King Mithridates and the Black Sea Empire

hey everyone today I wanted to discuss King method a DS at greater length and really get into why I find him fascinating outside of just what was covered in our latest episode to do so I'll be roughly tracing the timeline of his life and highlighting key aspects that stand out we'll start first with the context of his birth at the time many prophecies in the East foretold the coming of a god-sent savior Cain whose arrival would be announced by a star and whose rise would bring about the downfall of an evil empire many of these themes will sound familiar as they appear in the famous story of Christ's birth under the Star of Bethlehem but several decades earlier such celestial signs would appear for another king in the second century BC an extremely rare war banner star burned across the night the Roman historian Justin states that the comment blaze forth was such splendor that the whole sky seemed to be on fire the event set off a ripple of hopeful whispers in the east amazingly the comet would pass not just once but twice the first time occurred in 135 BC coinciding with the birth of Mithradates and again a second time in 119 BC for his coronation the relative dates of these events were recorded by the Far Away Han Empire such was the magnitude of these prophetic symbols that they would make their way onto coinage at the time and be incorporated into royal iconography adding yet further to the aura surrounding the birth of Mithradates would be his royal lineage the king was said to trace his father's bloodline two Persian kings and his mother's family to Alexander the Great as such he could claim to be the living embodiment of the best form of greco-persian fusion this was a powerful combination that demanded respect from both the east and west in addition Mithra Davies is said to have literally inherited Alexander's mantle in the form of the great Kings purple cloak according to Persian tradition the robe of such a venerated individual was said to transmit the owner's personal qualities and authority for it to end up in the hands of a prophesized Savior King hailed by comets would have swayed even the most ardent of cynics this incredibly rare prize would eventually be recovered by a victorious Pompey who proudly bore it back to Rome while many modern scholars cast doubt on the accuracy of this legendary portrayal of Mithradates birth there is no doubt that at the time many in antiquity believed them and as a result they carried all that much more power Mithra daddy's younger years were equally wrapped in legendary history stories tell that as a child he was struck by lightning but was uninjured except for a scar in the shape of a crown on his forehead as a boy he would begin traditional tutelage in classical Greek lessons and Persian essentials on kingship soon he would be taught to ride horses in a scene pulled straight from the life of Alexander the Great Mithra daddies would reportedly mount a wild unbroken horse nearly being injured in the process but managing to tame it before amazed onlookers as he developed the prince was said to be both strong of mind and body these qualities would equip him well when he was forced to flee into the wilderness to avoid murder little is known about these seven long years but many believe the time would have seen him wandering pontus exploring its land and its people the historian Adrienne mayor finds it likely that he would not have been alone in these matters and was likely accompanied by close friends such a band of companions roving about like Robin Hood and his Merry Men once again speaks to a life drawn straight from folklore amazingly these years living a life of a fairy tale hero would climax with the princes return home astoundingly at the age of just 17 he was able to claim the throne in a swift coup though we don't know the full details the effectiveness of the takeover is quite impressive for someone so young what's even more impressive is that Mithradates wouldn't just sit idly by content with his crown but would instead pursue a bold plan of expansion that would put him on a collision course with the most powerful adversary in the Mediterranean Rome Mithra Davey's dream was to form a Black Sea Empire here's a helpful map to trace its development the dark purple in the center shows pontus at the time of myth our daddy's coronation the purple around it and shows his kingdoms expansion the first two decades of his reign this period saw the king revamp the Pontic military recruiting a large army and organizing a strong navy with pirate allies these forces were launched to bring his neighbors into the fold most impressive of the conquests would be the northern wars against the Scythian and Sarmatian tribes fear step warriors were defeated along the coast and entered into an alliance with method a tease piece by piece the Black Sea Empire was being assembled this was a large polyglot community made of a huge variety of people harnessing them together was an impressive feat of diplomacy on the part of Mithradates who was said to have been able to speak over 20 languages not needing an interpreter in discussions this fact attests to his great intellect and ability all this work would soon pay off quite literally as the newly formed Black Sea Empire was quite lucrative tribute from the wealthy coastal cities and profits from control of trade over flowed Imperial Treasuries Mithra Davies would reinvest this wealth in the empire funding the Army Navy and his infrastructure over 75 castles were constructed across the lands many serving as repositories for treasure this accumulation of wealth gave Mithra daddies the incredibly deep pockets it would take to fight Rome over the years his opponents would be dumbfounded by the Kings ability to bounce back time and again from defeat he was the unkillable foe but the great gamble for myth heard a tease would come with the conquests of the pink area on the map when he openly dared to take on Rome such a move however was not to be undertaken rashly as was characteristic of Mithradates though his plan would involve careful planning but the boldness of this plan would prove quite shocking Mithra Davies planned to take the east from Rome and add it to his growing Empire his goal was to leverage the resentment against the Romans to not only take Anatolia but also Greece in doing so he would sweep in the reverse path of Alexander the Great conquering as a liberator who fought the evil oppressor the opening move of this ploy would be