In the kingdoms of the Hellenistic age, the passing of the throne is often remembered for fratricide or, at the least, for bitter dynastic rivalry. Mithridates IV, the sixth ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus, made his name by doing the opposite. The king, whose full title was Mithridates Philopator Philadelphos, married his sister Laodike, appeared beside her on coins and gave her a place as co-ruler. Ancient writers say very little about his reign. What survives is a few lines of historical record, two inscriptions found in Rome and on Delos, a handful of coins and the general course of regional politics. For about a century and a half this meagre material has been a puzzle for numismatists and epigraphers, and the king's name, his dates and even his existence have at times been confused with those of other rulers. The account below keeps to what this material shows and states plainly where scholars part company.

The Dynasty's Background

The Kingdom of Pontus was the homeland of a dynasty of Persian descent, with territory along the southern Black Sea coast and in the interior, taking in the valleys around Amasya and port cities such as Sinope and Amisos. After the founder, Mithridates I Ktistes, came Ariobarzanes, Mithridates II and Mithridates III in turn. While preserving its Persian origins, the dynasty built marriage ties with the Macedonian-descended Seleucid house. The wife of Mithridates II was Laodike, a daughter of the Seleucid king Antiochus II, and one of the sisters of Mithridates III became the first wife of Antiochus the Great. This interweaving of Persian and Greek ancestry shows in the coins of Mithridates IV as well.

Amasya was the dynasty's old royal seat in the interior. Strabo, describing Amaseia, his own city, speaks of the tombs of the kings cut into the rock and of the deep valley through which the Yeşilırmak winds. With Pharnaces' capture of Sinope the weight of the kingdom shifted towards the coast, but Amasya kept its importance for the dynasty. According to some sources, Mithridates IV's nephew Mithridates V was buried in the royal tombs of his ancestors at Amasya; where Mithridates IV himself was buried is unknown. The country around Amasya also bears indirect witness to the monetary history of his time: a silver hoard found at Amasya in 1860 contained several coins of his elder brother Pharnaces, whereas not one of the 822 silver coins in the Kirazlı hoard, found on the lands of the nearby village of Kürtler and buried around 230-220 BC, belonged to the kings of Pontus.

Mithridates IV was the son of Mithridates III and a Laodike of Seleucid descent. He had two siblings: his elder brother Pharnaces I and his sister Laodike. Since the dynastic list runs Mithridates I, Ariobarzanes, Mithridates II, Mithridates III, Pharnaces and Mithridates IV, the king is counted as the sixth ruler. Appian's count fits this order; according to him Mithridates VI was the eighth king of the dynasty and the sixth of that name. The regnal years of Mithridates III are uncertain and some scholars even question his existence, but the identities of his sons and daughter are clearly attested in the written sources. The sibling bond is also documented by an inscription from Delos, which names Laodike as "the sister of King Pharnaces and of Mithradates". The Belgian numismatist François de Callataÿ reminds us that even the numbering of the kings is no more than a modern convention: the order of the dynasty was settled only at the end of the nineteenth century through the work of Théodore Reinach, and Reinach himself changed his mind several times as new finds came to light.

The Legacy of Pharnaces' Reign

To understand the reign of Mithridates IV one has to look at his elder brother's policy. Pharnaces was on the throne before 183 BC and in that year seized Sinope, one of the most important cities on the Black Sea coast. The kings of Pontus had long had their eye on this port. The Rhodians sent envoys to Rome to complain of the attack, but to no effect. In the same years Pharnaces also fell out with Eumenes II, king of Pergamon. In the spring of 181 BC, without waiting for the return of envoys sent to Rome, he attacked both Eumenes and Ariarathes IV, king of Cappadocia, and invaded Galatia with a large army. A commission sent by the Roman Senate conducted talks at Pergamon, but Pharnaces' demands were judged unjust and rejected, and the war flared up again. The fighting went on intermittently until the summer of 179 BC. Prusias II, king of Bithynia, had also taken Eumenes' side in this war. The sources further record that Eumenes' brother Attalos, the prince who would later become Attalos II, defeated Pontus and gained territory between 182 and 179 BC.

