparations. Perhaps she was away during Pharnaces’ revolt, carrying out some mission on his majesty’s service. Mithradates often employed close friends as envoys. Hypsicratea could have been dispatched to visit the nomads of the north or west, to prepare for the invasion of Italy. She and Mithradates might have expected to be reunited on the march.
If Hypsicratea was in Pantikapaion in 63 BC, one would suppose that Mithradates arranged for her safety at the first signs of Pharnaces’ revolt. Was she among the soldiers escorting the princesses to Scythia? The only escape route would have been into Scythia; she and Mithradates might have hoped to meet there in triumph—or in exile if he received safe passage.
Could Hypsicratea have been captured by Pharnaces and delivered to Pompey? If so, such a prize would have been displayed prominently in Pompey’s Triumph. But that is implausible, since her name is not included in the very detailed records of that celebration.
REMEMBER YOU ARE MORTAL
Pompey’s Triumph took place in 61 BC, two years after his victory. For two days, all Rome marveled at a spectacle of such magnitude and extravagance that it surpassed all previous triumphs. As Appian pointed out, no Roman had ever vanquished so powerful an enemy as Mithradates the Great nor conquered so many nations, extending Roman rule to the Euphrates and the Black Sea.
There were 700 captured ships on view in the harbor and countless wagons loaded with barbarian armor and weaponry and bronze ship prows. Banners and inscriptions lauded Pompey’s capture of 1,000 castles and 900 cities. There were carts laden with an astounding 20,000 talents’ worth of silver and gold coins, vessels, and jewelry. Litters heaped with millions of coins, chests of carved gems—truly, the official records of Pompey’s incredible plunder were exhaustive and too exhausting to catalog in full here. It had taken Pompey’s secretaries 30 days just to make an inventory of the 2,000 onyx and gold chalices from Mithradates’ hoard at Talaura; and only a fraction of the loot was actually included in the procession. Not to be outdone by Lucullus’s lone cherry tree, Pompey even paraded two exotic trees from Judea, ebony and balsam.
A host of 324 captives marched in the parade, among them Mithradates’ grandson Tigranes, the son of Tigranes the Great, with his wife and daughters; and Zosimé, Tigranes’ courtesan. Poor Nyssa, Mithradates’ sister, was trotted out again to walk in shame beside five of Mithradates’ sons, Artaphernes, Cyrus, Oxathres, Darius, Xerxes, and Princesses Eupatra and Orsabaris. There were various kings and royal families of Mithradates’ allies, followed by Aristobulus, king of the Jews. A troop of Amazons captured by Pompey in the Caucasus was led past the crowd. Only Aristobulus and Tigranes the Younger were strangled after the parade.
As in Lucullus’s Triumph, King Mithradates himself was conspicuously absent. In his place, his throne and scepter were carried aloft, followed by litters of antique Persian divans and old silver and gold chariots, treasures passed down to Mithradates from Darius I. Next came a large silver statue of Mithradates’ grandfather, Pharnaces I, and the marble statue of Hercules holding his little son Telephus, modeled on Mithradates (fig. 3.7). Surpassing Lucullus’s life-sized golden statue of Mithradates, a colossal ten-foot-tall solid gold statue of the king was displayed by Pompey.
Pompey also commissioned large painted portraits of Mithradates and his family. Another series of giant paintings illustrated key scenes from the Mithradatic Wars. For a spectator, this narrative sequence of images would have produced the effect of the frames of a stop-motion animation film or the panels of a graphic novel (for a medieval version of a similar narrative effect, see plate 3). Here were Mithradates and his barbarian multitudes attacking; here was Mithradates losing ground, and Mithradates besieged. There were Tigranes and Mithradates leading their magnificent hordes, followed by images of these great armies in defeat, and finally Mithradates’ “secret flight by night.” Next came a series of emotionally gripping paintings showing how Mithradates had died in his tower, drinking poison with “the daughters who chose to perish with him.” These, of course, were scenes that no Roman had witnessed. They were based on artistic license and second- and thirdhand reports.
