First Mithridatic War
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First Mithridatic War
The First Mithridatic War (89–85 BC) was a war challenging the Roman Republic's expanding empire and rule over the Greek world. In this conflict, the Kingdom of Pontus and many Greek cities rebelling against Roman rule were led by Mithridates VI of Pontus against Rome and the allied Kingdom of Bithynia. The war lasted five years and ended in a Roman victory which forced Mithridates to abandon all of his conquests and return to Pontus. The conflict with Mithridates VI later resumed in two further Mithridatic Wars. Prelude Following his ascension to the throne of Kingdom of Pontus, Mithridates VI of Pontus focused on expanding his kingdom. Mithridates' neighbors, however, were Roman client states, and expansion at their expense would inevitably lead him to conflict with Rome. After successfully incorporating most of the coast around the Black Sea into his kingdom, he turned his attention towards Asia Minor (in particular, the Kingdom of Cappadocia) where his sister Laodice wa ...
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Mithridatic Wars
The Mithridatic Wars were three conflicts fought by Rome against the Kingdom of Pontus and its allies between 88 BC and 63 BC. They are named after Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus who initiated the hostilities after annexing the Roman province of Asia into its Pontic Empire (that came to include most of Asia Minor) and committing massacres against the local Roman population known as the Asian Vespers. As Roman troops were sent to recover the territory, they faced an uprising in Greece organized and supported by Mithridates. Mithridates was able to mastermind such general revolts against Rome and played the magistrates of the optimates party off against the magistrates of the populares party in the Roman civil wars. Nevertheless, the first war ended with a Roman victory, confirmed by the Treaty of Dardanos signed by Sulla and Mithridates. Greece was restored to Roman rule and Pontus was expected to restore the '' status quo ante bellum'' in Asia Minor. As the treaty of Dardan ...
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Archelaus (Pontic Army Officer)
Archelaus ( el, Ἀρχέλαος; fl. during the latter half of the second century BC and first half of first century BC, died by 63 BC) was a prominent Greek general who served under King Mithridates VI of Pontus in northern Anatolia and was also his favorite general.Mayor, ''The Poison King: the life and legend of Mithradates, Rome’s deadliest enemy'' p.114 Family and early life Archelaus was a Cappadocian Greek nobleman, possibly of Macedonian descent, from unknown parents. Perhaps his ancestors descended from those Greeks who arrived in Anatolia after the expedition of Alexander the Great. He had a brother called Neoptolemus and his family were active in the Pontic Court. As he was a friend of Mithridates VI, the Pontic King gave Archelaus the court title of '' philos''. Along with Neoptolemus they both rose to prominence during the wars of Mithridates VI on the northern shores of the Black Sea. Archelaus was a prominent Pontic general during the First Mithridatic War (89 ...
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Nicomedes III
Nicomedes III Euergetes ("the Benefactor", grc-gre, Νικομήδης Εὐεργέτης) was the king of Bithynia, from c. 127 BC to c. 94 BC. He was the son and successor of Nicomedes II of Bithynia. Life Memnon of Heraclea wrote that Nicomedes IV was the son of Nicomedes III with his wife Nysa but according to Granius Licinianus, Nicomedes IV was his son by an earlier wife called Aristonica who died nine days after her son's birth. He then married Nysa, the daughter of Ariarathes VI of Cappadocia and, Laodice of Cappadocia, the sister of Mithridates V of Pontus. Both Nicomedes III and Nysa shared a lineage from the Seleucid dynasty of the Seleucid Empire. He and Nysa likely had a daughter also named Nysa. Nicomedes also had another son, Socrates Chrestus, from a concubine called Hagne who was from Cyzicus. He sent Socrates and Hagne to Cyzicus with 500 talents. His third wife was Laodice of Cappadocia, his former mother-in-law. Nicomedes and Mithridates VI of Pontus made a ...