Unable to withstand the combined strength of Eumenes and Ariarathes, Pharnaces sued for peace. The treaty text that Polybius preserves carries harsh terms. Pharnaces was not to enter Galatia on any pretext, all his treaties with the Galatians were annulled, he was to withdraw from Paphlagonia, send back to their homes the people he had deported from there and return their weapons and war material. He was to give back to Ariarathes the places he had taken in the condition in which he found them, release the hostages and also surrender Tios on the Black Sea coast. Prisoners and deserters were to be returned without ransom, nine hundred talents were to be paid for the money and treasure carried off from Morzios and Ariarathes, and a further three hundred talents to Eumenes towards the costs of the war. Tios was shortly afterwards presented by Eumenes to Prusias, who had asked for it. Pharnaces lost all his conquests; only Sinope remained in his hands.

Polybius describes Pharnaces as arrogant and harsh in temper; elsewhere he writes that in contempt for the laws Pharnaces surpassed all the kings before him. Since this verdict comes from a pro-Roman historian it cannot be called impartial, but the long conflict with neighbouring kingdoms under Pharnaces is real enough. Pharnaces married the Seleucid princess Nysa, daughter of Antiochus Epiphanes, in 160 or 159 BC through the diplomacy of the Seleucid king Demetrius I. An inscription the Athenians set up on Delos in honour of the couple records that a gold crown was granted and bronze statues commissioned; its date also fixes the time of the marriage. Their children were Mithridates V and Nysa. That Pharnaces was still on the throne in 170 BC is known from a passing record; by 154 BC he was dead and had been succeeded by his brother Mithridates IV.

Accession and Dating

Even the place where Mithridates IV is first mentioned in the sources is disputed. The text of the peace of 179 BC states that it was made between Eumenes, Prusias and Ariarathes on one side and "Pharnaces and Mithridates" on the other. It has been argued that this Mithridates was the king's brother, so that the prince already held a share of sovereignty at that time; the German historian Benedikt Niese defended this view. Eduard Meyer did not accept it. The same treaty also mentions another Mithridates, "satrap of Armenia", who was fined three hundred talents for breaking his treaty with Eumenes and making war on Ariarathes. Whether the name in the text refers to this satrap or to the Pontic prince is uncertain. To treat 179 BC as the year the king entered politics is therefore a possibility, not an established fact.

The date of his accession is also unknown. What is certain is that in 154 BC or shortly before he is mentioned as king of Pontus, sending an auxiliary force to Attalos II, king of Pergamon. The end of the reign is placed at about 150 BC. The dates proposed for its beginning, however, spread over a wide range. The entry in the classical encyclopaedia Pauly-Wissowa puts the reign at about 170-150 BC; Reinach and, following him, Callataÿ speak of about 169 BC and place the joint coins with Laodike between 162 and 150 BC. Some sources give the reign as running from about 160 to 150 BC. A start around 170 BC is derived from Pharnaces' last mention in Polybius. Yet if the Delos inscription celebrating the marriage of Pharnaces and Nysa is dated to 160/159 BC, Pharnaces was still alive in those years and the two dates strain against each other. No document resolves this contradiction; the observation that the early starting dates are hard to reconcile with the inscription is our own inference. The divergence stems from the silence of the ancient writers and from the fact that coin finds give only a relative sequence. It is therefore more prudent not to name a single year for the beginning, but to say that the reign began before the mid-150s and ended around 150 BC.

The title itself carries information. Philopator means father-loving, Philadelphos sibling-loving. Both epithets were common in Hellenistic dynasties. The best-known example of Philadelphos is that of the Egyptian king Ptolemy II, who married his sister Arsinoe II, and in Pergamon Attalos II bore the same epithet. The adaptation of the Ptolemaic model on the joint coins of Pontus raises the question of which milieu inspired the adoption of sibling marriage. Some scholars also point to marriages between close kin in Persian tradition. None of these explanations is settled, because the king left no written reason for his choice.

