APPENDIX TWO 
MITHRADATES’ legendary status began during his own lifetime and continued for more than two millennia, inspiring literature, art, music, popular culture, and scientific investigations. This brief compilation is not comprehensive: a full accounting of his legacy would fill a book. See Summerer 2009 for a survey of representations of Mithradates in scholarship and the arts, from the fifteenth to the twentieth century.
VISUAL ARTS
Mithradates, sometimes with his companion Hypsicratea, appears in numerous medieval illuminated manuscripts; e.g., Plutarch’s lives of Pompey, Sulla, and Lucullus; Boccaccio; and Christine de Pizan (figs. 6.2, 7.3, 14.3, 14.4, 15.5; plates 2, 3, 6, 8, 9); see Summerer 2009 for more images of the deaths of Mithradates and his family
Monime, Mithradates’ tragic queen, was a popular subject of European paintings, for example, by Bartolomeo Pinelli (1816); Genovesio, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Hotel de Ville, France (sixteenth century); and fig. 12.5
Mithradates bust, Versailles (fig. 15.9)
Mithradates bust, by Verchaffen, ca. 1760 (N. Penny, “Lord Rockingham’s Sculpture Garden,” J. Paul Getty Journal 19 [1991]: 15 and fig. 11)
Mithradates bust, marble, Palais Justiniani, Rome, engraving by Monnier
Mithradates’ life story illustrated on two ornate sixteenth-century drug jars, J. Paul Getty Museum (fig. 15.3; plate 4)
Illustrations of Racine’s Mithridate (1673), e.g., figs. 7.4, 10.1, 12.6
Paintings illustrating the history of pharmacy, e.g., plate 1; Mithradates’ herbalist Krateuas appears in medieval medical manuscripts, e.g., Codex Vindobonensis Medicus, Munich
Illustrations of Mithradates’ death in Roman history books, e.g., figs. 15.1, 15.2, 15.4
DRAMA
Pageau, Monime (1600), based on Plutarch, Florus, and Appian
Behourt, Hypsicratée (1604) dramatized Plutarch’s description in Life of Pompey
Gautier de Costes de La Calprenède, La Morte de Mitridate (1635) highly esteemed by Cardinal Richelieu and Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV (Brèque 1983 and Snaith 2007)
Jean Racine, Mithridate (1673), Louis XIV’s favorite play (Goodkin 1986; Brèque 1983)
Nathaniel Lee, Mithridates, King of Pontus, a Tragedy, London, 1678
OPERA
There are eighteen librettos based on Mithradates, including Aldrovandini, Mithridate in Sebastia, 1701; Scarlatti, Mitridate Eupatore, 1707; Capello, 1723; Vittorio Cigna-Santi and Gasparini, 1767. Mozart’s first serious opera, written at age fourteen, wasMitridate, re di Ponto, Milan, 1770 (Sadie 1972; Brèque 1983; for illustrations and photos of productions, see L’Avant Scene Opera, special issue, 1983). Recent performances: Santa Fe Opera, 2001; Convent Garden, London, 2005.
LITERATURE
Because of Mithradates’ linguistic brilliance, his name came to denote a book written in several languages, a mithridates. For example, the Mithridates by Konrad Gesner (b. 1516) was a study of 130 languages. Mithradates’ life story or, in particular, his special regime of ingesting poisons in small doses has been featured in many literary genres in Europe and the United States, for example:
William Wordsworth, Prelude, 1798–1850
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” story, 1844
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, novel, 1845
“The Modern Mithidates,” illustrated satirical poem, Vanity Fair (December 31, 1859), 5, lists poisons readily available on “every grocer’s shelves”
John Greenleaf Whittier, “Mithridates in Chios,” poem, 1865
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Mithridates,” poem, ca. 1847
A. E. Housman, “Terence, this is stupid stuff,” poem, 1896
Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, mystery, 1920
Constantine Cavafy, “Darius,” poem about a poet in Mithradates’ court, 1920
Dorothy Sayers, Strong Poison, mystery, 1931
Poul Anderson, The Golden Slave, novel, 1960
William Goldman, The Princess Bride, novel 1973; movie, 1987
Colleen McCullough, The Grass Crown, novel, 1991
E. E. Smith, Triplanetary, novel, 1997
Michael Curtis Ford, The Last King, novel, 2004
POPULAR CULTURE
Mithradates appears in the “Total War: Rome” video game, 2008
History Channel game, Anachronism (2008), “Mithradates VI the Great” set of four cards: “Use the King of Pontus, Rome’s most feared adversary, to outwit, out-think, and outmaneuver your opponents.” www.TriKingGames.com
SPARTACVS: Crisis in the Roman Republic 80-71 BC (2009), board game pits the Roman Republic against the allies Mithradates, Spartacus, and Sertorius www.compassgames.com/spartacus.htm