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 Peter Stothard on ‘The Poison King’Posted on Jan 15, 2010
Three Latin words, Veni Vidi Vici, make up the most famous export from the mountainous strip of Turkey by the Black Sea that in the ancient world was called Pontus. This alliterative delight—I came, I saw, I conquered—is a triumph of linguistic showmanship even by the laconic standards of its author, Julius Caesar, a boast for the folks back home which followed his brisk defeat in 47 B.C. of Pharnaces II, son and successor to the hero of Adrienne Mayor’s book “The Poison King.” Caesar’s rapid coming, seeing and conquering inspired later lyricists of rock music and opera as well as the secret hopes of lesser military commanders who imagined that they too might quickly accomplish their business in the East and be back home for tea. It did not, however, represent the normal experience of Romans in Pontus in the first century B.C. For the fortunate Julius Caesar, fresh from his civil war victory over Pompey and refreshed by a Nile cruise with Cleopatra, the task of facing Pharnaces instead of his father, Mithradates VI, had been like fighting Napoleon III instead of Napoleon I. The conqueror’s triumphal procession through the streets of Rome, in a chariot drawn by four white horses, almost certainly took longer than the battle which had won it. Fifteen years earlier, Pompey’s Pontic triumph, had, by contrast, come at the end of three wars lasting a quarter of a century, fought by a series of generals against a determined Eastern leader famed for biological and chemical weaponry, among many other skills, and whom Mayor reasonably designates in her subtitle “Rome’s Deadliest Enemy.” Mithradates’ most notorious act of ancient terror took place in a single day in 88 B.C., the second year of his first war with Rome, when he ordered the massacre of some 88,000 Romans and Italians in the cities of the eastern Aegean coast. This was an unexpected outrage even by the less outraged standards of that time. The temptation to seek modern parallels here is very great, and Mayor does not wish us to avoid them. To be in Ephesus or Pergamum in 88 B.C. was to share the same unenviable place in history as the Iraqi Kurds of 1988 and the office workers of the World Trade Center in 2001. Mayor offers a lengthy comparative list of dates on which a group of unsuspecting civilians suffered a sudden and little-suspected blow that significantly shifted the course of subsequent events.
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy
By Adrienne Mayor
Princeton University Press, 472 pages
Mithradates had many characteristics of the classic Eastern despot. He made extensive use of poisons for his political advantage—in lethal doses to his enemies and, even more notoriously, in smaller doses on himself to harden his resistance to revenge attacks and his reputation for invulnerability. He was secretive, paranoid, extraordinarily adept at secret communication and routes of escape. Thus Mithradates may be readily now likened to Osama bin Laden (a small-time Oriental with a big-time antipathy to the West and a mystical ability to avoid capture) or Saddam Hussein (a paranoid despot with a penchant for chemistry and theatrical murders whose enemies gave him too many chances) and to others besides. Mayor’s chief aim, however, is not to demonize Mithradates. At a time when the problems of the West in the East, both for those exporting their culture and for those receiving it, are high on the general agenda, she wants to see the first century B.C. from her hero’s point of view. She aims to rescue his reputation from biographical accounts that have come mostly from his enemies. Mithradates was much the most successful opponent of Roman superpower domination in the uncertain era before the success of Caesar and his heirs made opposition much harder. Mayor places her Poison King squarely in the tradition of the autocrats he claimed as his ancestors, Alexander of Macedon and Darius of Persia, representatives of an Eastern monarchic heritage which, it can be argued, was at least as legitimate and beneficial to its foreign subjects as any alternative offered by Republican Rome. She stresses the horrors wrought by Roman tax collectors on local populations and the requirement of this incipient imperialism that taxes should be ever more widely and brutally extorted. Her technique is to make full imaginative use both of her own broad knowledge and the often frail ancient source material. Thus, when a Roman general poisons a besieged town’s water supply, it seems almost right that his son be punished by a fatal mouthful of Mithradates’ molten gold in front of an invited theatrical audience. And when the king of Pontus deploys killer bees or tests arsenic varieties on a parade of prisoners, he seems to be acting partly as a desperate defender of his realms and, almost as much, as a medical pioneer of the Enlightenment. Mayor is author of “Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs” and an authority on the use of chemical and biological weapons in ancient times. Mithradates’ secret formula for long life, much sought after in later times, remains a mystery even now, but there is unlikely to be a more thorough weighing