Mithridates King – 75mm Part 2

Description

Mithridates VI (Greek: Μιθραδάτης), born c. 135 BC and died in 63 BC, was King of Pontus, in northern Anatolia, from 120 to 63 BC. He was one of Rome’s strongest opponents during the Republic, controlling Asia Minor and the Black Sea, and was one of the protagonists of the Mithridatic Wars, which ended with the Romans in control of the whole region and the death of King Mithridates. Mithridates is considered by many to be the greatest king of Pontus, and he saw himself as a reincarnation of Alexander the Great. In his youth, his mother tried to poison him; when he realised this, Mithridates fled, and that is when his interest in poisons, and in the animals that produce them, was born. According to historians, Mithridates began to study poisons and their effects on the human body. After his father’s death, Mithridates returned to claim the throne and became King of Pontus. He was a highly cultured man who spoke several languages and knew the different cultures and peoples of his kingdom. Mithridates left the first historical records on the behaviour of poisons and their consequences, and he is credited with developing a universal antidote called “Mithridatium”, a formula since lost to time. Fearing he would be poisoned, Mithridates took small doses of poison himself; when he was defeated by the Romans and tried to take his own life with poison, it did not work, as his body had built up immunity. He had to ask a member of his personal guard to end his life, so as not to be captured by the Romans.