The Poison King - The Life and Legend of Mithradates, by Adrienne Mayor

Adrienne Mayor's rightfully acclaimed biography of Mithradates should appeal to a wide audience including classical scholars, archaeologists, folklorists, and military historians, of course, but also those tired of stories of ancient history told from the ubiquitous Roman perspective.

Mithradates was a real king, but his life was fantastic. He was a friend of Rome, but also her biggest enemy. He was so fabulously wealthy (possibly from deals with pirates) that he could repeatedly create armies, build siege engines, and fortresses, and then give away all his wealth to his followers. He traced his lineage to the Persians, but also to the Greeks, through Alexander the Great, who was one of his heroes and role models. Mithradates was a master poisoner who was himself immune. He was the well-educated master of a couple of dozen languages as well as a strong athlete. This is the endlessly fascinating man Adrienne Mayor breathes life into.

The Poison King begins with 5 chapters that include speculation about the early Mithradates, the significance of comets (like a Star of Bethlehem generations earlier), his possible education, the several-year self-imposed exile he and his best friends took to avoid assassination and get to know his subjects. (This followed the poisoning of Mithradates' father and takeover by his mother.) It is during this period that Mithradates fulfills most of the qualities that lead to his classification as a mythic hero, a point Mayor sets up in chapter two, but doesn't belabor in the biography proper, appropriately relegating more detail to the first appendix. Mayor says Mithradates gets higher marks than Jesus or Hercules.

Those are my favorite chapters. The introduction discusses the methods that must be used to flesh out the life of Mithradates. The second part, Chapters 6-15, the properly historical bulk of the biography, tells the sad tale of Rome's betrayals and bullying, leading ultimately to Mithradates' loss of his kingdom. Themes and threads from the first part are replayed in the second, dished out with enough detail that only a prior, general familiarity with Roman history is needed. The reader may find herself cheering the barbaric treatment of greedy Romans (molten gold down the gullet) and impressed by Mithradates ability to take a lesson from the Jugurthine War to mass murder Italians residing in Asia.

Although the bulk of the book (which describes in great detail the campaigns, shifts in power, and Mithradates' personal relationships) leads to the ineluctable defeat by Rome, Mayor doesn't end her biography of Mithradates on a decisively sad note. Instead, she offers an alternative possibility that is perfectly suited to such a brave, generous, fairy tale king.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. Also, the author credits this site.