Mithridates IV: The Birth of an Empire Pt. I
Sima Tan’s son, Sima Qian, followed in his father’s footsteps and took a grand tour of the world for himself. He would summarize the people and places he saw in the Taishigong Shu. He noted that not much had changed in the last 70 years, other than the rise of Roma at the expense of the kingdoms of the Diadochi.
Pairisades had remained a loyal friend to Pontos through the reign of Pharnakes I and into Mithridates’s reign. But the man grew less cautious with his age. He was caught by a slave servant who saw him writing a letter to Mithridates about the whereabouts of the Antigonid army in Phrugia. The slave turned the information over to the nobility of Ankyra in exchange for his freedom. The 87 year old Pairisades was executed the next day without a trial.
Hearing news of the death of his good friend and close ally, Mithridates promised that Pairisades’s loyalty would not be wasted. Using the reports collected over the decades, Mithridates ordered the invasion of Antigonid Phrugia. Thus began the Anatole War.
Seleucid forces crushed the Antigonid defenses in Lukaonia and marched into Phrugia. They then mounted an assault of the city of Ankrya and although they were repelled, the city’s defenses were made ripe for the approaching Pontic army.
Mithridates’s army marched into the city with almost no resistance. Ankyra had mostly been abandoned after the near defeat of the city garrison to the Seleucids. Although the city’s population fell to nearly one thousand residents, refugees from the Phrugian countryside were already pouring in.
The army then moved into Vithynia to plunder the countryside. The great estates of the nobility were set ablaze and their slaves taken for Pontos. The nobility themselves were either killed or enslaved.
Seeing that Pontos was now on their side of the war, the Seleucid Vasileos Antiochos IV came to Mithridates asking to open trade between the two kingdoms. Mithridates gladly accepted the deal from his new ally.
A reconnaissance force sent to Ionia happened upon a group of Antigonid siege engineers in the hills of Karia. The engineers, with no other option, agreed to join Mithridates’s army and were sent to Ankyra.
Scouts spotted the main Antigonid army in the foothills of Pisidia led by the Vasileos Perseus. Siege engineers were spotted among the soldiers as well. Fearing a counterattack in Phrugia, Mithridates ordered all Pontic forces to retreat to Ankyra to regroup and face the Antigonids.
Antigonid forces marched towards Ankyra, destroying the salt mines of Lake Alas in the process, but the captured Antigonid siege engineers set a trap for the invaders. The engineers set up Oxybeles on a ridge overlooking the Antigonid camp near the lake. When night fell, hundreds of flaming bolts rained down on the camp, killing many and destroying much of the army’s supplies. After the attack, Perseus took his forces north and began to prepare to siege Ankyra.
As the Antigonid army marched north, Mithridates ordered a daring assault to disrupt Perseus’s plans to lay siege to Ankyra. Gallian mercenaries were hired to conduct a night raid on the army camp and either kill or capture the Antigonid siege engineers. Unfortunately, Perseus was able to rally his men and defeat the Gallians while only losing a few of his engineers. The army packed up the next morning and continued the march north.
The two armies were evenly matched until Pontic reinforcements arrived from Paphlagonia, doubling Mithridates’s numbers. Unaware of the arrival of fresh soldiers, Perseus attacked the city he had lost only six years ago. Perseus’s army of ten thousand was met with twenty thousand Uazali. His engineers also proved useless as Uazali flanked around the Antigonid ranks and destroyed the siege equipment. When Perseus realized the battle was lost, he drank a vial of poison and surrendered his men to the will of Mithridates. With the Vasileos dead and his son a mere child, the Antigonid Kingdom began to show signs of fracture.
The widow of Perseus, now regent, Laodike V tried to hold the kingdom together, but was unable to rally the army. With nobody standing in his way, Mithridates marched into the highlands of Karia, toward the grand Antigonid port of Ephesos.
As Mithridates and his army drew close to Ephesos, scouts began reporting back that the city was well garrisoned and the thick walls of the city would require a long siege.
Declaring himself Vasileos of the Antigonids, Perseus’s half-brother Philippos raised an army in Vithynia. He first tried to retake the old Antigonid capital of Ankyra, but the city’s Pontic garrison proved resilient. Philippos retreated from Pontic lands and began raiding villages in Antigonid Mysia. Laodike’s forces would eventually catch up to Philippos and defeat him and his army.
With Mithridates and the army in far off Ionia, Armenian immigrants in Taurike took the opportunity to revolt against Pontic rule. Although local forces eventually quelled the revolt, the Tauric countryside was ravaged by the fighting and the walls of Chersonesos were destroyed in a nearly successful assault by Armenian rebels. When those responsible for the revolt were captured, one of the main conspirators turned out to be a member of the Armenian court. He had been sent by Vasileos Artavasdes to lead an Armenian insurrection in hopes of securing Taurike for himself. Mithridates felt betrayed by his eastern friend and ordered that trade with the Armenian Kingdom cease at once. He was too busy fighting the Antigonids to get revenge on Artavasdes, but promised that their time would come.
After months of sieging the city, a hole had finally opened in the walls of Ephesos. Uazali poured into the gap, but were met with stiff resistance from the city’s garrison. After hours of fighting, the garrison surrendered and Mithridates paraded proudly through Ephesos.
After the capture of Ephesos, Mithridates sent his men to the Ionian countryside to pacify the region. The soldiers also seized many slaves from the landed Antigonid nobles of the region.
By the time Mithridates’s death, he had nearly doubled the size of the Pontic Kingdom. He had annexed Phrugia, Vithynia, Caria, Ionia, Aiolis, Lydia and Doris. Most importantly, he had secured a port on the Aigaion Sea so that the kingdom was no longer dependent on the Antigonid-controlled Bosporos for access to the Mesogeios.
After Ephesos was pacified, Mithridates accompanied a small invasion force to the island of Samos. The people of the island accepted Pontic rule and let the army enter without a fight. As Mithridates toured the town of Vathy on the island, a man in the crowd fired an arrow, striking the Vasileos in the head. Mithridates IV died immediately, he was 51 years old. The assassin was never found and the entire town was burned as punishment. Mithridates was unable to produce a viable heir from his marriage to his sister Laodike. The crown of Pontos therefore went to his nephew Mithridates V, son of Pharnakes I. Mithridates V was coronated in the month of Skirophorion in the 2nd year of the 157th Olympiad.
