The Mithridatic Wars were three conflicts fought between the Roman Republic and the Pontic kingdom of Mithridates VI Eupator. Fought across Greece and Asia Minor, the wars started in 88 BC and, while intermittent, only concluded with Mithridates' death in 63. The final settlement in 63 saw the Romans annex Pontus and Syria while also establishing a number of client kingdoms in Asia Minor.
Starting in 88 BC in the aftermath of the Asiatic Vespers, the first war was conducted by Lucius Cornelius Sulla, alongside and independent of Marian generals also assigned to the war. They were mainly in Greece and mostly concluded in 85 BC with the Treaty of Dardanos, expelling Mithridates from the Aegean and forcing him to give up occupied territories in western Asia Minor. The second conflict lasted a few years in the late 80s BC and ended inconclusively.
The third conflict started in 73 and only ended in 63 BC. Against Mithridates the main Roman commanders were Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Pompey. Invading Roman Asia to forestall the Roman inheritance of Bithynia, Roman successes by 69 had forced Mithridates to flee to Armenia; with the Armenians refusing to hand the Pontic king over and joining the war, Lucullus led an invasion of Armenia until 66 when he was replaced in command by Pompey. Pompey forced the Armenians to capitulate and invaded Syria but Mithridates fled to Crimea. There, facing a revolt by one of his sons, Mithridates killed himself.
Pompey's eastern settlements after the third war saw Rome annex Pontus (it became part of provincial Bithynia) and annex Syria. It also established a network of client kingdoms on the eastern Anatolian plateau partially from portions of the dismantled Armenian Empire. The two and a half decade effort had drawn Rome much more deeply into the eastern Mediterranean and committed it to a lasting presence. Provincial policy in Rome permanently shifted towards imperial exploitation, with large portions of Anatolia coming under Roman taxation for the first time, with the concomitant stationing of large garrisons to compel compliance with collections.
Background
The accession of Mithridates VI Eupator to the throne of the Pontic kingdom c. 113 BC in a coup saw him imprison his younger brother Chrestus and mother Laodice. The Romanophile policy of his father had secured for Pontus substantial territories in Phrygia but even though this alignment had continued through Laodice's rule as regent, Rome had stripped Pontus of those lands in 119 or 116. Ambitious but initially wary of Rome, Mithridates concentrated his efforts to his north and east (away from Roman territory), accepting hegemony over parts of Armenia and then campaigning across the Black Sea to take Crimea.
Roman attitudes towards Pontic expansion were initially indifferent. But after Mithridates, along with Nicomedes III of Bithynia, invaded and partitioned Paphlagonia in 108/7 BC the Romans sent envoys demanding them to give up their conquests; rebuffed, but without any mandate for Roman intervention, nothing was done. Also intervening in Cappadocia to install his son as Ariarathes IX c. 102 BC, Mithridates sent envoys to Rome seeking recognition of his conquests. Some in Rome reacted negatively: Lucius Appuleius Saturninus apparently insulted the Pontic envoys; Gaius Marius apparently nursed designs on Pontic territories. When Cappadocia revolted against Pontic rule c. 97 BC the Roman Senate heard conflicting evidence about the territory's inheritance and, dismissing his claims, forced Mithridates to withdraw from the kingdom by decree. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, propraetorian governor of Cilicia (dated by A N Sherwin-White to 94 BC), then installed Ariobarzanes I as king.
An alliance with Armenia from 96 or 95 BC, secured by marriage, strengthened Mithridates considerably in Asia Minor. With a weakened Bithynia in the aftermath of the death of Nicomedes III of Bithynia and Roman distraction by the revolt of their Italian allies, Mithridates overthrew the pro-Roman ruler of Cappadocia in 91 or 90 BC before expelling the Nicomedes' homonymous heir from the kingdom. The Senate demanded the restoration of both monarchs to Cappadocia; Mithridates, building up forces in Pontus and seeking alliances (or at least neutrality) from neighbouring eastern powers, eventually complied. But when the two restored monarchs were unable to pay for Roman support, the Roman commissioners under Manius Aquillius at their own initiative urged them to invade Pontus, misreading Mithridates' accessions to Roman demands as weakness. Mithridates responded by again driving Ariobarzanes out of Cappadocia and – after his envoy was arrested for delivering a veiled threat – declared war.
