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So died Mithridates, who was the sixteenth in descent from Darius, the son of Hystaspes, king of the Persians, and the eighth1 from that Mithridates who left the Macedonians and acquired the kingdom of Pontus. He lived sixty-eight or sixty-nine years, and of these he reigned fifty-seven, for the kingdom came to him when he was an orphan. He subdued the neighboring barbarians and many of the Scythians, and waged a formidable war against the Romans for forty years, during which he frequently conquered Bithynia and Cappadocia, besides making incursions into the Roman province of Asia and into Phrygia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, and Macedonia. He invaded Greece, where he performed many remarkable exploits, and ruled the sea from Cilicia to the Adriatic until Sulla confined him again to his paternal kingdom after destroying 160,000 of his soldiers. Notwithstanding these great losses he renewed the war without difficulty. He fought with the greatest generals of his time. He was vanquished by Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey, although several times he got the better of them also. Lucius Cassius, Quintus Oppius, and Manius Aquilius he took prisoners and carried them around with him. The last he killed because he was the cause of the war. The others he surrendered to Sulla. He defeated Fimbria, Murena, the consul Cotta, Fabius, and Triarius. He was always high-spirited and indomitable even in misfortunes. Until finally overthrown he left no avenue of attack against the Romans untried. He made alliances with the Samnites and the Gauls, and he sent legates to Sertorius in Spain. He was often wounded by enemies and by conspirators, but he never desisted from anything on that account, even when he was an old man. None of the conspiracies ever escaped his detection, not even the last one, but he voluntarily overlooked it and perished in consequence of it -- so ungrateful is the wickedness that has been once pardoned. He was bloodthirsty and cruel to all -- the slayer of his mother, his brother, three sons, and three daughters. He had a large frame, as his armor, which he sent to Nemea and to Delphi, shows, and was so strong that he rode horseback and hurled the javelin to the last, and could ride 1000 stades2 in one day, changing horses at intervals. He used to drive a chariot with sixteen horses at once. He cultivated Greek learning, and thus became acquainted with the religious cult of Greece, and was fond of music. He was abstemious and patient of labor for the most part, and yielded only to pleasures with women.
1 In Sec. 9, supra, Mithridates Eupator is called the sixth in line from the first of that name, ἔκτον ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου. Here he is called the eighth, ὄγδοος. This discrepancy has led to some controversy in the learned world. Palmer constructed a family tree for Mithridates, showing that he was the sixth in line, counting the founder of the house as No. I, but the matter is not entirely free from doubt.
2 110 miles.
Appian. The Foreign Wars. Horace White. New York. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1899.
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