Taking credit for Pharnaces’ revolt, Pompey boasted that he had accomplished what Sulla and Lucullus had failed to do, bring about the death of “the untamed king” of Pontus. The inscription on his dedication of war spoils announced, “Pompey the Great [had] completed a thirty years’ war [and] routed, scattered, slew, or received the surrender of 12,183,000 people; sank or captured 846 ships [and] subdued the lands from the Sea of Azov to the Red Sea” to the Atlantic Ocean. Pompey “restored to the Roman People the command of the seas [and] triumphed over Asia, Pontus, Armenia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Syria, the Scythians, Jews, Albanoi, Iberi, Arabs, Cretans, Bastarnae, and, in addition to these, over Kings Mithradates and Tigranes.”15
For Rome, commented Plutarch, the death of Mithradates was like the destruction of ten thousand enemies in one fell swoop. Emphasizing the greatness of Mithradates and his ultimate defeat served to aggrandize Pompey’s own accomplishments. And after four decades of conflict, a certain admiration and awe surrounded this king who eclipsed all other kings, a noble ruler who had reigned fifty-seven years, who had subdued the barbarians, who took over Asia and Greece, and who resisted Rome’s greatest commanders and shrugged off what should have been crushing defeats; a warrior who never gave up but renewed his struggle again and again, and then—against all odds—had died an old man by his own choice, in the kingdom of his fathers.
Mithradates’ life had been a roller-coaster of sublime victories and harrowing losses, loyalties corrupted into betrayals, moments of divine happiness and terrible revenge, as players both East and West jockeyed to choose the winning side, to make the best investment in a volatile market of alliances. The risks Mithradates took were never for mere riches or fame—though those stakes could be high—but for the very survival of his Greco-Persian-Anatolian ideals and for freedom from Roman domination. Indomitable even in defeat, marveled Appian, Mithradates “left no avenue of attack untried.” Pliny praised him as “The greatest king of his era.” Velleius eulogized Mithradates as “ever eager for war,” a man of “exceptional courage, always great in spirit . . . in strategy a general, in bodily prowess a soldier, in hatred to the Romans a Hannibal.” He was the greatest king since Alexander, declared Cicero—a compliment that would have thrilled Mithradates.16
Pompey identified with Alexander too. Now he assumed Alexander’s mantle, in a symbolic and literal sense. Pompey the Great was borne along the triumphal route in a golden chariot studded with glittering gems of every hue. Across his shoulders lay the fragile, faded purple cloak of Alexander the Great, once the cherished possession of Mithradates the Great, the “Hellenized Iranian Alexander.” Appian was dubious about that cloak, but belief had imbued the ancient garment with reverence whatever its true provenance. As Pompey lovingly arranged the fabled robe for maximum visibility, the slave standing behind him began to murmur the traditional caution in the victor’s ear: “Remember you are mortal.”17
Did this memento mori send a ripple through Pompey’s mood? Did it revive a lingering doubt, suppressed ever since he had declined to examine that ravaged body in the magnificent armor? It had been two years since the corpse had been laid in the tomb of the Pontic kings. Yet Mithradates had made fools of both Sulla and Lucullus by popping back after everyone assumed he was demolished. One can imagine Pompey’s fleeting thought, Yes, I am surely mortal. . . . but is Mithradates?
WHAT IF?
Mithradates’ life story is incomplete in many crucial details, and much is suspended in the amber glow of legend, inviting the imagination to fill in what we long to know. In the introduction, I discussed how narrative history and historical reconstruction help make sense of imperfect evidence and flesh out missing details and dead ends in the sketchy ancient record, without violating known facts, probabilities, and possible outcomes. A related approach, counterfactual or “what if” scenario building, allows us to reasonably suggest what might have happened under given conditions.
The mysterious circumstances surrounding the demise of a larger-than-life individual like Mithradates beckon historians to imagine what happened behind the scenes presented in the fragmentary sources. As we saw, the ancient historians themselves sometimes disagreed over facts and presented alternative versions of the same events, such as Mithradates’ Caucasus crossing and his last hours. From the Middle Ages on, the uncertainty in the ancient record is reflected in the numerous artistic illustrations of alternative scenarios for Mithradates’ death. Just as Hypsicratea’s disappearance encouraged medieval and modern writers to write the rest of her story, there is ample justification to try to reconstruct a plausible alternative scenario for Mithradates.18
By all ancient accounts, Mithradates’ died in his palace in Pantikapaion in 63 BC, owing to a combination of self-administered poison and the sword of his bodyguard or the weapons of Pharnaces’ men. The body retrieved from the tower should have provided incontrovertible evidence of this event. But, in fact, the decomposed body identified as that of Mithradates—after the passage of some months and far removed from the scene of death—was unrecognizable except for a commonplace scar and the royal insignia. Everyone involved—from Mithradates’ son Pharnaces and his old friends, to Pompey and the Romans—agreed to assume that the dead man was Mithradates.
