Military Monday: The Early Army of Mithridates VI

The army of Pontus reflected the Kingdom itself, and even its king: it was a mixture of different fighting men with different styles, cultures, and ideas. In the best of circumstances, this mix led to sweeping victory, but in the end, it led to ultimate defeat. Fancying himself the heir of Alexander the Great, Mithridates VI followed Alex's tendency to augment his army with whatever kind of troops he conquered along the way. While this worked well for Alexander, it should be noted that Mithridates lived considerably longer and this region had been changing for almost three hundred years since the young Macedonian conqueror.

Asia Minor was and remains a land of many peoples. Considered prime colonial ground by the Greeks, it had an unmistakable flavor of Hellenist-style learning, fighting, and worship. However, there were also Persian colonists there, left-over from Darius' invasion years before Alexander. And this is all in combination with the native peoples, who were primarily tribal, though growing more and more agrarian and urban, forsaking their nomadic ways. In order to unite these people, Mithridates would often resort to xenophobia, at least the anti-Roman variety, thus giving them a common enemy. Here, truly, was a wise student in the art of war.

After he had conquered some of the Balkan region to the North, Mithridates looked to securing his borders in the south. So he made plans, along with Nicomedes III, the king of western neighbor Bithynia, to divy up the area called Cappadocia, just south of Pontus, between the two of them. Mithridates' sister was ruling as regent because her husband had just died. Nicomedes, being a cunning king himself, decided to marry the sister instead, leaving one of his sons in charge of the region.

The two men sent representatives to Rome to resolve the dispute, leaving Nicomedes in a position of comfort, thinking that there would be no battle until their dignitaries returned. Mithridates waited for a time, then invaded Cappadacia outright, and its puppet king was killed in the ensuing fight. This enraged the Romans in the area, who helped Nicomedes raid and burn several towns and settlements in southern Pontus as punishment for his invasion.

Mithridates was more than capable of stopping this looting, but instead he allowed it to happen. Nicomedes ravaged the countryside while the Pontic king merely took reports and made preparations. He knew that the Romans would likely move against him on the pretense of aiding Bithynia, and so he spread word far and wide that those villages had been pillaged under Roman advice, thus uniting the varied people of Pontus against Rome, and Bithynia, her handmaiden. Raising an army was easy for him at this point; those who had their crops and livestock stolen by the Bithynian raiders were only too happy to take up a spear and get some of it back, with interest.

Sure enough, the three Roman generals whose armies were in various parts of Asia Minor all moved against Pontus with the hope of quelling Mithridates VI. The three armies were probably about forty thousand each, along with Nicomedes' army which was reportedly fifty thousand foot, six thousand horse. If they had all joined together to take on this rogue Pontic despot, they may have had a chance. But in their anger, and without waiting for orders from the Roman Senate, they took him on individually, along with his army of two hundred and fifty thousand foot and forty thousand horse. He crushed them one by one, capturing their generals and subjecting them to horrible, humiliating treatment.

His footmen were likely Phalanx pikemen at the core, along with lighter armed auxiliaries and javilineers. The javelin-throwers of Pontus were legendary for their accuracy, and the deadliness of their weapons. The horsemen he employed were mostly, probably all, javelin-armed and heavily armored, capable of forming a kind of highly-mobile Phalanx which disrupted enemy formations with missiles before charging home at their flanks. His tactics were most likely pin-and-fork, using the heavy spearmen to hold the enemy in place while his horses harassed their flanks and caused a rout. He may have also had some Scythian horse archers in his ranks, recruited when he defeated them in the Bosporus up north, and if that were the case, their contribution would have been immeasurable. They were a Steppe people; born in the saddle and taught to ride and shoot from a very young age. Their accuracy was high, and their tactics were notorious: they would pretend to retreat in a panic, only to outrun their pursuers while shooting them with their poisoned arrows. No matter Mithridates' tactics, the comparatively small armies of Rome and Bithynia didn't stand a chance.

Because of this conquest, all of Asia Minor was under his control. He moved swiftly to secure the loyalties of Greek colonies in the western regions, and sent representatives to gain alliances with the Greek cities, who had been living almost a hundred years under Roman hegemony. They eagerly agreed, giving Mithridates a buffer region with which to hold back immediate Roman retaliation.

Unfortunately for him, when Rome did retaliate, they took all of Greece back, but signed a treaty with him that left him in control of Asia Minor. Though he accomplished much and did a lot to unify such a diverse group, it seems that their divisions were stronger than a mutual hatred of Rome. Mithridates the Great himself spoke at least twenty-two languages, which apparently was necessary just to communicate with all the captains in his army!

In the ensuing Mithridatic Wars, the Romans repeatedly punished Pontus with their manipular legions and flexible tactics. Eventually, trouble within his own household was Mithridates' undoing as he was betrayed by Pharnaces, his illegitimate son.

Opinion of this warlord varies, depending on the source. Some look upon him as just another petty king trying to build an empire and advance his own name. Others see him as a kind of freedom fighter against Roman imperial oppression. Personally, the jury's out for me. I think he was much smarter than the average despot, yet his cruelty toward Romans, both military and civilian, cannot be overlooked. It should be noted, however, that he never referred to himself with the surtitle “the Great.” That was something the Romans did shortly after he died. It seems that though they were enemies, there was something about this man that they deeply respected.