known as the Asian Vespers the event involved orders being distributed in secret across Anatolia these coordinated a mass uprising that would take place in May of 88 BC when the day arrived unsuspecting Romans were butchered in cities and towns across the region all at once individuals were massacred in the streets while crowd seeking shelter in public spaces were slaughtered in all the event was said to have killed between 80 and 150,000 people I'll be covering the event in more detail in a later moments episode but suffice to say it was a devastatingly brutal day that sent shockwaves through the Roman world the cruelty of Mithras plan was matched by its ingenious nests and that he had now essentially gotten the entire area to openly sign a Blood Pact with him to fight against Rome what followed would be the first of three wars between Rome and pontus once again I can't go into too much detail now but to recap the first war saw the Roman general sulla conduct a campaign that would retake a rebellious Greece our events back in Rome stalled further battle and forced him to sign a treaty with Mithra Davies that left the remaining Ponte Kingdom alone in exchange for a large indemnity the second war saw Roman armies commanded by Lucius morena sweep into Asia the war ended inconclusively after Roman defeat and withdrawal on seller's orders the third war saw Roman armies led in the east by Lucius lucullus then by Pompey the war ended with Roman victory and the final defeat of Mithras I've done these fascinating events little justice with this recap so if you'd like to learn more definitely take a look at this article from ancient warfare magazine looking at these conflicts from macro perspective I'm actually quite impressed with method eighties I say this not from the perspective of someone fascinated by military history as he was no battlefield genius like Hannibal but rather as someone who admires the strength of character Mithra Davies had this in spades and showed an incredible amount of bullheaded determination admittedly as one of you said in our last video Rome does seem to have been fighting pontus with one hand tied behind its back and that given its full attention Mithra daddies would have been squashed well I actually find a lot of truth in this statement it's this very fact that makes the time period fascinating the idea that Rome was fighting with one arm bound while myth or daddies stood there with a dagger paints an incredibly vivid picture of why I love this particular moment in history I'll take a few minutes to illustrate this point briefly at the time of the second century Rome had just finished off Carthage and was entering into an incredible period of expansion where its legions would march out to dominate the remaining powers of the Mediterranean however by the end of the second century Rome was showing terrible signs of internal weakness Roman military and civil officials increasingly saw individual power at the expense of the state and these unstable times powerful men would rise to destabilize the Republic and civil war loomed on the horizon these were dangerous years that shook the very foundations of Rome here's a quick rundown of the internal fighting which broke out during this time in 91 BC the social war saw Italy split in two as longtime allies turn on one another in 88 and 82 BC the forces of sulla and Marius fought for control of Rome in 82 BC Sartorius broke away with the provinces of Hispania and in 77 BC Lepidus and his armies rebelled and in 73 BC to make matters worse Spartacus sparked off the third servile war which proved that potential enemies lurked within the hearts of every downtrodden slave of the Empire this is the precise time from 88 to 63 BC when myth or daddies waged his Wars in this context it's easier to see why myth or daddy's was seen as such a threat with all this chaos going on all it would take was one opponent to deal a fatal blow while ultimately myth or Daly's would not do so the potential for such an outcome is what grabs my attention and again fascinates me with the period if that were all there was to the story of Mithradates then I think I'd be more than justified in my admiration but amazingly there's even more to it in closing I'd like to rattle off just a couple more tidbits that I picked up in my research he's reputed to have been an excellent Horseman who won numerous sharon traces and games across the Aegean and Anatolia he fought personally in several battles he was married to different queens and had over 20 known children and one of his last queens was an Amazonian woman who rode into battle on horseback Mithra Diddy's is known to have killed off the Roman general manious acquiesce by pouring molten gold down his throat something that would be mimicked years later with Crassus Mithridates is known for his intellectual curiosity 'he's having collected great libraries of knowledge art and technology even wrote several books themselves as we covered in our last video he was the poison King I hope that this discussion has given you some appreciation for the incredible tale of myth of ADEs there's a ton more I could get into but I defer to this amazing book called the poison King by Adrian Mayer and she paints an incredible portrait of his life and goes into really great detail and once again I want to plug ancient warfare magazine they have all kinds of amazing articles but in one of their issues the entire thing is dedicated to myth their daddy's and his wars with Rome so definitely check that out in any case thanks for watching and I hope you appreciated this closer look and mirth your daddy's in his life

Channel: Invicta

Views: 438,061

Keywords: moments in history, inventive moments in history, mithridates, mithradates, the poison king, mithridates the poison king, pontus, pontus history, mithridates history, poison history, mithridatic wars, mithridatic wars documentary, mithridatic wars history, roman history, roman documentary, pontus documentary, greek history, medicine history, kingdom of pontus, history of poison, history of pontus, history of medicine, invicta, invicta history, black sea empire

Id: r5RDrN5ec4c

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/DaemonTheRoguePrince]

More of us should take inspiration from the world's ancient monarchs. Mithridates, Ptolemy, Numa Pompilius, Alexander among many others are worthy of our attention.

[u/YOUREABOT]

I misread the title at first and thought, "how could anyone make an empire out of a reeeeeally bad urinary infection?"