of the possibilities: The most practical message that this reviewer took away with him was “beware St. John’s wort,” a natural replacement for Prozac which, it seems, does stimulate resistance to toxins but does other bad things besides. There are fascinating pages too on the fate of slaves in arsenic mines, the use and sources of naphtha and the advantage to be gained from eating the testicles of bark-chewing beavers that had made an early discovery of aspirin. Mithradates, like many figures in ancient history who failed to win the celebrity status of a Caesar or Cleopatra, was better known a century ago than he is today. In the past 200 years he has enjoyed the attention of poets and playwrights and of opera librettists most of all: Racine liked the idea of a hero bringing Rome to its knees; Mozart luxuriated in the love rivalries of father and sons; there was the popular idea that the great escaper had cheated his Roman conquerors one last time and lived on beyond their triumphs to enjoy himself with his Amazon mistress; Wordsworth, in his own mood of anti-imperialism, imagined him siring the very Gothic heirs that eventually destroyed the empire of Rome; A.E. Housman left behind the best known testament, “I tell the tale that I heard told, Mithradates, he died old”; and Ralph Waldo Emerson also celebrated the seductive power of bad things that do good, “Hemlock for my sherbert cull me, And the prussic juice to lull me.” Mayor quotes a variety of those who, like her, found inspiration in the great king of Pontus. But her aim is more biographical than metaphysical, more to challenge our political preconceptions than problems of mortality or morality.
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By clxgid, January 23, 2010 at 6:42 am Link to this comment
When I scroll down to the bottom of Truthdig’s front page, and find gems like this, that is why I keep coming back.
Report thisBy truedigger3, January 17, 2010 at 2:56 pm Link to this comment
Re:By M Henri Day, January 16 at 2:53 pm #
I agree with you 100%.
Report thisBy prgill, January 17, 2010 at 5:54 am Link to this comment
M. Henri Day, good comments.
I have spent the day doing background reading on Lucius Cornellius Sulla simply because I couldn’t figure out who Mithridates was or why Pontus mattered. (Wikipedia lists some 30 different “Mithridates”). In a backhanded sort of way, I appreciate Stothard’s review for having piqued my interest.
That said, I would agree concerning the enduring interest in both the region and the period, and the disservice rendered by the editors of TruthDig in commissioning this particular reviewer to review this particular book.
Report thisBy johannes, January 17, 2010 at 3:43 am Link to this comment
To Alice de Tocqueville,
Nice old name, thank you, sometimes its very difficult to find the good words, you know who will give the good and just sentiment an your writing in English.
O La La, the Language de France is so full of fine sentimental, and précis words, in the English language you find most of the time one Saxon-Angles-Frisian word, and one Anglo- Normand word who means the same thing, makes it also an nice but difficult language.
The problem is the sentence structure, and some gram. pointless rules, who you find in all languages.
Well dear Alice, salutations, de France.
Report thisBy Alice de Tocqueville, January 17, 2010 at 1:15 am Link to this comment
Well, Johannes, if you don’t understand it, you aren’t the only one…but you have described it pretty beautifully.
Report thisBy LemuelG, January 16, 2010 at 3:13 pm Link to this comment
Hrmm, so it appears we have a book which is largely fictitious.
I damn-near crapped myself when I read about him using Salamanders and Beaver-testes as aphrodisiacs… LMFAO, where does the author find this stuff? Who publishes it?
Report thisBy M Henri Day, January 16, 2010 at 10:53 am Link to this comment
Peter Stothard, who boldly flaunts his political prejudices/ignorance, «Mithradates had many characteristics of the classic Eastern despot. He made extensive use of poisons for his political advantage—in lethal doses to his enemies ...» - does Mr Stothard really believe that Mithradates «Western» counterparts, the Roman emperors, were less willing to employ poisioning, or for that matter, massacres as a tool of statecraft ? - seems an apt choice to review a book by an author who, he admits, makes «full imaginative use both of her own broad knowledge and the often frail ancient source material». Whether likening Mithradates «to Osama bin Laden (a small-time Oriental with a big-time antipathy to the West and a mystical ability to avoid capture) or Saddam Hussein (a paranoid despot with a penchant for chemistry and theatrical murders whose enemies gave him too many chances)» is a conceit of the author of the book being reviewed, Adrienne Mayor, or that of Mr Stothard himself, if taken seriously it reveals a singular lack of knowledge of the historical figures concerned and if not is merely a tautology. The period and region at issue here - Southeastern Europe and Southwest Asia at a time corresponding to the latter days of the Roman Republic is of abiding interest, but Truthdig has done its readers no service by commissioning this reviewer to review this book….
