In the first century BC, the Roman Republic is expanding rapidly across the Mediterranean basin. As the legions venture eastward into Anatolia, the Romans are able to divide and conquer all of their enemies, except for one: Mithridates VI of Pontus, also known as the Poison King.

Mithridates is more than a mere historical figure; he’s a mythic hero, born under the sign of a shooting star and nearly murdered by his own mother before spending much of his youth in the wilderness. These details may sound made up, but truth is often stranger than fiction, and the story of Mithridates is one of the strangest ever told.

Map of Anatolia during Mithridates’ reign: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Asia_Minor_in_the_Greco-Roman_period_-_general_map_-_regions_and_main_settlements.jpg

My Interview with Sean McFadden of Deep Noetics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eecCdz7cbug

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Music credit: Sergey Cheremisinov - Black Swan

SOURCES:

Appian: https://www.livius.org/sources/content/appian/appian-the-mithridatic-wars/

Cassius Dio: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/home.html

Justin: https://www.attalus.org/translate/justin6.html#37.1

Livy: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/baker-the-history-of-rome-vol-6 (Livy’s work on Mithridates is lost. Only a summary remains.)

Philip Matyszak, Mithridates the Great, Rome’s Indomitable Enemy: https://www.everand.com/read/444975669/Mithridates-the-Great-Rome-s-Indomitable-Enemy

Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King, the Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy

Valerius Maximus: http://attalus.org/info/valerius.html

Brian McGing, The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus: https://archive.org/details/foreignpolicyofm0000mcgi/page/n13/mode/2up

Brian McGing (Encyclopaedia Iranica article on Pontus): https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/pontus

Plutarch’s Parallel Lives:

                -Sulla https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Sulla*.html

                -Lucullus https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Lucullus*.html

                -Pompey https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pompey*.html

                -Sertorius https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Sertorius*.html

Rank-Raglan mythotype and scores: https://everything.explained.today/Rank%E2%80%93Raglan_mythotype/

Laurence M. V. Totelin (study on antidote): https://www.jstor.org/stable/4130095?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents