Some kingdoms are born as the continuation of an inheritance passed from father to son; others are built almost from nothing, through one man's patience over many years and his skill at reading the turns of fortune. The Kingdom of Pontus belongs to the second kind, and the hand that laid its first stone was that of Mithridates I, later remembered by the Greek epithet Ktistes, the Founder. Descended from the Persian nobility and raised amid the bloody struggle for power among the successors of Alexander the Great, he travelled a long road: from a court he had to flee in haste one night, to the mountains of Paphlagonia, and from there to the throne of a kingdom that would make Amaseia its centre. The dynasty he founded would rule northern Anatolia for more than two centuries, and Mithridates VI Eupator, who defied Rome, would trace his line back to him.

What we know of his life is, unfortunately, scattered. No inscription of his survives, no coin can be securely attributed to him, and no biography was written in his own time. His story has to be pieced together from writers who took up their pens two or three centuries later: a few lines in Diodorus, an anecdote in Plutarch, a summary in Appian, a single sentence in Strabo of Amaseia, and the notes that Memnon of Heraclea let fall while recounting the history of his own city. In drawing his portrait, therefore, separating what is certain from what is tradition matters as much as the events themselves.

The Persian Dynasty of Kios

Mithridates' family belonged to the ruling stratum of the Achaemenid Empire in Anatolia. One of the earliest known members of the line, Ariobarzanes, was satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, and the Greek city of Kios on the Sea of Marmara, a harbour town near present-day Gemlik, was among the family's holdings. Ariobarzanes is known to have cultivated close relations with Athens, and Athenian citizenship was granted to him and to three of his sons. Having joined the great Satraps' Revolt against the Persian king Artaxerxes II in the 360s BC, Ariobarzanes was betrayed by his own son Mithridates and was crucified around 362 BC. This betrayal, mentioned also by Xenophon and Aristotle, casts a hard shadow over the family's later history.

The Mithridates who handed over his father is known in the sources as Mithridates II of Kios, and he took over the government of Kios in 337 BC. Diodorus writes that he ruled Kios and Myrleia for thirty-five years, although this rule is thought not to have been continuous, with a period in which he was removed from power. When Alexander's conquests swept Persian rule from Anatolia, the family did not disappear; it survived by adapting to new masters. According to Lucian, Mithridates II was at least eighty-four years old when he died. In 302 BC Antigonus Monophthalmus, who then ruled most of Asia, had him killed at Kios on suspicion that he was preparing to go over to the side of his rival Cassander.

On the family's origins the ancient writers are bolder still. Diodorus presents the young Mithridates, ancestor of the Pontic dynasty, as a descendant of one of the seven Persian nobles who killed the false Smerdis, the usurper of the throne in 522 BC. Appian, for his part, says that the kings of Pontus descended from the first satrap of Pontus appointed under Darius the Great, and that the Founder was the eighth generation from that satrap. Because the dynasty's desire to link itself to the Persian royal line remained strong in later generations, it is hard to judge how much of these genealogies rests on historical fact and how much on a narrative of legitimacy constructed afterwards. Even so, the sources agree that the family came from the upper ranks of the Persian aristocracy.

Father or Uncle

The exact kinship between Mithridates the Founder and Mithridates II of Kios is a question that still divides scholars. The prevailing view holds him to be the son of the murdered Mithridates II and his successor at Kios. For this reason the Founder appears in some works as "Mithridates III of Kios," following the numbering of the Kios dynasty, and this occasionally causes serious confusion among the Pontic kings who bore the same name. Yet both Plutarch and Diodorus call the young Mithridates "the son of Ariobarzanes." On the basis of this, Russel Geer, the translator of Diodorus, and the ancient historian Jona Lendering take him to have been the son of an Ariobarzanes who appears to have been the brother of Mithridates II, which would make him the murdered ruler's nephew. In that case we are dealing with a nephew who inherited the family's lands at Kios from his uncle. Scholars who have studied Pontic history in detail, such as Brian McGing, nevertheless accept him as the son. The sources at our disposal are not sufficient to settle the matter.

Youth Among Alexander's Successors

The year of Mithridates' birth is not known with certainty. Plutarch writes that he was the same age as Demetrius Poliorcetes, the son of Antigonus. Since Demetrius was born in the mid-330s BC, Mithridates' birth falls roughly in those years as well. Some sources, more loosely, place it around 340 BC. Either way, his childhood coincided with the years in which Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian Empire, and his youth with the long period of conflict, known as the Wars of the Diadochi, that broke out among Alexander's generals after his death in 323 BC.

