The Death and Burial of Mithridates VI

Tür:

Kitap Bölümü

Yazar:

Jakob Munk Højte

Yayın yılı:

2009

Yayıncı:

Aarhus University Press

Mithridates VI, king of Pontos, died in 63 BC in Pantikapaion. The circumstances surrounding his death are to some extent obscure. One tradition holds that he tried to commit suicide by poison, but that a long life of selfadministered antidotes made him unable to fulfil his intention. In the end he needed the service of the sword of his Gaulish bodyguard Bituitus. 1 Another tradition holds that he was murdered by the troops that had deserted to his son Pharnakes (often called the second to distinguish him from his great-grandfather, the king of Pontos), who had joined a rebellion against the aging king instigated by the city of Phanagoreia. 2 The reason for the rebellion should allegedly have been the futile and hopeless plan of Mithridates to raise a new army with which he would attack Italy by way of the northern Black Sea and the Balkans. 3 Pharnakes had the body summarily embalmed and sent off to Pontos with a request to be appointed king of his ancestral domain. Pharnakes evidently thought that Pompeius would appreciate his help in ridding him of Mithridates, and that his treachery towards his father would call for a reward. This was not the last time Pharnakes misjudged the intentions of a Roman general. Fifteen years later, by Zela, it nearly cost him his life when he tried to regain the Pontic throne in the aftermath of the war between Pompeius and Caesar. Pompeius received the news of the death of his adversary, Mithridates, in the dessert south of Jerusalem, as h…

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