Mithridates the Great by Philip Matyszak Read Free Book Online Page A

their attackers.
    The Galatians made use of the fact that they occupied some fine horse country, and were considerably better horsed than their compatriots in Europe. Because the horsemen tended to be from among the aristocracy, they were armoured, and usually carried sword and shield. In this they were similar to Cappadocian cavalry who seem to have been kitted out as were the average Greek horsemen, on unarmoured horses with riders wearing cuirass or mail, and carrying javelins and/or xyston (a kind of long thrusting spear). As will be seen, Mithridates expansion of his kingdom was to increase the variety of the cavalry arm even further.
    Finally, Mithridates seems to have been the first of his line to give serious consideration to a navy, although the raw material in the form of well-forested hillsides and Greek expertise had been available for decades. In part, Pontus had not needed a fleet, because the kingdom made a point of being friendly with the pirates who infested the coast of Crete, and more recently, Cilicia. Now, with mastery of the Black Sea in mind, Mithridates began to recruit shipbuilders. It might also have occurred to him that if the questions of Phrygia and Paphlagonia could not be amicably resolved, Pontus and the Romans were probably going to have a serious falling out at some point.
    Given that the Roman navy was as bad as the Roman army was good, and that the only practical way of getting an army to face Mithridates in Asia Minor was to bring it by sea, it would be a good idea to face the Romans on the water rather than on land. The problem was what to do about the Romans and their allies already in Asia Minor. From the later evidence, it appears that the young Mithridates spent a substantial part of his early reign considering this question.

Chapter 2
    Building a Kingdom
    The North and Northeast
    It would have been extraordinary if the young Mithridates had not given considerable thought before he came to power as to what sort of kingdom he wanted Pontus to be. He had before him the examples of his two immediate predecessors, the reign of his father and the regency of his mother. The foreign policy of both was based on friendship with Rome. Mithridates V had actively assisted the Romans during the rebellion of Aristonicus, and his mother had complacently acquiesced whilst Rome stripped the kingdom of the rewards it had received for that help. On the other hand, Pontus had kept its conquests to the east, and retained hegemony over Cappadocia – gains acquired without, and in the case of Cappadocia, despite, Rome. Mithridates seems to have drawn the obvious conclusion. Whilst enmity with Rome was unproductive, and possibly fatal, the friendship of Rome was not worth having either. A further example of this fact was the former kingdom of Pergamum, which had once been Rome’s most loyal ally in the region, and was now a Roman province being methodically raped by tax-collectors. 1
    Mithridates would also have noted that Rome was an aggressively expansionist power which had moved in less than two generations from the shores of Italy to those of Africa, Spain and Greece. There was nothing in Rome’s recent history to suggest it was going to stop there, and being too hard to conquer was the best defence that Pontus could have. In short, Mithridates seems to have concluded that Pontus had to get big, and become strong, or die. Such a policy would in any case have appealed to young Mithridates, who was refreshingly free from a victim mentality. His view appears to have been that the Romans were doing what he would have done in the same situation; the same, in fact, as he intended to do once he had budged the Romans from the picture. As the Romans themselves were later to note with a large degree of respect, Mithridates saw himself not as a victim of Rome but as a rival for mastery; certainly in Asia Minor, and after that, who knows?
    Yet the question remained. If Pontus was going to build itself an