Wars
First war
In the summer of 89 BC Rome was still distracted fighting its Italian allies in the Social War. Mithridates for his part had occupied Cappadocia and, that year, extended his occupations to Phrygia, Bithynia, and parts of Ionia. Defeating the Roman garrisons of Asia under Aquillius, subduing their client kings, and overrunning the Roman province of Asia, he extended his control in early 88 to the western coast of Asia Minor. With the Senate and assemblies voting for war at Rome, he responded by perpetrating the Asiatic Vespers, having all Romans and Italians in the occupied territories (some 80,000) massacred en masse with their properties seized and split with the killers. The deaths of so many businessmen and the seizure of their properties caused a financial panic in Rome.
After unsuccessful sieges of Rhodes and Patara in Lycia, Mithridates was called to Athens: Aristion, elected commander-in-chief (Ancient Greek: strategos epi ton hoplon), allied with Mithridates to take the island Delos and offered naval support. Much of the rest of Greece also capitulated, including the Peloponnesian Achaeans and Spartans and most of Boeotia. Roman resistance centred on provincial Macedonia which was able to hold off Mithridates and his allies until proconsul Sulla appeared with his consular army.
Sulla appeared in Thessaly and marched south overland to Attica. In Boeotia he forced Thebes and other cities to again change sides. Arriving in Attica he invested Athens and the Athenian port Piraeus. Mithridates sent a large army along the northern Aegean through Macedonia to relieve Athens, but the city surrendered on 1 March 86 BC. Some weeks later the Pontic garrison at Piraeus boarded ships to join the Pontic army in Macedonia and the Athenian acropolis fell. Aristion and his followers were executed but the city at large was spared in recognition of its great antiquity. That summer two battles followed in Boeotia – those of Chaeronea and Orchomenus – which saw the Pontic forces obliterated by the Romans with, according to Sulla's memoirs, minimal Roman losses.
Roman forces were, however, not united. With the Cinnan regime in power at Rome, they assigned consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus with an army to take over command from Sulla, who refused to relinquish his, forcing the two Roman armies to operate essentially independently. With Mithridates expeditionary forces destroyed, Sulla offered terms: Pontic withdrawal from Roman Asia and Paphlagonia along with restoration of the pre-war monarchs in Bithynia and Cappadocia. Mithridates also was to hand over seventy or eighty ships and an indemnity of some two or three thousand talents. For his part Sulla would ensure Mithridates would henceforth be treated as a Roman ally. Flaccus' army, which killed him in favour of his legate Gaius Flavius Fimbria, continued east into Asia Minor with successes, almost capturing Mithridates at Pitane, before he escaped by the inaction of Sulla's quaestor Lucius Licinius Lucullus. Mithridates sued for peace with Sulla, meeting at Dardanus in the Dardanelles, in autumn 85 BC where he accepted Sulla's terms. Fimbria's army then surrendered to Sulla, with Fimbria killing himself shortly thereafter, and then served to garrison Asia while Sulla arranged a settlement.
The Treaty of Dardanos so reached was remarkably lenient on Mithridates. This was almost certainly because Sulla desired a free hand so that he could launch an invasion of Italy and destroy the Cinnan regime at Rome. Treatment of the Asian provincials was not so light-handed: with substantial increases in Roman revenues exacted from the defeated or unfaithful provincial communities. Harsh indemnities were also forced from the Asian cities, who for the time being paid Sulla.
The terms of the treaty with Mithridates were not at the time public, with Sulla unwilling to publicise what was essentially a withdrawal for convenience. Taking a long delay to avoid charges of neglecting Roman interests in the east, in spring 83 Sulla's armies boarded ships for Brundisium to start civil war. Even though Sulla was victorious in the civil war and his actions (including the proscriptions) were formally ratified by a cowed assembly after his victory over his fellow citizens in 82 BC, the Dardanus pact was not included.