Describing the great pitched battle fought at Gabiene in Iran in the winter of 317-316 BC, Diodorus lists among the picked cavalry in the army of Eumenes a certain "Mithridates, son of Ariobarzanes," of whom he says that he was a man remarkable for courage and trained as a soldier from childhood. If this Mithridates is the same person as the founder of Pontus, the young Persian noble gained his first experience of war on the side fighting against Antigonus. When Eumenes was handed over by his own troops and put to death after this battle, many of the commanders and nobles around him passed into the service of Antigonus. It is plausible that Mithridates too joined Antigonus' circle in this way, but no source describes that transfer directly. The assumption that the two are one and the same is an interpretation shared by scholars such as Lendering, but it cannot be proved.

Plutarch introduces Mithridates as one of Antigonus' courtiers and a close friend of Demetrius. The two young men were of the same age, spent their time together and shared in the same pastimes. Plutarch is careful to note that Mithridates "neither was nor was held to be a base fellow." In his account, the source of the suspicion that Antigonus later conceived against the young man was a dream the king had seen, and nothing in the young man's own conduct had given rise to it.

Antigonus' Dream and the Flight

As Plutarch tells it, Antigonus dreamed one night that he was walking across a large and fair field, sowing gold dust on the soil. From the gold he sowed a golden crop sprang up, but when he came back a little later he found nothing but stubble. As he writhed in grief and vexation, certain voices told him that Mithridates had reaped the golden crop for himself and gone off towards the Black Sea. Antigonus was deeply shaken by the dream. After binding his son Demetrius by an oath of silence, he told him what he had seen and added that he had firmly resolved to put Mithridates out of the way.

Demetrius was greatly distressed by the news. To warn his friend aloud would be to break his oath. One day, when Mithridates came as usual to spend time with him, Demetrius gradually drew him away from his companions. Once they were alone, he wrote on the ground with the sharp butt of his spear, where Mithridates could see it, "Fly, Mithridates." The young man understood at once and fled that same night. Plutarch relates the anecdote to illustrate Demetrius' loyalty to his friends and the humanity of his nature, and he rounds it off by saying that Antigonus' dream was soon fulfilled, for Mithridates became master of a large and fertile country and founded the line of the kings of Pontus.

Appian gives the same story with slightly different details. In his version Antigonus has Mithridates arrested and prepares to execute him, but Mithridates manages to escape with only six horsemen. According to Appian, the fugitive shut himself up in a stronghold in Cappadocia, where many people gathered around him as Macedonian power fell into decay, and in time he took possession of Cappadocia and the neighbouring lands along the Black Sea coast. Plutarch, too, says that he fled by night "to Cappadocia." It should be borne in mind that ancient writers used the name Cappadocia broadly for this period, in a sense that included the interior of Pontus.

The Problem of the Date

The sources disagree on the date of the flight. Diodorus places the killing of Mithridates II of Kios among the events of 302 BC and adds that the Mithridates who succeeded him immediately afterwards reigned for thirty-six years. Most modern studies likewise place the Founder's flight immediately after the killing of his father or uncle, in 302 or 301 BC. Plutarch, by contrast, sets the story in the section on the youthful virtues of Demetrius, among the events before the battle of Gaza in 312 BC. Appian, for his part, ties the flight to earlier years, when Antigonus took over control of Syria. Lendering points out that the story of the dream and the warning written on the ground closely resembles the biblical account of David and Jonathan, and he therefore thinks its details may have been shaped to a literary pattern. Still, the fact that several different writers all record Antigonus' suspicion of this family shows that the core of the episode is genuine.

The Fortress of Kimiata

The clearest information about the fugitive's place of refuge comes from Strabo of Amaseia, who witnessed the last days of the dynasty. Describing the interior of Paphlagonia, the geographer speaks of a district called Kimiatene and, within it, of a strong fortress named Kimiata at the foot of the mountainous country of Olgassys. According to Strabo, Mithridates, surnamed Ktistes, used this fortress as his base of operations when he set about making himself lord of Pontus, and his descendants preserved the succession down to Eupator. Coming from Strabo, who was related to Pontic noble families, this account also reflects how the dynasty remembered its own past.