But the extraordinary situation raises a host of questions. Was Mithradates really dead? Was this really his body? Others have posed these questions. Notably, the great French playwright Jean Racine began his famous tragedy Mithridate (1673) with Mithradates’ faked death. Mozart’s opera of 1770 also opens with Mithradates’ reappearance after rumors of his death. Historian Brian McGing suggested in 1998 that the story of Mithradates’ suicide in the tower might have been invented by Pharnaces, perhaps to divert accusations of parricide (a strong taboo among Persian-influenced cultures). But other deceptions and motivations were also possible. What if Mithradates was still alive?19
If anyone was capable of orchestrating a ruse to deceive the Romans into believing he was dead, it was Mithradates. He once substituted his son for the real king Ariathes. A brilliant escape artist, he had frequently eluded capture by stealth and trickery, and more than once he traveled incognito among his own subjects. Mithradates had cheated death repeatedly—and on at least four occasions he had disappeared and was presumed dead.
Moreover, Mithradates was a connoisseur of Greek myths, and theatricality and dramatic allusions were his trademarks. Ancient tragedy as well as comedy often turned on mistaken identities, distinctive scars, birthmarks, gestures, favorite possessions. Mithradates—and Pompey—knew the story of how Alexander’s corpse had been faked. Alexander’s best friend, Ptolemy, had stolen the body from Babylon and transported it in secret to Alexandria, Egypt. To throw his rivals off his track, Ptolemy had sculptors fabricate a realistic wax model of Alexander and clothed it in his royal robes. This double was placed on a sumptuous bier of silver, gold, and ivory inside one of Alexander’s own elaborate Persian carriages. Surrounded by Alexander’s royal belongings, the replica fooled the pursuers, while the real corpse was taken in a nondescript wagon by an obscure route to Egypt.20
Pharnaces could have sent Pompey a double, a corpse of a man of Mithradates’ age and physique and displaying a cavalryman’s scarred thigh, recent sword wounds, and a decomposed face. Such a deception would prevent the Romans from desecrating Mithradates’ true remains if he had really died in the tower (no one expected Pompey to inter his enemy’s corpse with honors in the Pontic royal tombs). According to the ancient historians, Mithradates had requested safe passage from Pantikapaion, to take refuge among his allies. A deception involving another’s corpse could have been devised to cover Mithradates’ last great escape.
What follows is a plausible—admittedly romantic—alternative scenario, drawing on the ancient sources and curious medieval and Gothic legends, and turning on logical “decision forks,” but without venturing beyond the limits of the possible.21
THE GREAT ESCAPE
In his long life, “no conspiracy ever escaped Mithradates’ notice,” wrote Appian, “not even the last one,” plotted by Pharnaces, “which he voluntarily overlooked and perished in consequence of—so ungrateful is wickedness once it is pardoned.” But what if Pharnaces actually had been “grateful”? If a deception about Mithradates’ death and remains were to be perpetuated, it would have begun at this point, upon Mithradates’ discovery of Pharnaces’ conspiracy. Pharnaces knew that his betrayal warranted death—Mithradates had never spared a proven traitor’s life. He was especially harsh in punishing treachery within his family. His surprising pardon of Pharnaces was the opposite of what was expected, totally out of character for the practical, ruthless, unsentimental Mithradates.22 The pardon guaranteed that Pharnaces would be king, if not now, then soon. What was Mithradates’ true motivation?
When pressed to the wall, when all seemed lost, Mithradates had a long history of successfully slipping away and eluding pursuit. It is not difficult to imagine that, with the help of the old general Metrophanes, father and son might have negotiated a bargain. When the plot was first discovered, Mithradates still held the upper hand. The stakes were high for both men. For Pharnaces, it was life or death. Only by agreeing to Mithradates’ conditions could he survive to inherit his father’s kingdom. Mithradates, after a half century of dealing with Romans, knew Rome would never allow him to rule in peace. His plan to invade Italy lacked crucial support, and Pharnaces was his chosen successor. If he forgave his son, Mithradates could pass the crown to his designated heir and promise to disappear completely in exchange for safe passage and a ruse to convince Pompey that he was dead.
