The kingdom of Mithradates was two hundred years old and rich in natural resources, especially metals, when he came to the throne at age 11. The country was mostly villages studded with royal castles, like a feudal state. The royal house was descended from Persian nobles with a Hellenistic civilization and Greek the official language. The Greek influence did not spread to the cities except its northern coast on the Black Sea and the Greek and Persian influences never fused.

Raised in Sinope he had a Greek education and was so intelligent that he could speak 25 languages and transact business in all the dialects of the chiefs in his domain. Early in his adult life he imprisoned his mother with whom he shared power and had his brother assassinated. Mithradates was a man of exceptional physical strength and force of character whose exploits soon earned him an extraordinary reputation.

His ambitions were great, so when asked by king Parisades of the Bosporus and Chersonesus in the Crimea to help against the Scythians and Sarmatians, he did. When his friend soon died he became master of the whole north coast of the Black Sea with a capital at Panticapaeum. He also took Colchis and Lesser Armenia which added immense supplies of corn, money and men. Within a few years he was the most powerful ruler in Asia. Now he wanted Anatolia.

To do this he had Nicomedes II of Bithynia to help him. Galatia and Paphlagonia quickly taken, they turned to Cappadocia but quarrelled over control. Mithradates then allied with his son-in-law Tigranes of Armenia, then took Cappadocia in 93 BC. But in 92 BC, Sulla the proprietor of Cilicia, restored the king of Cappadocia and removed Mithradates and Tigranes. When the Roman Social Wars began in 90 BC they again seized Bithynia and Cappadocia. The Roman general Manius Aquilius ordered Mithradates to withdraw, which he did, but when Aquilius got Nicomedes II of Bithynia to attack Pontus, Mithradates struck back defeating Nicomedes and killing Aquilius. He then swept into the rest of Asia promising freedom and canceling taxes. He was hailed as a deliverer but he had the problem of what to do with the many Roman and Italian business men in his provinces. In the winter of 88 BC he solved his problem with " The Night of the Vespers". He ordered that on that one night, all Roman and Italian persons living in the walls of all the cities in Asia, be murdered; and they were; 80,000 of them. Mithradates even sent an army across the Aegean and took control of the southern port of Greece after a tyrant who favored him had come to power in Athena.

As a result of this, in 87 BC, Sulla landed in Epirus with 5 legions and after a series of battles defeated Mithradates and his generals. He met Sulla in the summer of 85 BC at Dardanus near Troy to discuss peace. Mithradates paid 2000 talents, 70 war ships and evacuated conquered territories, in return, he was recognized King of Pontus and friend of Rome, thus ending the first Mithradatic War.

Sulla imposed a heavy indemnity of 20,000 talents on the cities that backed Mithradates, such as Pergamum, Ephesus and Miletus. The Greeks became the victims of Roman money lenders. The second Mithradatic War started when the Roman commander Murena invaded lands of Mithradates on the flimsy pretext that Mithradates had not left all of Cappadocia. In 82 BC Murena was defeated by Mithradates on the bank of the Halys river. Sulla ordered Murena to desist; Mithradates had won and peace was declared by Mithradates. He, though, only regarded it an intermission between wars with Rome.

The third Mithradatic war began 8 years later in 74 BC on the death of Nicomedes III of Bithynia. Mithradates took the field with 120,000 foot soldiers, 16,000 calvary and vast numbers of barbarians. He defeated the Roman consul Cotta at Chalcedon but was defeated later by the other Roman consul Lucullus. The war went on and in 66 BC he was defeated by Pompey the Great. In 63 BC Mithradates' son Pharnaces, sick of war, took power from Mithradates who then took poison. His body was sent to Pompey at Amisus as a token of submission. Pompey interred the body with regal honors at Sinope. He was 69 years old and had reigned for 57 years of which 25 years had been consumed with war against Rome. Cicero called him "The Greatest of All Kings after Alexander."

Price, in his monumental work on Alexander III the Great, says these coins were struck out of sympathy with Mithradates. Wrong! Mithradates was their king and he ordered the coinage for the war though it didn't circulate outside of Odessa. It is probable, if we follow Price's dating, that these coins were minted for use in the second Mithradatic War circa 83/82 BC. That war ended in two years and it was eight years before the third Mithradatic War broke out in 74 BC. With there being no war time use, they circulated locally, briefly and were buried as a hoard before the next war broke out.

While Mithradates left the name of Alexander on the reverse as well as the Zeus type, he took all the finest die cutters and put them to work on his portraits, which they began with the basic Alexander type as a point of departure. The portraits of Mithradates are bold, clear, and distinctively himself. The other addition is his long flowing hair, typical of Mithradates' proudest coinage in his own name. The reverses are of deplorable quality as are the Hercules head obverses in sharp contrast to the fineness of Mithradates' portraits. The reverse of these coins have the Mithradatic star under the chair of Zeus to indicate who minted them. Why Mithradates issued these coins in the name of Alexander is a mystery. But that he did, gives collectors of today a gift from the greatest rival of the Romans. In 1980 at a Sternberg sale, an example of these coins in this quality sold for 7700 SFR. In 32 years we've only handled three of these coins, all in less than Fine condition. These represent a rare opportunity to obtain a portrait of one of the great men of antiquity.

Copyright @ 1997 by Harlan J. Berk, Ltd. - http://www.harlanjberk.com - E-Mail: info@harlanjberk.com