Second war
Lucius Licinius Murena was propraetorian governor of Asia in 83 BC. In violation of the private peace concluded with Sulla, Murena attacked Mithridates that year on the basis that Mithridates was interfering in the restoration of Ariobarzanes to Cappadocia and preparing forces to resume an offensive against Rome. His operations in 83 BC largely proceeded without opposition, but during the last of three large raids into Pontic territory, Murena's forces were defeated in 82 with serious losses. The next year Aulus Gabinius arrived as envoy from Sulla to order him to cease hostilities; Gabinius also organised Mithridates' withdrawal from Cappadocia by means of a marriage pact, avoiding further fighting.
For his part, Murena celebrated a triumph over Mithridates at Rome in 81, which A N Sherwin-White in the Cambridge Ancient History calls "unearned". This award of a triumph may have been motivated by domestic concerns. Both Sulla and Murena triumphed over Mithridates in 81, suggesting that Sulla may have been attempting to paint Mithridates as subdued even when facts on the ground and the terms of his private peace with Pontus showed otherwise.
The events showed Roman policy under Sulla was largely non-expansionist, centred on retaining the existing international regime in Asia Minor with Mithridates suitably cowed as a client state. Opposition to this policy in the Senate and elsewhere is however evident: Murena was able to justify his war against Mithridates on the grounds that the Treaty of Dardanos was not anywhere written and therefore did not exist; the Senate, shortly after Sulla's death in 78 BC, refused to ratify it even though Mithridates pushed hard via intermediaries to secure its recognition.
Third war
The proximate cause of the third war was the Roman annexation of Bithynia in the aftermath of the death of its king, Nicomedes IV, with a will that in the absence of legitimate heirs left it to Rome. The Senate, ignoring the pleas of one of the royal bastards for rulership, instructed the Asian proconsul to take it as a province and, in expectation for war, reassigned the consuls of 74 (Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Marcus Aurelius Cotta) to the closest provinces: Lucullus received Asia and Cilicia while Cotta received Bithynia along with a fleet. Arguing that the failure to ratify the Dardanus peace (even if observed de facto) meant that the war still continued and responding to Mithridates' mobilisation, they departed for the east late in the year.
Lucullus' campaigns
Fighting started in the spring of 73 BC. While Lucullus intended to march overland through Phrygia and Galatia to Pontus, Mithridates struck first and invaded Bithynia, defeating Cotta in the Sea of Marmara near Chalcedon and besieging him there. Lucullus rushed to Cotta's relief while Mithridates besieged the large port city of Cyzicus. Investing Mithridates' forces already investing Cyzicus, Lucullus was able to prevent the Pontic army – poorly supplied by sea and vulnerable from land – from capturing the city and, with winter approaching, forced Mithridates to abandon the siege and withdraw east. Refusing battle, Lucullus' strategy preserved his entire army and compelled Mithridates into the less favourable strategy of fighting in central Asia Minor where Roman advantages were greatest.
The next year, 72 BC, Lucullus slowly marched into Pontus with the intention of allowing Mithridates to concentrate troops which could then be forced into a large decisive battle. With Roman successes at sea under Cotta, Lucullus engaged and destroyed Mithridates' cavalry near Cabira and placed Mithridates on the defensive. The Pontic king withdrew east towards mountainous Lesser Armenia under heavy Roman harassment, leading to most of the Pontic army being destroyed and Mithridates' flight for refuge with the Armenians. Lucullus then spent much of 71 and 70 BC completing his conquest of Pontus, sacking Sinope and Amisus, and occupying Lesser Armenia. Sending Appius Claudius Pulcher as envoy to Armenia in 71, Lucullus demanded Mithridates be surrendered; however, with Appius' rude and overbearing behaviour, the Armenians delayed and late in 71 or early in 70 BC announced their refusal.
Lucullus, likely expecting the war was over, had requested the standard senatorial commission to help settle affairs in the newly conquered territories. But on their arrival in late 70 or early 69 they had found him launching directly into Armenia. The conflict started without authorisation from Rome against a polity with whom the Romans had previously had no formal relations. Possibly concerned with the political risk, he sought a quick and decisive victory. He won one on 7 October at Tigranocerta but was unable to capitalise on it – both Tigranes and Mithridates disappeared into the mountains of northern Armenia – due to the onset of winter.