The location of Kimiata was long a matter of debate. Older maps and atlases place the fortress in the vicinity of the village of Kurmalar. Surface surveys and epigraphic studies carried out in Paphlagonia, however, suggest that it most probably stood at Asar Tepe, near the village of Deresamail in the Eskipazar district of Karabük. This newer identification, discussed in the publications of Project Paphlagonia led by Roger Matthews and Claudia Glatz, shows that the Founder's first stronghold lay well to the west of the core lands of Pontus, in mountainous and well-protected terrain. This rugged country, which Antigonus' armies could not easily reach, was a fitting refuge for an exile to gather his strength again.

From Ipsus to Corupedium: The Years of Gathering Strength

The roughly twenty years between Mithridates' settling at Kimiata and his assumption of the royal title are the period on which the sources are most silent. The great events that frame this silence, however, are well known. In 301 BC at Ipsus in Phrygia, Antigonus was defeated by the combined forces of Lysimachus, Seleucus and Cassander and fell on the battlefield. The fugitive's greatest enemy had thus left the stage of history. Most of Anatolia now passed under the control of Lysimachus, and the eastern lands under that of Seleucus. These great kingdoms, however, found it difficult to establish firm rule over the mountainous interior of Paphlagonia and Pontus. The turmoil that followed Ipsus, as Doğancı and Altın also emphasise, opened a wide field of action for the Persian noble who was bringing the local tribes under his rule.

In Appian's words, the dissolution of Macedonian power led many to come over to Mithridates. Bodies of troops from various quarters joined him, and his dominion expanded step by step. Diodorus writes that he added many new subjects to his rule and reigned as king of Cappadocia and Paphlagonia for thirty-six years. Those thirty-six years cover the span from his flight to his death, that is, 302-266 BC. The Founder is also known to have clashed with the forces of Seleucus. Daniela Dueck, in her book on Strabo, records that he defeated certain Seleucid forces before settling in Paphlagonia. It has also been suggested that his territory extended westwards as far as the river Sangarius (Sakarya).

No document shows when in these years Mithridates gained possession of Amaseia. Some summaries simply say that he went first to Kimiata and then to Amaseia. The studies compiled by Doğancı and Altın, however, indicate that the city was founded in the Hellenistic period by Mithridates I and made the capital of the kingdom. Set in the deep valley of the Yeşilırmak, a natural fortress between two rocky peaks, Amaseia was protected against attack from the mountains and commanded fertile plains as well as the roads linking east and west. Its position made it easier for the city to become the heart of the new dynasty in the interior.

The Royal Title

The year 281 BC saw the disappearance of the last two great commanders who had survived among Alexander's successors. Lysimachus was killed at Corupedium in Lydia, fighting against Seleucus, by a spear thrown by a soldier from Heraclea. Seleucus, preparing to cross into Macedonia after his victory, was murdered shortly afterwards by Ptolemy Keraunos, whom he had been keeping in his company. The collapse of the two great powers that held Anatolia in the same year offered the local dynasties of the region an unparalleled opportunity to declare their independence.

Mithridates seized this opportunity and in 281 BC, or by some reckonings in 280, assumed the title of basileus, that is, king. This date is accepted as the founding year of the Kingdom of Pontus. The title proclaimed that the new state was no longer a satrapy or an exile's lordship, and that it stood on the same footing as the other kingdoms of the Hellenistic world. This is also why the sources and modern authors give different dates for the start of his reign. Some count it from his flight, giving 302-266 BC, while others count it from his assumption of the royal title, giving 281-266 BC. The article by Doğancı and Altın also gives the span 301-265 BC.

When the epithet Ktistes came into use is likewise unclear. Lendering believes it was bestowed on him by later generations. Strabo, too, refers to him as "Mithridates, surnamed Ktistes." The epithet means "the one who founds" or "the builder" and shows that he was remembered as the founder of a state or a city. Since the later kings of the Pontic dynasty bore other epithets such as Euergetes, Eupator and Philopator, the Founder's epithet is also the simplest way to distinguish him from the other Mithridates who shared his name.