Joint Rule on the Coins

The most tangible evidence for the reign is the coinage, and it is remarkably scarce. Callataÿ's die study, published in 2009, could gather fewer than a hundred specimens from the entire royal coinage of Pontus over roughly a century, from Mithridates III to Mithridates V. Among them are one gold stater and fourteen tetradrachms in the name of Mithridates IV, five tetradrachms in the joint names of king and queen, and in Laodike's name alone a single tetradrachm and a doubtful stater. The king's tetradrachms were struck from six obverse dies, the joint tetradrachms from only two. These coins also reached the modern world late: the king's tetradrachm was first published in 1877, and the joint tetradrachm of king and queen only in the early 1900s, by Reinach.

On the tetradrachms Mithridates IV struck in his own name alone, the obverse shows the king's diademed head and the reverse Perseus. Perseus stands wearing a cloak, a pointed, curved helmet and winged sandals; in one hand he holds the curved sword called the harpe, in the other the head of Medusa. Above his head are the eight-rayed star and crescent regarded as the emblem of the dynasty. The legend names the king with the epithets "father-loving and sibling-loving". Perseus is a Greek hero, but the Persians had linked him with their own past. The coin is read as a choice by which the king stressed both his Persian and his Greek descent, and it may have been struck before his marriage. On the gold stater, known from a single specimen, Hera stands on the reverse in a long dress holding a sceptre, again with a crescent and eight-rayed star beside her. This stater was published only in the mid-twentieth century.

The tetradrachms struck together with Laodike carry two faces at once. On the obverse appear the draped jugate busts of Mithridates and Laodike. The Greek legend on the reverse gives the titles of King Mithridates and Queen Laodike and calls the two together "Philadelphoi", the sibling-loving. Beside the legend the couple, rendered as Zeus and Hera, stand facing front. Hera holds a sceptre in her right hand. The laureate Zeus holds a sceptre in his right hand and a thunderbolt in his left. The choice is read as a declaration of Hellenism. Three of the five known joint tetradrachms come from a hoard found at Samsun in 1900 and thought to have been buried around 150 BC; this is one of the few pieces of evidence that the coins circulated within the kingdom's own territory.

A single tetradrachm struck in Laodike's name alone, with her own title only, is known. The specimen in Paris is broken into three pieces. The queen appears on the obverse with veiled head, and on the reverse she is shown standing in the guise of Hera, in a long dress and holding a sceptre; her title reads Queen Laodike. Reinach once took the Laodike of this coin to be the wife of Mithridates V and mother of Mithridates VI. B. C. McGing and Callataÿ, however, assign the coin to Laodike, the sister of Mithridates IV, on the basis of the portrait's resemblance to the queen's portrait on the joint tetradrachm. McGing, relying on the similarity between the portrait on the coins struck in Laodike's own name and the one on the joint tetradrachm, and on the same Hera reverse, considers it very likely that the queen was the king's co-ruler.

A gold stater in Laodike's name is also known, but its authenticity is disputed. The coin surfaced at an auction in 2001 and sold for 220,000 Swiss francs. The obverse shows the veiled bust of the queen, the reverse a double cornucopia with a six-rayed star; her title reads "the illustrious and sibling-loving Queen Laodike". Epiphanes, the illustrious, would be the only instance among known Greek coins of this epithet given to a queen. Callataÿ grants that the weight is perfect and the style plausible, yet lists many reasons for doubt. The emblem of the dynasty is, without exception, the eight-rayed star and crescent, and a six-rayed star has no meaning in this context. The cornucopia gives the impression of an Egyptian model adapted without real understanding of either setting. The portrait differs from that on the tetradrachm and recalls Ptolemaic rather than Pontic style. The astonishingly flat surface of the reverse and the coin's almost uncirculated look are also features common in modern forgeries. In Callataÿ's view there is no conclusive proof that the piece is false, but there is ample reason to treat it with great suspicion. Any interpretation built on the epithet "Epiphanes" therefore carries the same doubt.

