The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus

The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus
Author: B. C. McGing
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 218
Release: 1986
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789004075917

This book is about the clash of the Hellenistic world with the Romans, about a late Hellenistic king, a dominant figure of the first century B.C., who refused to accept his inclusion in the Roman sphere of control, and attempted to assert his political independence. A subsidiary theme is the espousal of hellenism by a non-Greek dynasty. The work examines first the early history of Pontus, and then analyses carefully the events of Mithridates Eupator's reign for what they reveal of his foreign policy. Attention is focused on diplomacy, strategy, propaganda, support, rather than on military details. There is no substantial study of Mithridates in English, and really only one in any language - Reinach's famous work of 1890. Since then, new inscriptions and coins have come to light, new methods and approaches devised. This book is intended as a contribution to the filling of a large scholarly gap.

The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus

The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus
Author: B.C. McGing
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2018-07-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004328246

This book is about the clash of the Hellenistic world with the Romans, about a late Hellenistic king, a dominant figure of the first century B.C., who refused to accept his inclusion in the Roman sphere of control, and attempted to assert his political independence. A subsidiary theme is the espousal of hellenism by a non-Greek dynasty. The work examines first the early history of Pontus, and then analyses carefully the events of Mithridates Eupator's reign for what they reveal of his foreign policy. Attention is focused on diplomacy, strategy, propaganda, support, rather than on military details. There is no substantial study of Mithridates in English, and really only one in any language - Reinach's famous work of 1890. Since then, new inscriptions and coins have come to light, new methods and approaches devised. This book is intended as a contribution to the filling of a large scholarly gap.

Mithridates VI and the Pontic Kingdom

Mithridates VI and the Pontic Kingdom
Author: Jakob Munk Hojte
Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2009-06-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 8779346553

Mithridates VI Eupator, the last king of Pontos, was undoubtedly one of the most prominent figures in the late Hellenistic period. Throughout his long reign (120-63 BC), the political and cultural landscape of Asia Minor and the Black Sea area was reshaped along new lines. The authors present new archaeological research and new interpretations of various aspects of Pontic society and its contacts with the Greek world and its eastern neighbours and investigate the background for the expansion of the Pontic Kingdom that eventually led to the confrontation with Rome.

Book Three of the Sibylline Oracles and Its Social Setting

Book Three of the Sibylline Oracles and Its Social Setting
Author: Rieuwerd Buitenwerf
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9789004128613

This volume contains a detailed study of the third Sibylline book. This Jewish work was written sometime between 80 and 40 BCE in Asia Minor. It provides valuable information on the position and self-image of Jews in a non-Jewish, Graeco-Roman environment.

End of the Roman Republic 146 to 44 BC

End of the Roman Republic 146 to 44 BC
Author: Catherine Steel
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0748629025

In 146 BC the armies of Rome destroyed Carthage and emerged as the decisive victors of the Third Punic War. The Carthaginian population was sold and its territory became the Roman province of Africa. In the same year and on the other side of the Mediterranean Roman troops sacked Corinth, the final blow in the defeat of the Achaean conspiracy: thereafter Greece was effectively administered by Rome. Rome was now supreme in Italy, the Balkans, Greece, Macedonia, Sicily, and North Africa, and its power and influence were advancing in all directions. However, not all was well. The unchecked seizure of huge tracts of land in Italy and its farming by vast numbers of newly imported slaves allowed an elite of usually absentee landlords to amass enormous and conspicuous fortunes. Insecurity and resentment fed the gulf between rich and poor in Rome and erupted in a series of violent upheavals in the politics and institutions of the Republic. These were exacerbated by slave revolts and invasions from the east.

Short-term Empires in World History

Short-term Empires in World History
Author: Robert Rollinger
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2020-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 3658294353

The volume will focus on a comparative level on a specific group of states that are commonly labelled as “empires” and that we encounter through all historical periods. Although they are very successful at the very beginning, like most empires are, this success is very ephemeral and transient. The era of conquest is never followed by a period of consolidation. Collapse and/or reduction to much smaller dimension run as fast as the process of wide-ranging conquest and expansion. The volume singles out a series of such “short-term empires” and aims to provide a methodologically clearly structured as well as a uniform and consistent approach by developing a general set of questions that guarantee the possibility to compare and distinguish. This way it intends to examine not only already well established empires but also to illuminate forgotten ones.