Pharnaces carried his great-grandfather’s Persian name and had been raised within Persian culture. He named his son Darius, and the mother of his daughter Dynamis was probably a Sarmatian (later, as queen of the Bosporus, Dynamis wore an Amazon-Persian-style headdress decorated with Zoroastrian Sun symbols). Perhaps Mithradates discerned a strong strain of his own independent spirit in this son. Indeed, as king Pharnaces would retrace his father’s path: after a peaceful early reign as a Friend of Rome, he would take advantage of the Roman civil war to suddenly rebel, marching a large army, with scythed chariots and a strong cavalry, across Colchis and into Pontus in a quixotic quest to recover his father’s old kingdom.23
Fig. 15.6. Queen Dynamis, bronze bust. As ruler of the Bosporan Kingdom, Mithradates’ granddaughter wears a star-studded Persian-Phrygian cap like those of Amazons and Zoroastrians. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg. Photo, M. Rostovtzeff 1919.
So let us imagine that at the crisis of Pharnaces’ attempted coup in 63 BC, father and son acknowledged each other as equals at the bargaining table, facilitated by Metrophanes. They would have sworn a sacred oath by the gods Men and Mithra that allowed them both to survive with honor. Then they could work out the details of the grand illusion.
Now let’s replay the events according to the script that might have been composed by Pharnaces and Mithradates. A large, robust corpse that could pass as Mithradates had to be discovered in the tower and shipped to Pompey. Any veteran cavalryman was likely to have the requisite battle scar on the thigh; the face could be easily obliterated beyond recognition with corrosive lime or acid. One cannot help wondering whether the faithful cavalry officer Bituitus volunteered for this supreme sacrifice. Mithradates’ armor, scepter, crown, and other regalia would complete the illusion. Old retainers, perhaps Gaius or Metrophanes, could confirm the identification of the body for Pompey.
Keeping his part of the bargain, Mithradates dons ordinary traveling clothes and steals away by night, something he had done many times in the past (perhaps his castle had secret exits, like Hannibal’s in Bithynia). The king takes his weapons and what treasures he can carry: gold coins, favorite agate rings, some valuable papers. Where would he go? Escape by sea was impossible. The only safe route was north.
Mithradates could ride out and join any one of the Scythian or Sarmatian tribes on the steppes. Their ideals and physical prowess were compatible with his, and he could speak their languages. Mithradates had experienced a nomadic lifestyle in his youth and early reign, and during his evasions of Lucullus and Pompey. He had recently renewed his friendships with the nomad chieftains. Pharnaces had maintained good relations with these tribes. Two intriguing facts lend support to the idea of an escape into Scythia. Mithradates’ son by Adobogiona, Mithradates of Pergamon, was ruler of the Bosporan Kingdom after Pharnaces. During an uprising, this Mithradates really did take refuge among the Scythians. Mithradates’ granddaughter Dynamis, queen of the Bosporan Kingdom during the time of Augustus, also went into exile for a time—she was sheltered by a Sarmatian tribe, perhaps that of her mother.24
Who would have accompanied Mithradates into secret exile? Perhaps Bituitus, if he survived (his fate is not recorded). And surely Hypsicratea—or perhaps she and the king had already arranged a rendezvous (see plate 8). There are ancient precedents for imagining a “posthistorical” second life for Mithradates and Hypsicratea in the lands beyond the Black Sea. In romances about heroes and heroines of Greek myth, for example, Achilles and Helen of Troy were paired in an idyllic after-life. They never met in the Troy of Homer’s Iliad, but in popular lore the couple enjoyed “an extraordinary post mortem existence” as lovers in a mythical Black Sea paradise. Notably, the 1707 opera Mitridate by Scarlatti offers an alternate history in which Mithradates and Hypsicratea disguise themselves as Egyptian envoys.25
