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Of higher elements desire to advance civilization, earnest leadership of the national opposition, special gifts of genius there are found, in our traditional accounts at least, no distinct traces in Mithradates, and we have no reason to place him on a level even with the great rulers of the Osmans, such as Mohammed II and Suleiman.
The largesses of corn were, apparently about this time, materially abridged by decree of the people with a view to husband the financial resources of the state for the war; which was the more necessary, as, owing to the threatening attitude of king Mithradates, the province of Asia might at any moment fall into the hand of the enemy and thus one of the chief sources of the Roman revenue be dried up.
After the early death of his father Mithradates Euergetes, who fell by the hand of an assassin at Sinope, he had received the title of king about 634, when a boy of eleven years of age; but the diadem brought to him only trouble and danger. His guardians, and even as it would seem his own mother called to take a part in the government by his father's will, conspired against the boy-king's life.
Mithradates advanced into Pontus with 4000 Armenian horsemen and 4000 of his own, and as liberator and avenger summoned the nation to rise against the common foe.
Was it not better even at the risk of Mithradates once more throwing the torch of war into Asia Minor, to desist from a pursuit which promised so little gain and so many dangers?
Granting that during the death-struggle of the republic it was easier to offer resistance to Rome than in the times of Scipio or Trajan, and that it was only the complication of the Asiatic events with the internal commotions of Italy which rendered it possible for Mithradates to resist the Romans twice as long as Jugurtha did, it remains nevertheless true that before the Parthian wars he was the only enemy who gave serious trouble to the Romans in the east, and that he defended himself against them as the lion of the desert defends himself against the hunter.
The war with Mithradates brought the Roman army there again and also to another Comana in Pontus, where there was a branch of the Cappadocian cult.
Aufidius so far as to render the importation legal for the games of the Circus. Plutarch speaks of Sulla as immediately canvassing for the prætorship after his return to Rome. Ariobarzanes applied for help to the Romans, and he was restored by Sulla B.C. 92. The word Mithradates occurs in various shapes in the Greek writers; and it was a common name among the Medes and Persians.
But if Tigranes should now make peace, not only would Mithradates lose the last chance of being reinstated in his kingdom, but his surrender would be beyond doubt the first condition of peace; and certainly Tigranes would not have acted otherwise towards him than Bocchus had formerly acted towards Jugurtha.
In these regions ruled king Mithradates, and that first of all in Cappadocia on the Black Sea or Pontus as it was called, a district in which, situated as it was at the northeastern extremity of Asia Minor towards Armenia and in constant contact with the latter, the Iranian nationality presumably preserved itself with less admixture than anywhere else in Asia Minor.
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