That a statue and an inscription were set up for Laodike on Delos shows that her name was known beyond Pontus. The ancient writers never mention the queen; she is known only from coins, inscriptions and a statue. What is said about her political weight is therefore an interpretation of the coin evidence rather than a firm verdict. There is no record that the couple had children, and the date of the marriage is unknown. The royal marriages and queens of Pontus are the subject of a separate article; here it is enough to mention the union to the extent that it shaped the form of government. Since Mithridates is thought to have had no children, the throne passed to his nephew Mithridates V, the son of his elder brother Pharnaces.

The Limited Use of the Coinage and a Debate

Die counts also give an idea of the purpose for which these coins were struck. By Callataÿ's reckoning, all the kings of Pontus together, over the roughly seventy years from Mithridates III to Mithridates IV, used about thirty tetradrachm obverse dies. The estimate for the tetradrachms of Mithridates IV alone is around nine dies, and for the joint tetradrachms about three. This is one sixth of what Mithridates VI struck in thirty years, and in yearly average about one fourteenth. The near absence of royal coins from Pontic hoards confirms the picture: even a hoard of more than two hundred tetradrachms found at Ordu and buried after 150 BC did not contain a single coin of a Pontic king. Since the royal silver was not supported by small bronze change, it did not enter everyday trade and was most probably struck for limited, military purposes such as paying mercenaries. For this reason Callataÿ also stresses that the propaganda value of the coin images should not be overstated. How wide an audience the Zeus and Hera of the joint coins reached must be weighed against this limitation.

The sequence of the coins is not beyond dispute either. In 1998 the British numismatist Harold Mattingly proposed that the coins attributed to Mithridates III in fact belonged to the first phase of Mithridates IV, followed by the joint coins of the king and Laodike and finally by the coins the king struck alone. Callataÿ rejects the proposal on several grounds: the coins from the hoards on which Mattingly relied are not as fresh as supposed but worn and damaged; the portraits of Mithridates III cannot be reconciled with those of Mithridates IV and show an older face; while the portrait on the coins Mithridates IV struck alone is almost identical to that on the coins where he appears with his sister. The weights also support the traditional order; the median weight of the tetradrachms is 16.97 grams under Mithridates III, 16.85 under Pharnaces and 16.83 under Mithridates IV, in line with the slow decline of coin weights over time.

The portraits have also provoked the judgements of modern scholars. The Danish numismatist Otto Mørkholm praised the realistic portraits on the coins of the Pontic kings as a gallery without parallel in Hellenistic portraiture. Other writers described the same faces with disparaging comparisons; one went so far as to liken the profile of Mithridates IV to that of a down-and-out drunkard. Callataÿ openly criticises such remarks, noting that they bear the stamp of nineteenth-century racial theories.

Closeness to Rome and Pergamon

The foreign policy of Mithridates IV departs markedly from his elder brother's confrontational course. Its clearest evidence is his siding with Pergamon in the war between Prusias II of Bithynia and Attalos II Philadelphos of Pergamon. It was Prusias who started it. The Bithynian king invaded Pergamene territory between 156 and 154 BC but was in the end forced to pull back under Roman pressure. According to Polybius, Attalos began gathering large forces as early as the winter, and Ariarathes and Mithridates, under the terms of their alliance, sent him an army of cavalry and infantry. At its head was Demetrius, son of the Cappadocian king. The Pauly-Wissowa entry dates this aid to 156 BC, while some chronologies place it in 154 BC.