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Ariarathes VII Of Cappadocia
Ariarathes VII Philometor ("mother-loving") ( grc, Ἀριαράθης Φιλομήτωρ, Ariaráthēs Philomḗtōr; reigned in 116–101 BC or 111–100 BC), King of Cappadocia, was the first son of King Ariarathes VI of Cappadocia and his wife Laodice of Cappadocia. Ariarathes VII had an older sister called Nysa and a younger brother called Ariarathes VIII of Cappadocia. In his first years he reigned under the regency of his mother Laodice, the eldest sister of the King Mithridates VI of Pontus. During this period the kingdom was seized by King Nicomedes III of Bithynia, who married Nysa. Nicomedes III was soon expelled by Mithridates VI, who restored upon the throne Ariarathes VII. However, Ariarathes VII objected to his father's assassin, and ally of Mithridates VI, Gordius, having a role in the government of Cappadocia.  So Mithridates VI had Ariarathes VII killed in 101 BC.  Mithridates VI then put onto the Cappadocian throne his own 9 year old son, Ariarathes ...
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Gordius Of Cappadocia
Gordius (in Greek Γoρδιoς), a Cappadocian by birth, was the instrument of Mithridates Eupator (120–63 BC), king of Pontus, in his attempts to annex Cappadocia to Pontus. Gordius was employed by him, in 116 BC, to murder Ariarathes VI, king of Cappadocia. Gordius was afterwards tutor of a son of Mithridates, whom, after the murder of Ariarathes VII he made king of Cappadocia as Ariarathes IX. Gordius was sent as the envoy of Mithridates to Rome, and afterwards employed by him to engage Tigranes, king of Armenia, to attack Cappadocia, and expel Ariobarzanes I, whom the Romans made king of that country in 93 BC. Sulla Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix (; 138–78 BC), commonly known as Sulla, was a Roman general and statesman. He won the first large-scale civil war in Roman history and became the first man of the Republic to seize power through force. Sulla had ... restored Ariobarzanes in the following year, and drove Gordius out of Cappadocia. Gordius opposed Lucius Lic ...
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Ariarathes VI
Ariarathes VI Epiphanes Philopator ( grc, Ἀριαράθης Ἐπιφανής Φιλοπάτωρ), was the Ariarathid king of Cappadocia from 130 BC to 116 BC. He was the youngest son of Ariarathes V of Cappadocia and Nysa of Cappadocia. Name "Ariarathes" is the Hellenized form of an Old Iranian name, perhaps ''*Arya-wratha'' ("having Aryan joy"). The name is attested in Aramaic as ''Ariorath'' or ''Ariourat'', and in later Latin sources as ''Ariaratus''.; ; . Reign He was a child at his succession, and for this reason the power was kept by his mother, who acted as his regent. At some point his mother seems to have poisoned all of Ariarathes’ five brothers; but the infant king was saved by people loyal to the dynasty and had Nysa killed. Using this as a pretext, his maternal uncle, King Mithridates V Euergetes of Pontus (150 BC–120 BC), tried to assert control over the country by marrying Ariarathes to Mithridates' first daughter, Laodice of Cappadocia, who was also Ariar ...
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Laodice Of Cappadocia
Berenice or Laodice of Cappadocia, also known as Laodice ( grc, Λαοδίκη ''Laodíkē''; flourished from the mid-120s BC to the 90s BC) was a princess from the Kingdom of Pontus and a queen of the Kingdom of Cappadocia by marriage to Ariarathes VI of Cappadocia, and queen of Bithynia by marriage to Nicomedes III. She was regent of Cappadocia in 116 during the minority of her son Ariarathes VII. Early life Laodice was of Persian and Greek Macedonian ancestry. She was the first born child of the monarchs of the Kingdom of Pontus, Laodice VI and Mithridates V Euergetes, who reigned 150-120 BC. One of the siblings was Mithridates, who became Mithridates VI Eupator Dionysius, and reigned 120–63 BC. She was born and raised in the Kingdom of Pontus. Between 130-126 BC, her aunt, the sister of Mithridates V, queen of Cappadocia and regent of her son Ariarathes VI Epiphanes Philopator, Nysa of Cappadocia, died. She had been the wife and later the widow of the previous Cappadoci ...
