Mithridates the Great Read Free Page B

ancient city at Yerevan and called it Artaxata, after the custom of rulers to name after themselves cities they founded or totally rebuilt.
    Like the Parthians, the Armenians determined to make the most of the fluid political situation, and adopted an expansionist stance, snapping up weaker border states, and expanding northward and westward along the eastern shore of the Black Sea. However, once the Parthian King Mithridates II (also known as Arsaces IX ) , had finished mopping up resistance in Mesopotamia, he led his forces against Armenia. He defeated the current king, Artavasdes I, and took as a hostage his young son Tigranes, the man who was later to be known to history as Tigranes the Great. The Parthians seem to have been content to rule mainly by proxy, and Armenia remained a quasi–independent state, ready to expand once more as soon as the time seemed right.
    Asia Minor
    This then, was the world that the father of Mithridates knew. In the middle of that world was the great mass of Asia Minor, thrusting over the northern Mediterranean to divide it from the Black Sea. S urrounded by water on three sides, Asia Minor was a world in itself, containing widely varied geographical features, micro–climates, and diverse peoples; from the sophisticated and Hellenized kingdoms in the west, to the mountainous princedoms abutting Armenia in the east. Diverse as it was (the sources tell us that twenty–two languages were spoken in Pontus alone), Asia Minor had been settled and civilized, home of the Hittite civilization, long before the Greeks fought before the walls of Troy. Indeed, it was here, the ancient sources tell us, that the first iron swords were forged.
    Both history and geography had combined to prevent Asia Minor from becoming a single political or ethnic unit. The major feature of the land massis a huge upland plateau that dominates the interior. Here the winters are harsh and the rivers are few. Water is found in brackish pools, and most peasant farmers content themselves with a pastoral existence with herds of sheep, goats, and occasional cattle. During the opening years of the third century, a tribe of Gauls had forced their way into the region. They had fought a bruising series of campaigns against the armies of various states but these had stubbornly refused to be parted from their desirable lands. Therefore, after pinballing from one kingdom to another, the Gauls finally ensconced themselves on the upland plateau, from where none of the neighbours considered it worthwhile to force them off. These peoples were known as the Galatians, the same people to whom St Paul was to write his biblical epistle two centuries later.
    At this time, the Galatians were divided into groups called tetrarchies, though there were often more than four leaders of the nation, which was itself divided into three tribes. Whilst they maintained a lively series of internecine wars among themselves (as was generally the case), the Galatians were incapable of being more than a general nuisance to the neighbours. However, when they did manage to pull together for more than a few months the Galatians could become a menace serious enough to require a major military response. Fortunately the poverty of their upland home meant that Galatians were always ready to accept employment as mercenaries, even if the job entailed keeping their fellow countrymen on the right side of the border.
    South and east of Galatia, perched on the edge of the Anatolian plateau, was the kingdom of Cappadocia. Cappadocia was a relatively poor land, cut off from the northern Mediterranean by the mountains of Cilicia, and with the powerful and predatory kingdom of Armenia to the east. Before the plains in the west dried out into the barren fastnesses of Lycaonia, the land supported the herds of horses which were the basis of Cappadocia’s famed cavalry. There were no real cities in Cappadocia as the Greeks would understand the term. Instead there were villages of