This brief record is almost all we know of the Pontic contribution. In Polybius' wording the two kings sent a single army, and it was placed under the command of a Cappadocian prince. The sources say nothing of the size of the force, the scene of its operations or its effect on the outcome. The end of the war was decided by Roman diplomacy. Ten envoys sent by the Senate warned Prusias in threatening terms; when he resisted most of their demands, the Romans broke off friendship and alliance with him. At about the same time a fleet of eighty decked ships under Athenaeus was ravaging the lands of the cities subject to Prusias along the Hellespont. Appius Claudius, Lucius Oppius and Aulus Postumius, sent next by the Senate, brought the two kings to make peace. Prusias was to hand over twenty decked ships to Attalos at once, pay five hundred talents over twenty years, and pay a further hundred talents in compensation to Methymna, Aigai, Kyme and Herakleia for the damage he had done. Each side was to keep the territory it had held before the war.

This heavy indemnity also prepared Prusias' downfall. In his old age Prusias wished to make the children of a later marriage his heirs and to push aside his son Nicomedes II. He sent Nicomedes to Rome to seek a reduction of the payments and instructed the envoy Menas, who accompanied him, to kill him if he failed. Instead of betraying Nicomedes, Menas took his side. Nicomedes proclaimed himself king and gained the support of Attalos II. Prusias was killed by Nicomedes' men in 149 BC in the temple of Zeus where he had taken refuge. The reign of Mithridates IV had ended at about the same time.

The decision to side with Pergamon is regarded as the beginning of a policy of friendship between Pontus and the Roman Republic and its allies; this line would last until Mithridates VI Eupator. The summary in the sources is brief: Mithridates was allied to the Romans and supported Attalos II against Prusias II, called the Hunter. Even so, the verdict that Mithridates IV was a peaceable ruler remains to some extent a matter of interpretation. What can be said with confidence is that, after a period in which his elder brother Pharnaces had fought Pergamon, Cappadocia and Bithynia, the king did not come into conflict with these states or with Rome, and stood by Pergamon. The sources themselves acknowledge that very little is known about his reign.

The Dedication on the Capitol

The most striking document of Mithridates IV's relations with Rome is a bilingual inscription found on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. The Latin and Greek text records that King Mithridates Philopator and Philadelphos, son of King Mithridates, dedicated a statue of the Roman people on account of the friendship and alliance between himself and the Romans. In the Greek text the Roman people is called the king's "friend and ally", and the dedication is said to have been made in return for its goodwill towards him. The inscription has also preserved the names of the envoys who carried out the commission: Naimanes son of Naimanes and Maes son of Maes. Because much of the stone is broken, part of the text is read today only through restoration.

Whose inscription this was remained a matter of debate for a long time. Theodor Mommsen, because he dated the group of stones on which it stands to the age of Sulla, took this Mithridates to be a son of Mithridates VI Eupator not known from any other source. Reinach, however, showed from the coin evidence that the only known Mithridates bearing the titles Philopator Philadelphos was Mithridates IV. As reported in the Pauly-Wissowa entry, Reinach concluded from the decree of the Lycian League inscribed on the same block that the dedication was made around 168 BC, the year in which Rome restored the Lycians' freedom. The American historian Ronald Mellor took up the question again in 1978. As the Italian epigrapher Attilio Degrassi had shown, the inscriptions stand on travertine blocks of the same size and belong to a large monument at least twenty metres around near the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol; the letter forms also suggest the first century BC. Mellor proposed that, after the fire that destroyed the temple of Jupiter in 83 BC, damaged older dedications may have been re-inscribed on a new monument in the time of Sulla. On this view the dedication of Mithridates IV was made in the 160s BC, and the stone we see today is a copy renewed about a century later.

The inscription does not fully agree with the ancient narrative of Pontus' relations with Rome either. Appian writes that the first king of Pontus to enter into friendship with the Romans was Mithridates V Euergetes. Mellor points out that Appian is not very clear about the Pontic succession. As long as the Capitoline inscription is assigned to Mithridates IV, a formal relationship of "friendship and alliance" with Rome is pushed back by at least a generation.