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Cappadocia
Cappadocia or Capadocia (; tr, Kapadokya), is a historical region in Central Anatolia, Turkey. It largely is in the provinces Nevşehir, Kayseri, Aksaray, Kırşehir, Sivas and Niğde. According to Herodotus, in the time of the Ionian Revolt (499 BC), the Cappadocians were reported as occupying a region from Mount Taurus to the vicinity of the Euxine (Black Sea). Cappadocia, in this sense, was bounded in the south by the chain of the Taurus Mountains that separate it from Cilicia, to the east by the upper Euphrates, to the north by Pontus, and to the west by Lycaonia and eastern Galatia. Van Dam, R. ''Kingdom of Snow: Roman rule and Greek culture in Cappadocia.'' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002, p.13 The name, traditionally used in Christian sources throughout history, continues in use as an international Tourism in Turkey, tourism concept to define a region of exceptional natural wonders, in particular characterized by fairy chimneys and a unique ...
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Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The Black Sea is supplied by major rivers, principally the Danube, Dnieper, and Don. Consequently, while six countries have a coastline on the sea, its drainage basin includes parts of 24 countries in Europe. The Black Sea covers (not including the Sea of Azov), has a maximum depth of , and a volume of . Most of its coasts ascend rapidly. These rises are the Pontic Mountains to the south, bar the southwest-facing peninsulas, the Caucasus Mountains to the east, and the Crimean Mountains to the mid-north. In the west, the coast is generally small floodplains below foothills such as the Strandzha; Cape Emine, a dwindling of the east end of the Balkan Mountains; and the Dobruja Plateau considerably farth ...
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Mithridates VI
Mithridates or Mithradates VI Eupator ( grc-gre, Μιθραδάτης; 135–63 BC) was ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus in northern Anatolia from 120 to 63 BC, and one of the Roman Republic's most formidable and determined opponents. He was an effective, ambitious and ruthless ruler who sought to dominate Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, waging several hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful wars (the Mithridatic Wars) to break Roman dominion over Asia and the Hellenic world. He has been called the greatest ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus. He cultivated an immunity to poisons by regularly ingesting sub-lethal doses; this practice, now called mithridatism, is named after him. After his death he became known as Mithridates the Great. Etymology ''Mithridates'' is the Greek attestation of the Persian name ''Mihrdāt'', meaning "given by Mithra", the name of the ancient Iranian sun god. The name itself is derived from Old Iranian ''Miθra-dāta-''. Ancestry, family and early lif ...
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Legionary
The Roman legionary (in Latin ''legionarius'', plural ''legionarii'') was a professional heavy infantryman of the Roman army after the Marian reforms. These soldiers would conquer and defend the territories of ancient Rome during the late Republic and Principate eras, alongside auxiliary and cavalry detachments. At its height, Roman legionaries were viewed as the foremost fighting force in the Roman world, with commentators such as Vegetius praising their fighting effectiveness centuries after the classical Roman legionary disappeared. Roman legionaries were recruited from Roman citizens under age 45. They were first predominantly made up of recruits from Roman Italy, but more were recruited from the provinces as time went on. As legionaries moved into newly conquered provinces, they helped Romanize the native population and helped integrate the disparate regions of the Roman Empire into one polity. They enlisted in a legion for 25 years of service, a change from the early practi ...
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Aristion
Aristion (died 1 March 86 BC in Athens) was a philosopher who became tyrant of Athens from c. 88 BC until his death in 86 BC. Aristion joined forces with king Mithridates VI of Pontus against Greece's overlords, the Romans, fighting alongside Pontic forces during the First Mithridatic War, but to no avail. On 1 March 86 BC, after a long and destructive siege, Athens was taken by the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla who had Aristion executed. Life Aristion's early history is preserved by Athenaeus, on the authority of Posidonius. Posidonius calls him Athenion and makes him a Peripatetic philosopher, whereas others, Pausanias, Appian, and Plutarch, call him Aristion, and Appian calls him an Epicurean philosopher. There is no universally accepted resolution to this confusion, and it is possible that there were two separate tyrants who held power in Athens in quick succession during the First Mithridatic War whose stories became conflated together. This is the most commonly accep ...
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