Mithradates VI Gold Stater NGC ChMS Star

Starting with his days chilling in the forest punching rocks and wrestling bears, Mithridates got the excellent, Princess Bride-style idea of developing an immunity to poisons by ingesting small amounts of lethal toxins every morning with his orange juice, then slowly ratcheting it up to the point where he was bombing arsenic keg stands and freshening his breath with cyanide mouthwash.  His obsession with poisons was so intense that the longest-lasting impact of his life is concoction he invented known as the Antidotum Mithridaticum, a bizarre antidote cocktail of 54 ingredients ranging from acacia and cinnamon to duck blood and something called "Gallic Nard" that I really hope isn't what I think it is.  Throughout his reign, Mithridates perfected the recipe by testing it out by giving it to convicted criminals and prisoners of war and then seeing if they died from lethal doses of poison.  This sounds fucked up, but this shit is so crazy that the Antidotum Mithridaticum was still being used as a poison antidote in England until 1745 and in Germany and France until about 1900.  As in 1900 AD, roughly two thousand years after this duck blood smoothie was invented.

 Ok so Mithridates Six inherited a decent-sized kingdom, but he had pretty hardcore ambitions to be all that he could be in terms of kicking ass and conquering Asia.  A guy who loved his old-school Greek and Persian heritage and thought all this newfangled Roman Republic hipster bullshit was pretty much the lamest thing since ancient Sumeria, Mithridates's master plan was to basically be Alexander the Great (the guy was so hardcore about it that he even wore Alexander the Great's cloak around like a throwback jersey so that should tell you something) stomping balls from Persia to Athens.  Already fairly wealthy thanks to his control of trade on the Black Sea, Mithridates hired a shit-ton of mercenaries from across Asia and Europe, kitted his forces out with everything from Scythian horse archers and scythed war chariots to Macedonian-style infantry phalanxes, and went to work making sure the rest of the world never forgot where the hell Pontus was and what it was all about.  He intervened in a war in Crimea, ended up conquering the region for himself, then took both warring countries into his empire as protectorates.  He kicked the Scythians in the balls, destroyed the armies of Colchis, captured territory all around the Black Sea, and married his daughter off in a political alliance with the king of Armenia.

Well all this conquering and ass-kicking and pureeing enemy warriors into chowder with spinning scythe chariot blades understandably got Rome a little nervous, so they eventually got around to sending a guy named Manius Aquilius out there to get this Poison King bullshit under control.  Aquilius casually rode out there with five legions and told Mithridates to get the hell out of Cappadocia and a couple other places and settle down with this massacre/killing thing.  Mithridates wasn't really looking to fuck with Rome just yet, so he said, "yeah, sure thing," and withdrew his forces back to Pontus.  Aquilius, thinking he was the biggest shit ever, started power-tripping balls, installed Roman-allied governors in the area, shut down economic trade, blocked the entrance to the Black Sea, and stupidly acted like a total dick to the most powerful ruler in Asia Minor.

Mithridates asked Aquilius to reconsider.  Aquilius told him to fuck off.

Wrong answer.
At the head of a fleet of warships, a thundering herd of horsemen, and a sea of face-shanking phalanx soldiers, Mithridates the Great, King of Pontus, rode out from his borders in 89 BC, crushed the Romans and their allies, reconquered the land he'd oh-so-reasonably just withdrew from, killed Aquilius by pouring molten gold down his throat, and then unflinchingly ordered the summary execution of all 80,000 Romans and Italians living within his borders.  Then he went on the march.  Cities he encountered had two options:  Surrender and hand over any Roman officers within your walls and not only will you be unharmed, but I'll make sure you pay less taxes than you were paying to Rome.  Resist and die.

Mithridates busted through the Romans, sent troops to Athens and Sparta to help them overthrow their Roman rulers, marched into Macedonia and Eastern Europe, plundered Roman stores and sanctuaries, and then, when he was done, he danced like Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder.

Ok, well, slaughtering tens of thousands of Romans, getting high-fives from Spartans, and carving a swath of destruction at the head of a mighty army was sweet and all, but let's face it:  Rome is still Rome, and Rome does what Rome does and what Rome does is beat the shit out of everything else in the world.  Eventually a dude named Sulla (who I intend to write much more about later) showed up, defeated Mithridates in two massive battles, put the King of Pontus in his place, and then blew outta there with a relatively lenient peace treaty considering how much trouble Mithridates had caused.  When he got home, everyone thought Sulla was so awesome that they made him Consul, then Dictator.

Well while lesser Kings might have lost their shit over something like this, it just made Mithridates more angry.  First, he had to deal with a couple jackasses in his own empire that thought they could overthrow him (they couldn't – he crushed them on the battlefield, then invited anyone he suspected of being disloyal to a huge banquet in the royal palace, where he subsequently had the doors barred and everyone slaughtered in an episode that should sound somewhat familiar).  Then, once he'd proved that he hadn't lost his nerve to kill everything in sight, Mithridates went to work fucking with Rome in every way short of direct military intervention.  He sent money to rebels in Hispania.  He befriended the Gauls and had them start investigating invasion routes into Italy.  He allied with Ptolemaic Egypt and Thracian war chiefs.  He even sent an envoy to fucking Spartacus to see if that guy wanted a hand with anything.

He also started fucking with Roman sea trade by building a huge armada of pirate ships, allying himself with the Pirate King of Sicily, and encouraging every seaman with an eyepatch and/or sword to pillage Roman trade in the Black Sea and Mediterranean.  It got so bad that Rome actually sent another general, Lucius Licinius Murena, to send an expeditionary force to raid inside Pontus borders, but the second Murena set foot in Mithrdates' kingdom the Poison King met him on the field of battle and smashed his army and mailed it back to Rome in cookie dough tubes.

Well as tends to happen with these things, everything eventually boiled down to one epic showdown for ultimate control of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, and unfortunately there was very little in the world that could stand up to the Roman war machine once it got it's shit together.  First, an army under Marcus Aurelius Cotta went after Mithridates and failed miserably in their mission to not be violently massacred at spear-point or ball-shanked with fire arrows, but following this victory for Mithridates, Rome sent two of her most badass military geniuses – Lucius Lucullus and Pompey the Great –with a half-dozen hardcore, veteran Roman legions that defeated Mithridates's generals and sent him into flight.  The Poison King took a boat, sailed it across the Black Sea, and asked his son (who he'd installed as King of Scythia) for help.  When he realized that his own kid had been bought out by the Romans Mithridates personally executed him and just continued trying to rally support, hoping to unite the Thracians and Scythians and launch a desperate, last-ditch invasion of Rome.  Before he could get that far, however, he was discovered and cornered by Roman agents.  Seeing that the end was near, the 69 year-old Mithridates VI of Pontus tried to kill himself, but it didn't work, because he was immune to poison, and even though he chugged enough Drano to kill a horse it still didn't put him down, and he died, sword in hand, being cut down by Roman assassins.  He had been King of Pontus for 57 years, and an enemy of Rome for 40, which is about 39 years longer than most people stayed enemies of Rome during this time period.

Because he had defeated the longest-running enemy in Rome's history, when Pompey returned home he was officially given the name "Pompey the Great", and was thrown a triumph that lasted two full days.  Mithridates' possessions – items ranging from gold-plated couches to nine-foot statues of the Poison King, to a collection of 2,000 goblets made of pure Onyx and studded with jewels – were paraded through the streets.  Mithridates' death would mark the end of large-scale organized opposition to Roman rule in Asia."