The Amisos Treasure

In 1995, during road-widening work in the Cedit neighbourhood of Samsun's İlkadım district, a tomb chamber of the Pontic period came to light. The find is known as the Amisos Treasure and is now displayed in the Samsun Museum (the Archaeology and Atatürk Museum). Consisting of 64 pieces in gold, metal, glass and terracotta, the treasure has particular value as a tomb find recovered in place and in its original state. According to the inventory reported in the press, it contained a royal crown of pure gold, fifteen gold buttons, four gold bracelets, eighteen broken bracelets, a gold buckle, two earrings, ten large neck ornaments, a ring with a stone, twenty-four necklaces, four hundred and twenty-four beads, a glass bowl, four clay vessels, three lamps and a clay plate. Gold mouth and eye bands, a necklace two metres long and lion-headed bracelets in filigree work are the pieces that draw the most attention.

It has been suggested that the find may have belonged to Mithridates IV. This attribution rests on no firm evidence; no inscription indicating the location of the king's tomb is known. Nor is there agreement on the dating. In a statement given in 2025, the archaeologist in charge of the gold collection at the Samsun Museum said that the treasure is dated to the time of Mithridates VI, but that there are serious indications it may be older. The link between the treasure and Mithridates IV thus remains a possibility, not a proven fact.

Philopator and Philadelphos in Hüsameddin's Account

The local historiography of Amasya reached this king by a different route. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, in the section of his Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya) dealing with the kings of Pontus, distributes between two separate kings the two epithets now known to belong to a single ruler. In his sequence, the ruler he calls the "Fourth Mihridâd" is the king the Greeks named "Filapatur", given the meaning "father-loving". Hüsameddin claims that the epithet actually derives from "Batur", meaning hero, a word the Turanians gave to a brave and valiant ruler, which the Greeks later adapted to their own language, and he dismisses the Greek explanation as meaningless, remarking that "everyone loves his father". According to him this king, to guard the eastern gorge of Amasya, built a fortress with a town in front of it where the Yeşilırmak and the Kelkit river meet, and the place was named "Baturya, Paturya" and later "Opaturya". Hüsameddin writes that the same king subdued by war the peoples around Canik, Sinop and Trabzon, built a fleet to guard the coasts and reigned for forty-four years; he also notes that the town of Opaturya no longer existed in his own day.

The "Fifth Mihridâd" who follows is, in his account, the king known in Greek and European histories by the epithet "Filadelfes", meaning "sibling-loving". Hüsameddin thinks that this epithet was equivalent to the title of Athenian citizenship and shows that the king was on good terms with the Greeks. He credits this king with building a fortress north of Amasya, west of the old town called Marınca, to control the Osmancık and Amasya gorges, and so ties the origin of the name Merzifon to him as well; in his view the king reigned for thirty-six years and was succeeded by his son Farnak. This account does not match the modern sequence. In modern scholarship the epithets Philopator and Philadelphos belong to one and the same king, Mithridates IV, the brother of Pharnaces I, and he reigned after Pharnaces, not before him. The claims about the fortress of Opaturya, the fortress at Merzifon and the Turkish origin of the epithets could not be confirmed by any other source. Even so, these pages are valuable for showing the effort of an Amasya historian in the first half of the twentieth century to tie the kings of Pontus to the geography and place names of his city.

Legacy and Aftermath

Mithridates IV was succeeded on the Pontic throne by his nephew Mithridates V Euergetes. The son of Pharnaces and the Seleucid princess Nysa, this king continued the alliance with Rome. In the Third Punic War he sent the Romans a few ships and a small auxiliary force, and later supported them in the war against Eumenes III of Pergamon. In return he was rewarded with Phrygia by the Roman consul Manius Aquillius. The Senate annulled the consul's acts on grounds of bribery, but Mithridates V held on to these lands until his death. Around 120 BC he was poisoned at a banquet he gave in Sinope. According to some sources he was buried in the royal tombs of his ancestors at Amasya. His son Mithridates VI Eupator would, some half a century later, become one of Rome's fiercest enemies. That Eupator multiplied the striking of coins tenfold or twentyfold shows in retrospect how sparingly his predecessors, Mithridates IV among them, had used money.