Pax vobiscum

Famous Friday: Mithridates VI, Alexander's Last Heir

I don't blame Rome for conquering the world. Sure, they did some terrible things along the way and their very name became synonymous for oppression, but I don't really think it was all their fault. Rome, not unlike Sparta, had the practice of ensuring its security by serious, disciplined military training, and using slaves to handle the menial work of growing food and tending to the livestock (although Rome's slavery was nowhere near the scale of Sparta's!). This meant that, in the same way that the Peloponnese city-states all wanted to be Sparta's ally when it was strong, the emerging powers of the Mediterranean wanted to be counted among Rome's friends. When a conflict would break out involving one of Rome's allies, they would often call for help and Rome would send and army. Eventually, to save on time and travel expenses, the Romans just built an outpost nearby and eventually saw to all that nagging day-to-day governance stuff.

Ergo (+100 Latin bonus points!), if there was a destabilized area in the Mediterranean from about 200 BCE onward, you could bet that it wouldn't be long before the Romans would lend a hand. Asia Minor circa 90 BCE was one such area where local conflict and civil strife were both common. It was a land of many cultures, having been conquered by both the Persians and Greeks respectively over the previous 500 years, and there was still a significant local population who had their own customs and philosophies. To the Romans, who admittedly had begun to look toward the expansion of their already impressive empire, it looked like a good land for up-and-coming politicians to get noticed through conquest.

So it was that Lucius Cornelius Sulla found himself far from home on the Asian frontier facing off against a mighty Pontic king who had somehow unified these diverse people and formed an army. Mithridates VI, also called Eupator, stood before him proud and defiant, refusing to repent for his slaughter of Roman civilian colonists in the terrible massacre that Appian refers to as the “Asiatic Vespers.” It is important to note that though this act certainly qualifies Mithridates VI as a cruel, petty despot, it was not without pretense from the Romans themselves

Though they admired Greek thought and borrowed their mythology, the Romans were notoriously merciless in their dealings with Greek settlements. In 167 BCE, the Greek colony of Epirus was sacked and all its inhabitants enslaved. In 146 BCE, they destroyed Corinth. Not to mention the slaughter of Archimedes at Syracuse. Though I don't believe the Romans always sought the wars that entangled them, they certainly didn't go to war without real commitment.

Before continuing our tale of the small kingdom of Pontus versus the mighty empire of Rome, let's explore Mithridates as a person, that we might better understand this man and why he did such terrible things. First of all, let's explore the area where he was born.

The light purple is his empire at its most expansive. The dark purple represents where he started. Clearly, this was a man who knew how to exert his influence without the aid of Roman interlopers. His heritage probably has a lot to do with his disdain for all things Roman.

Mithridates was a descendant of Alexander the Great on his father's side, and this was a fact he took great pride in. It helped him to recruit the Greeks living in Asia Minor, as they grew up hearing stories from their parents about mighty Alexander and how he conquered the world. On his mother's side, he was a descendant of Darius I, a mighty Persian conqueror. This helped him to win support from Persians, and also from the Asians. Thus, Mithridates set himself up as the heir of both the Macedonian empire and the Persian empire, which was a powerful political and rhetorical weapon.

His father died when he was only 14, and it is believed that he left his home soon afterward for a time. His mother ruled in his stead as a regent, and meanwhile sold large portions of the Pontic territory to Rome, who was eager to stake their claim on the East. The city of Laodicea is named after her.

Six years after his father's death, Mithridates VI either came of age or returned to his throne (since it's unclear whether he ever really left) and threw his mother in prison. He did not approve of the partitioning of the kingdom, and he especially didn't want to involve the Romans. He desired to defeat them, to overturn a hundred years of virtually unchallenged Mediterranean hegemony and establish a new Helleno-Persian Empire that would rule in its place. But first, he would have to unite Asia, carefully maintaining a balance between diplomacy and outright conquest.

First, he turned his eye to the north, knowing that it would be impossible to reunite Asia without a base of power in the form of money. So, in exchange for protection, he raised and sent an army to drive the Scythians out of Crimea and the Eastern Baltic region. The Bosporans, who lived in that area for many years, eagerly accepted this help because the Scythians had long been their bitter rivals; mostly horse archers who fought with poison arrows and had a raiding-based economy. They were kind of like ancient land-based vikings. Mithridates' army succeeded, thanks to the leadership of Diophantes, one of his greatest generals. Thanks to him, the Rhoxolanoi, a Scythian ally, also accepted Pontic rule. Now that he had cut his teeth on northern politics and warfare, he was ready to mix it up with the locals.

Nicomedes III ruled Bithynia at the time, and Mithridates initially meant to ally with him. Nicomedes proved himself a friend of Rome, however, and so a war broke out between them. Mithridates met Nicomedes on the battlefield, and the Pontic army consistently defeated the poorly-trained Bithynians, who were scattered like chaff in the wind. So it was that Nicomedes chose to enlist Rome's help directly, corresponding with them and begging for relief from the Pontic tyrant. Rome, having received a request for help, gladly obliged and thus began Mithridates' direct struggle with the Empire.

Next week, we will take a detailed look at the tactics and customs of the Pontic peoples, with their Greek Phalanxes, Peltasts, and Scythe Chariots. As this week turned out to be a “Greek Week,” next week will be mostly a “Mithridates VI Week.” Stay tuned, and stay safe.

Pax vobiscum

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