You are looking at one of Ancient Rome’s worst enemies, the ruler of the wealthy Kingdom of Pontus in Asia Minor, Mithridates the Great, aka Mithridates VI Eupator (135-63 BCE). He took the Roman empire into wars that exposed the weaknesses of the Republic, which collapsed in cataclysmic civil wars in just a generation after his death. One of Mithridates’ most infamous actions was the orchestrated murder of thousands of Latin-speaking civilians in the Anatolian regions under his sway.
The massacre of 88 BCE involved men, women, and children, and didn’t just include Roman citizens abroad, but their Latin-speaking slaves, and merchants, and people traveling through the lands. All over in cities and villages, a coordinated slaughter happened in either the spring or summer — at the Temple of Asclepius in Pergamon where refugees normally sought shelter, along the seashore at Adramyttium, and elsewhere, up to 150,000 were killed. Historians estimate that the casualties might have been closer to the figure given by Ancient writer Valerius Maximus at 80,000, which is still truly staggering. Comparative death rates might be the US soldiers in the entire Vietnam war at 50,000, or the civilian deaths in Gaza this year at about 40,000 at this time of writing.
Mithridates’ actions didn’t come from out of the blue — the Romans had been pressing into their eastern lands with enormous cruelty, enslaving populations, defaulting in legal agreements, and extorting taxation/tribute ruthlessly. Mithridates had even punished one notorious Roman governor who attacked him with a death by having him drink molten gold, as a sign of his greed. It is no wonder he styled himself in this portrait to be reminiscent of another glorious non-Roman leader, Alexander the Great.
Source(s): For a further elaboration of the massacre of 88 BCE and Mithridates’ reign, see _The Poison King_ by Adrienne Mayor, Princeton UP, 2011