The difference between the age of Mithridates IV and that of Mithridates VI is great. Yet explaining it by one king's personal choices would be misleading. Pharnaces' defeat had narrowed the kingdom's room for expansion, and Rome's mediation in regional affairs made it harder for the smaller kingdoms to expand on their own. Within these conditions, on a throne he shared with his sister, Mithridates IV followed a course close to Pergamon and Rome and made that closeness visible enough to dedicate a statue to the Roman people on the Capitol. The next generation would test those conditions again.

Chronology

Before 183 BC: Pharnaces captures Sinope.

181-179 BC: Pharnaces' war against Eumenes and Ariarathes; the return of his conquests in Galatia and Paphlagonia.

179 BC: A "Mithridates" is named beside Pharnaces in the peace treaty; whether this is Mithridates IV is disputed.

About 170-169 BC: Pharnaces' last mention in the sources; according to some scholars, the beginning of Mithridates IV's reign.

About 168 BC or the 160s BC: Proposed dates for the dedication inscription on the Capitol.

160-159 BC: Pharnaces marries the Seleucid princess Nysa.

About 162-150 BC: Proposed range for the striking of the joint coins with Laodike.

156-154 BC: Prusias' attack on Pergamon; Pontus and Cappadocia send an auxiliary force to Attalos; the peace imposed by Rome.

About 150 BC: End of the reign; his nephew Mithridates V succeeds. The Samsun hoard containing three of the joint coins was buried at about this time.

149 BC: Prusias is killed by the men of his son Nicomedes II.

About 120 BC: Mithridates V is poisoned in Sinope; his son Mithridates VI takes the throne.

1995: The Amisos Treasure is discovered in Samsun.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 2 (volumes 1-4 edition), p. 274 (e-book: amasya.bel.tr/uploads/e-kitap/kitap/1-4/files/basic-html/page274.html).

Academic studies

  • François de Callataÿ, "The First Royal Coinages of Pontos (from Mithridates III to Mithridates V)", in J. M. Højte (ed.), Mithridates VI and the Pontic Kingdom, Black Sea Studies 9, Aarhus, 2009, pp. 63-94.

Other sources

  • Polybius, Histories (Historiai), XXIII-XXV, XXVII, XXXIII (records concerning Pharnaces and Mithridates IV; treaty of 179 BC: XXV.2; aid to Attalos and the peace: XXXIII.12-13), translated by W. R. Paton, LacusCurtius (penelope.uchicago.edu). penelope.uchicago.edu
  • Appian, Mithridatic Wars (Prusias II and Nicomedes; Mithridates V and friendship with Rome).
  • Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, XXXVIII.
  • Fritz Geyer, "Mithridates 10", Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, XV,2 (1932), columns 2161-2162 (Wikisource). de.wikisource.org
  • Ronald Mellor, "The Dedications on the Capitoline Hill", Chiron 8 (1978), pp. 319-330.
  • OGIS 375 / CIL I² 730 (the bilingual dedication on the Capitol), translation at attalus.org.
  • B. C. McGing, The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus, Brill, 1986.
  • J. D. Grainger, A Seleukid Prosopography and Gazetteer, Brill, 1997.
  • "Samsun Müzesi'nin dikkat çekici eserleri: 'Amisos Hazineleri'", Anadolu Agency, Habertürk, 18.11.2025. haberturk.com
  • Livius.org, entry "Mithridates IV Philopator Philadelphus" (Jona Lendering).
  • Wikipedia, entries "Mithridates IV of Pontus", "Laodice (sister-wife of Mithridates IV of Pontus)", "Pharnaces I of Pontus", "Prusias II of Bithynia", "Attalus II Philadelphus" (supplementary).

Online sources