An obscure will-o’-the-wisp legend, mentioned by Edward Gibbon in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), even gives Mithradates his final revenge. I have traced this tradition back to medieval Norse saga, in which a barbarian tribe from the Sea of Azov, allied with Mithradates, carried on his dream of one day invading Italy. Led by their chieftain Odin, this tribe was said to have escaped Roman rule after Pompey’s victory, by migrating to northern Europe and Scandinavia. They became the Goths, who, still inspired by Mithradates’ old struggle, avenged his defeat by overwhelming the Roman Empire. In the vision of the poet William Wordsworth, this old tale tells
How vanquished Mithridates, northward passed,
And, hidden in the cloud of years, became
Odin, the Father of a Race by whom
Perished the Roman Empire. . . .26
And so let us suppose that on a May morning in 63 BC, riding across the vast expanse of green grass carpeted with wild red peonies, Mithradates sheds his royal skin and chooses a nomad’s life for the rest of his natural days. In this story, he and Hypsicratea would live among the “untamed” men and women who loved to roam the boundless plains. In the vision limned by the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, the steppe nomads were “tall, handsome, and robust people with piercing eyes,” who “wandered like happy fugitives from place to place,” dressed in furs and wool leggings, with blue tattoos, “living on the milk of their herds, wild cherries, and meat, never spending a night under a roof . . . eating and drinking, buying and selling, holding assemblies, and even sleeping on their steeds or in their wagons.” They were “no one’s subjects, none can even tell you where they are from, since they are conceived, born, and raised in faraway places.” Skilled warriors, “they delight in danger and warfare and do not know the meaning of slavery, since all are born of noble blood, and they choose as their chiefs those who are conspicuous for long experience as warriors.”27
In this new life, our companions would have the leisure to share their life stories, Mithradates recounting the history of his kingdom, Hypsicratea telling of her free and equal people of Caucasia. Thanks to his Persian heredity and theriac, Mithradates could have lived another five, ten, or even twenty years had he not died in the tower in 63 BC.28 In time, death might have come to Mithradates in battle, on a hunting expedition, or quietly in sleep. He would die in eleutheria, freedom, confident of his exalted place in history and myth. Mithradates’ friends would have buried him in the nomads’ traditional way, with his horse and a modest cache of golden treasures and cameo rings, in an anonymous kurgan on the steppes.29
Mithradates’ passing—whether it occurred in the tower as reported in 63 BC or later in secret exile—would have been mourned by the strong woman he liked to call by the masculine form of her name, Hypsicrates. Younger than Mithradates, perhaps in her forties, Hypsicratea still had good years ahead. How did she spend the rest of her life?
What follows is a further speculation, based on the conditions of possibility set out in the ancient sources—and on new archaeological evidence. Let us begin with the name Hypsicratea/es. Only two instances of this name are known in the latter part of the first century BC. One is Mithradates’ Amazon friend Hypsicratea. The other is a mysterious historian named Hypsicrates, who was also associated with Pontus and the Black Sea Kingdom. Coincidence? Or is there a more interesting explanation for this doubling of a very rare name?
FIG. 15.7 Julius Caesar. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria, photo by Andrew Bossi, Wikipedia Commons, cc-by-sa-2.5.
Little is known about the shadowy figure called Hypsicrates. The historian turns up after 47 BC, some sixteen years after Mithradates’ death in 63 BC, when Julius Caesar crushed Pharnaces’ attempt to regain his father’s lost kingdom. Taking over Pontus, Caesar freed a prisoner of war named Hypsicrates at Amisus. This Hypsicrates accompanied Caesar as his historian on campaigns and wrote treatises on the history, geography, and military affairs of Pontus and the Bosporan Kingdom.
