The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates

The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor

Book Review by Philip Matyszak

Two thousand years after his death, Mithridates VI of Pontus continues to generate strong feelings, and this will certainly continue to be the case for readers of Adrienne Mayor's latest book. I have a feeling that readers on this forum will either love it or hate it, but rather as with Mithridates himself, it

I have not read this specific book but it does not surprise me much, I've seen the same kind of things in her "Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion bombs", she uses her sources without always checking them and does no quellenforshung. For exemple she does the common mistake of following Polyen when he speaks of an elephant being used by Cesar in his second invasion of the UK, where it's clearly a confusion with Claude's campaign.

The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor

Book Review by Philip Matyszak

 

Two thousand years after his death, Mithridates VI of Pontus continues to generate strong feelings, and this will certainly continue to be the case for readers of Adrienne Mayor's latest book. I have a feeling that readers on this forum will either love it or hate it, but rather as with Mithridates himself, it

I have just finished reading this book and very much enjoyed it. The author made me think about what life must have been like living on the fringes of Rome's ever expanding empire. Ok it still years before the Republic falls but the book identifies that during these troubled times back in Italy, Africa and Spain trade needs to be not only maintained but expanded to feed the commercial centre and roman philosophy.

The book soon relates the massacre of the 80,000 in what today would be modern Turkey. We have before this heard how Mithridates toured his own and neighbouring kingdoms examining his defences and looking for places to hide his vast wealth. The inference here that Mithridates would have the logistical infracstructure in place to make this happen. However later in the book we read about this huge armies and navies that appear to self destruct rather than be defeated solely in battle by inferior numbered roman troops. While I have read much about the superior training and weaponry of the romans it is difficult to comprehend how Mithridates could have lost so badly on home soil. He should have had the benefits of terrain as well as the poisons that he is supposed to have used on his arrows, spears etc. Are we to merely accept that he could arrange to kill so many people over such a wide area at the same time but not adequately provision an army. Or is this a case of the historical sources building upon the image of this King of Kings and the numbers have been massaged to create the myth?

I would welcome any other feedback on this issue.

I've just read that book and I also found it weird how Mithridates could have craftily organized a massacre but made such a blunder of the siege of Cyzicus. If he was such a careful student of Alexander the Great, why did he bring such a huge force into Bithynia?