Relations with Heraclea Pontica

The new king's most important western neighbour was the rich and powerful Greek city of Heraclea Pontica on the Black Sea coast, today's Karadeniz Ereğli. The surviving fragments of the work of Memnon, the city's local historian, provide the most concrete information we have on the Founder's foreign policy. After the death of Lysimachus, the Heracleots regained the independence they had long lost and sent envoys to Seleucus. When Aphrodisius, whom Seleucus had charged with administering Phrygia and the interior of Pontus, gave a hostile report on the city, the king received the envoys with threats. The Heracleots thereupon began preparing their defence and, seeking allies, sent envoys to Mithridates, king of Pontus, as well as to Byzantium and Chalcedon.

Memnon's record shows that by 281 BC Mithridates was already recognised as "king of Pontus" and that the Greek cities of the coast regarded him as a serious ally. This solidarity against Seleucus gave the Founder the chance both to secure his western frontier and to establish direct relations with the Greek world. The dynasty's tradition, over the following two centuries, of preserving its Persian origins while forging close ties with Greek cities begins to show itself in these first diplomatic steps.

Relations with Heraclea did not always remain friendly. According to Memnon, Eumenes, who held Amastris, today's Amasra, a city once taken from Heraclea, angrily rejected the Heracleots' offer of money and preferred to hand the city over for nothing to Ariobarzanes, the son of Mithridates. Pontus thus acquired its first important harbour on the Black Sea coast around 279 BC. The passing to Pontus of a city the Heracleots claimed as their own strained relations between the two sides. Some modern studies hold that a few years later, when the Ptolemaic dynasty moved against Pontus in Anatolia, Heraclea stood against Mithridates as an ally of Egypt.

The Galatians and the Ptolemaic Army

In 278 BC a new power entered Anatolia. The Galatians, a people of Celtic origin who crossed the Bosporus at the invitation of Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, first fought as mercenaries and then settled in central Anatolia, around present-day Ankara. Memnon records that they were divided into three tribes, the Trocmi, the Tolistobogii and the Tectosages, and that the Tectosages made Ancyra their centre. These warlike peoples became a factor that altered the calculations of every kingdom in Anatolia.

The second important event reported from the Founder's reign concerns these newcomers. During the First Syrian War, which it was waging against Antiochus I in the 270s, the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt was trying to extend its influence in Anatolia. A force was sent against Pontus as well. Mithridates and his son Ariobarzanes, securing the help of the Galatians, drove these Egyptian forces back. The episode rests on a brief note in the entry on Ancyra in the geographical lexicon of Stephanus of Byzantium. Some modern summaries name the Egyptian king here as Ptolemy I, but Ptolemy I had died in 282 BC. Considering that the Galatians reached Anatolia twelve years before Mithridates' death, the opposing side must have been Ptolemy II Philadelphus, and most of the detailed sources do give that name.

This victory is the last recorded event of the Founder's reign. Brief as it is, it matters, because it shows that Pontus could hold its ground against an army sent by one of the richest kingdoms of the Hellenistic world and that the new state was strong enough to defend its independence. The relationship formed with the Galatians, however, proved a double-edged legacy for later generations. Near the end of his life Ariobarzanes was embroiled in a dispute with the Galatians, and after his death they ravaged the land of the still very young Mithridates II.

His Death and the Royal Tombs of Amaseia

Mithridates I died around 266 BC, at the end of the thirty-six-year reign that Diodorus assigns to him. The sources say nothing about the circumstances of his death. He was succeeded by his son Ariobarzanes, and with this first transfer of power the dynasty's line of succession from father to son was secured. The state the Founder left behind was a kingdom opening onto the Black Sea in the north, covering northern Cappadocia and eastern Paphlagonia, and carrying both a Persian and a Hellenic identity.

Mithridates is generally believed to have been buried in a royal tomb near Amaseia. Describing his native city, Strabo says that within the walled circuit of the rock, whose two peaks are joined to one another by nature and magnificently towered, stood both the palaces and the monuments of the kings. Today the monumental rock-cut tombs carved into the slope of Mount Harşena overlooking the Yeşilırmak are the most visible remains of these royal monuments. According to Doğancı and Altın, Amaseia was the capital of the Kingdom of Pontus from Mithridates I to Pharnaces I, and the kings who died in this period, Mithridates I, Ariobarzanes, Mithridates II, Mithridates III and Pharnaces I, were buried in the monumental tombs cut into the rock at the foot of the acropolis. The largest of these tombs is about fifteen metres high, eight metres wide and six metres deep.