Henri
Report thisBy johannes, January 16, 2010 at 4:18 am Link to this comment
To Gerard,
I do think that the ordinairy people did not created the Gods or the Religion, but that it started to be used as an so called danger warning, so as your mother did if you not behave the sint will not give you this an that, but you geth some with the roede.
And about slaves, as a young men, on highschool, we did do an research in our Europeên history about slavery, in principe all people where more or less slaves, but the humans who where sold and deported to the in that given time powerhouses, in the periode from 2000 bc to 1600ac, there are millions of humans as slaves sold, the most men or boys where castrated, the blond bleu eyed girls from the north where most in demand in small Asia.
So the slavery with black people from Africa was not the only one, humans where and are still an in expensive object, every where on this planet, and all religions have made their situation not bether, almost sure much bleeker.
Report thisSalutation, and thank you for your compliment.
By stcfarms, January 16, 2010 at 3:29 am Link to this comment
Religion has been the opiate of choice for millennia, it is the most insidious
scourge that man has ever faced. It has become so ingrained in the culture
because it is transmitted from parent to child, a nearly perfect way to ensure
that it is not questioned on a conceptual level. Man had better kill god, or god
will most assuredly kill man.
“We have met the enemy and he is us” Pogo
By gerard, January 15 at 10:48 pm #
As a result of feeling helpless. they will continue to create religions with gods
to make them feel protected if they just do this or that, say this or that, go
here or there regularly etc. Ritual masks all sorrows and promises a kind of
other-worldly “love” that provides what humans refuse to provide for each
other.
There have been great moments of beauty and light created by human beings
Report thisin the past who believed in themselves. The decision is ours.
By gerard, January 15, 2010 at 6:48 pm Link to this comment
The more horrors humans experience themselves, and the more horrors are reported to them in gruesome detail and without explanation of contexts, assumed
Report thisrationales, etc., the less they will believe in human compassion, and in their own power to reason and to act based on the fact that they inwardly know better than to repeat mistakes. (conscience)
As a result of feeling helpless. they will continue to create religions with gods to make them feel protected if they just do this or that, say this or that, go here or there regularly etc. Ritual masks all sorrows and promises a kind of other-worldly “love” that provides what humans refuse to provide for each other.
It is one bad thing to promise support and then fail to provide it. It is quite another to lead people into despair. Things are dangerously out of balance when all we can think about is how terrible everything has always been and still is.
There have been great moments of beauty and light created by human beings in the past who believed in themselves. The decision is ours.
By stcfarms, January 15, 2010 at 5:10 pm Link to this comment
It is a good thing that god does not exist as it would punish mankind
Report thisseverely. It is possible to escape the madness by living on the sea…
By johannes, January 15, 2010 at 3:53 am Link to this comment
It all started when the humans started to settle some where and domicilisation started in villages and lather on city’s, they could not move away, all they had was there, so they became slaves of the system and the strong crimilal so called leaders.
Its the same to day, dont bye a house just rent it, no money on the bank but some gold and diamonds, so you can move, dont make a slave of your self, do not fall in their traps, about capitalisation, thats not for the working people, if you own something, thats the hook where they catch you with.
The whole history of the humankind is full of black ” blood” holes, millions and millions where slaughterd and killed, and wiped out
again and again, every thing you see or may know is build on human blood, and with all that killing, all the love and tenderness that was in humans, was killed on the same moment, and it never stopped, to day its the same.
And beleef me its not based on a mistake, but it is all done out of psychopathic power seeking, by on human out of balans things, NO NO HUMANS, things.
If there is a God, a Pantocrator, he has to weep all day, if he sees what we the humankind have done with his creation, and how we tread the most beautifull creation the humans, and the planet, and the psyche the feeling the tenderness the soul of this all, well I must say I can not understand this all.
Report this