Hypsicrates’ works have not survived, but they were quoted by other historians. Strabo of Pontus cited Hypsicrates as an authority on two highly significant topics: the military fortifications of the Bosporan Kingdom, and the lifestyle and customs of the Amazons of the Caucasus region. Notably, Strabo mentioned Hypsicrates along with another close friend of Mithradates, the philosopher Metrodorus. Josephus quoted Hypsicrates on the campaigns of Julius Caesar and on Mithradates of Pergamon. Lucian, a Syrian from Samosata (second century AD), described Hypsicrates as a “historian from Amisus who mastered many sciences.” There is one more salient detail. Hypsicrates, he died old. According to Lucian’s list of remarkably long lives, Hypsicrates lived to be ninety-two.30
This set of striking coincidences linking Hypsicratea and Hypsicrates has been overlooked by modern scholars, apparently because of the gender difference. But we recall that Mithradates called Hypsicratea by the male form of her name. Mithradates’ intellectual and athletic equal, she lived a manly life, riding, hunting, and making war. The name “Hypsicratea” disappeared from the historical record after 63 BC, the year Mithradates’ death was reported. Everything we know about the person known as Hypsicrates, especially the topics of expertise attributed to him—Amazons and Mithradates’ kingdom—points to someone very close to Mithradates (and the notably long life could even hint at access to Mithridatium).
I suggest that the historian writing under the name Hypsicrates was none other than Mithradates’ beloved companion, Hypsicratea.
The newfound inscription for the statue honoring Hypsicratea, described earlier, lends support to this idea. The statue was probably erected during the reign of Mithradates’ granddaughter, Queen Dynamis, who knew Hypsicratea. Amazingly, the text of the inscription spells her name with es, Hypsicrates, the masculine form of Hypsicratea. We now know that this was not just a private nickname, but that Mithradates’ companion was in fact publicly known as Hypsicrates.
FIG. 15.8. Inscription honoring Hypsicratea, discovered in Phanagoria. Her name is given in the masculine form: “Hypsikrates wife of Mithradates.” Photo courtesy of Jakob Munk Højte, after V. Kuznetzov, “Novye nadpisi iz Fanagorii,” 2007.
FIG. 15.9. Portrait of Mithradates, seventeenth-century marble copy of ancient original. Racine’s tragedy, Mithridate (1673) was a favorite of Louis XIV, the Sun King (1638–1715). Amphitheater of the Grand Trianon garden, Grand Canal, Versailles, MR 2488, 85 cm/33 in high. Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.
So let us suppose that at some point after 63 BC, Hypsicratea returned to Pontus. Perhaps disguised as a man she took up a scholarly life at Amisus, and was captured by Caesar after the battle at Zela in 47 BC. Another possibility is that she was fighting on Pharnaces’ side and was taken prisoner by Caesar’s soldiers. The lot of a female captive was not enviable. A permanent male persona as Hypsicrates would be advantageous. Caesar, impressed by this person’s unique knowledge of Mithradates’ kingdom and recent history—and possibly even aware of the gender switch and true identity—made Hypsicrates his personal historian. Even the politics of this association are fitting. Mithradates and his circle were pro-Marius, foes of Sulla and Pompey. Caesar was pro-Marius, and an enemy of Sulla and Pompey.
Who was more qualified than Hypsicratea to preserve the story of Mithradates and his kingdom? She had loved Mithradates and fought by his side. She knew the king’s store of personal anecdotes, desires, and accomplishments. If Hypsicratea later wrote as the historian Hypsicrates, she may well have been the source of many of the details about Mithradates’ character and reign that were preserved by other ancient historians. Mithradates, from the beginning, was the self-conscious author of his own life. Through Hypsicratea/es, he could also have been responsible for his own legend.
I have sketched a continuation of Mithradates’ story as a historical thought experiment, but in reality Mithradates enjoyed a vital afterlife in history, science, and popular legend for more than two thousand years after his death (appendix 2). In his relentless resistance to Rome, Mithradates, the savior born under an Eastern star, represented a genuine alternative to Roman imperialism in the turbulent last days of the Republic. Some sixty years after Mithradates’ death, another savior and champion of Truth and Light was born under a different Eastern star. In the turn of the millennium, in the new world that emerged from Mithradates’ armed resistance and the Republic’s military response, that new King of Kings would challenge and eventually win over the mighty Roman Empire, but not by force of arms.
Mithradates battled against the tide of history. This intrepid, complex, ideological leader ultimately failed to conquer Rome by violence and war. Yet, if we let Rome stand for tyranny, the grandeur of Racine’s vision of Mithradates’ legacy still rings true:
Take charge. Let us, following your name,
Live up to being your sons everywhere we go.
Set dusk and dawn on fire by your hands;
Fill the universe without ever leaving the Bosporus;
May the Romans, hard pressed from one end of the world to the other,
Be unsure where you will be, and find you everywhere.31