It is widely accepted that the Founder, as the first ruler to begin the series of royal tombs, was buried on these cliffs, and in local tradition the tombs of Harşena are spoken of together with his name. However, no inscription has been found showing which of the rock tombs belongs to him, so with present knowledge it is not possible to assign any particular tomb to the Founder. The tradition of royal burial at Amaseia came to an end when Pharnaces I captured Sinope in 183 BC and moved the capital there. The city nevertheless remained one of the kingdom's important centres and produced families, like that of Strabo, whose lineage went back to the Pontic court.

The Founder's Legacy and the Continuity of the Dynasty

The true greatness of Mithridates I lies less in the extent of the lands he conquered than in the continuity of the structure he built. He turned the road he had set out on as a refugee prince into a secure throne that he could pass on to his son and grandsons. Those who came after him, Ariobarzanes, Mithridates II and III, Pharnaces I, Mithridates IV, Mithridates V Euergetes and Mithridates VI Eupator, all rose on the foundation he had laid. Plutarch says that the line was brought to an end by the Romans in the eighth generation. Appian, for his part, records that the sixth Mithridates after the Founder went to war with Rome, and adds his own judgement that some branches of the house may have ruled in Cappadocia and others in Pontus. The Kingdom of Pontus passed under Roman rule in 63 BC, when Pompey defeated Mithridates VI and dismembered his realm.

The Founder's most lasting legacy was the identity of the dynasty. The kings of Pontus kept their Persian names, their claims to legitimacy based on Persian descent and a conception of kingship drawn from the Achaemenid tradition, while also adopting the Greek language, alliances with Greek cities and the style of Hellenistic monarchy. The traces of this dual identity are plainly visible in the first king, who fled from Kios and received the envoys of Heraclea. The man who, in Antigonus' dream, reaped the golden crop and carried it off to the Black Sea took his place, at least in the memory of later generations, as a founder who succeeded in carving his own kingdom out of the break-up of an empire. That Amaseia was a royal city for nearly two centuries, and that the royal tombs on the slope of Harşena have today become the emblem of the city, is the outcome of the road this founder opened.

Chronology

c. 362 BC: Ariobarzanes, head of the family and satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, is put to death after the Satraps' Revolt, betrayed by his son Mithridates.

337 BC: Mithridates II of Kios takes over the government of Kios.

Mid-330s BC (c. 340 BC in some sources): Birth of Mithridates; he is said to have been the same age as Demetrius Poliorcetes.

Winter 317-316 BC: Battle of Gabiene; Diodorus lists a certain "Mithridates, son of Ariobarzanes" among the picked cavalry in the army of Eumenes (it is not certain that he is the same person as the Founder).

302 BC: Mithridates II of Kios is killed at Kios on the orders of Antigonus.

302 or 301 BC: Warned by Demetrius, the young Mithridates flees and takes refuge in the fortress of Kimiata in Paphlagonia (Plutarch and Appian place the episode in earlier years).

301 BC: Battle of Ipsus; Antigonus is killed.

281 BC: Lysimachus dies at the battle of Corupedium, and Seleucus is then murdered; Mithridates assumes the title of basileus (280 BC by some reckonings). Heraclea Pontica seeks Mithridates' help against Seleucus.

c. 279 BC: Amastris is handed over to his son Ariobarzanes.

278 BC: The Galatians cross into Anatolia.

270s BC: Mithridates and Ariobarzanes, with Galatian help, repel the forces sent by Ptolemy II (the date is uncertain).

c. 266 BC: Mithridates I dies and is succeeded by his son Ariobarzanes.

183 BC: Pharnaces I takes Sinope; the capital moves from Amaseia to Sinope, and the tradition of royal burial at Amaseia comes to an end.

63 BC: With Pompey's victory over Mithridates VI, the Kingdom of Pontus passes under Roman rule.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Strabo, Geography, Book XII, 12.3.39 (Amaseia) and 12.3.41 (Kimiata): https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/12C*.html
  • Doğancı, Kamil and Altın, Recep, "Strabon'a Göre Antikçağda Amaseia ve Çevresi", Karadeniz Araştırmaları XV/58 (2018), pp. 1-25.
  • Dueck, Daniela, Strabo of Amasia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome, Routledge, 2002.

Other sources

Online sources