The Cleopatras

The Cleopatras
Author: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2024-05-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1541602935

The definitive story of the seven Cleopatras, the powerful goddess-queens of ancient Egypt One of history’s most iconic figures, Cleopatra is rightly remembered as a clever and charismatic ruler. But few today realize that she was the last in a long line of Egyptian queens who bore that name. In The Cleopatras, historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones tells the dramatic story of these seven incomparable women, vividly recapturing the lost world of Hellenistic Egypt and tracing the kingdom’s final centuries before its fall to Rome. The Cleopatras were Greek-speaking descendants of Ptolemy, the general who conquered Egypt alongside Alexander the Great. They were closely related as mothers, daughters, sisters, half-sisters, and nieces. Each wielded absolute power, easily overshadowing their husbands or sons, and all proved to be shrewd and capable leaders. Styling themselves as goddess-queens, the Cleopatras ruled through the canny deployment of arcane rituals, opulent spectacles, and unparalleled wealth. They navigated political turmoil and court intrigues, led armies into battle and commanded fleets of ships, and ruthlessly dispatched their dynastic rivals. The Cleopatras is a fascinating and richly textured biography of seven extraordinary women, restoring these queens to their deserved place among history’s greatest rulers.

Empire of the Black Sea

Empire of the Black Sea
Author: Duane W. Roller
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2020
Genre: HISTORY
ISBN: 0190887842

What is commonly called the kingdom of Pontos flourished for over two hundred years in the coastal regions of the Black Sea. At its peak in the early first century BC, it included much of the southern, eastern, and northern littoral, becoming one of the most important Hellenistic dynasties not founded by a successor of Alexander the Great. It also posed one of the greatest challenges to Roman imperial expansion in the east. Not until 63 BC, after many violent clashes, was Rome able to subjugate the kingdom and its last charismatic ruler Mithridates VI. This book provides a general history of this important kingdom from its mythic origins in Greek literature (e.g., Jason and the Golden Fleece) to its entanglements with the late republic of Rome. Roller discusses its rulers as well as the Romans and others who interacted with them and opposed them. He addresses social and cultural issues, including the attitude of the traditional Greek states and other eastern kingdoms, economic issues such as depopulation and land exhaustion, and--especially in the latter years of the dynasty--the changing and indeed endless internal problems in Rome itself that would come to drive or even overpower events in the field. Previous histories of this era are varied in their focus and quality. Needless to say, much of the interest has been directed to the final and most famous member of the dynasty, Mithridates VI (120-63 BC); this book explores the entire kingdom and its rich history. Empire of the Black Sea is an engaging and accessible history of a forgotten reign.

Violence in the Forum

Violence in the Forum
Author: Natale Barca
Publisher: Casemate
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2024-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1636244483

Weaves together the military, political, and social aspects of this tumultuous period of Roman history. “The entry of daggers into the Forum” is an expression that identifies two precise historical moments: when two tribunes of the plebs—brothers Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Caius Sempronius Gracchus—were murdered in Rome in 133 and 122 BC amidst bloody riots. These deaths and subsequent events marked the rupture of the constitutional order in the Roman Republic and the beginning of a political crisis. Thus began a political process that would lead, over the span of three generations, to the end of the res publica, a transition of endless violence, ransacking, and destruction, including three bitter and bloody civil wars. Internal politics in Rome in this period was fueled by social conflict, the confrontation between two political alignments—the Optimates and the Populares—each headed by an eminent figure and was characterized by sectarianism and (factional) intolerance. It was characterized by speeches delivered in the Senate, in the streets, and in the courts with solemnity and intensity but equally by the daggers that flashed in the hands of conspirators and assassins; by street riots, with thousands of victims; by real or alleged coups d’état, with ferocious mass repressions; by summary executions; by victims abandoned to the fury of the mob; of widespread civil wars whose battles intertwined with those against enemies abroad; manhunts, horrendous crimes; the system of legalized killings that aimed at the annihilation of political opponents known as proscriptions; corruption; and brutal and mass killings. This book discusses this tumultuous period in Rome between 133 and 78 BC, covering the plots of the Senate of Rome against the Gracchi and their violent ends, the mysterious death of Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, destroyer of Carthage and of Numantia, the ferocious lynching of Lucius Apuleius Saturninus, the seditious tribune of the plebs, the civil war between Marius and Sulla, including the siege and capitulation of Rome and Marius’ reign of terror, ending with the definitive victory and proscriptions of Sulla.

Rome's Great Eastern War

Rome's Great Eastern War
Author: Gareth C. Sampson
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2021-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526762692

This military history of Ancient Rome analyses the empire’s revitalized push against rising enemies to the East. In the century since Rome’s defeat of the Seleucid Empire in the 180s BC, the East was dominated by the rise of new empires: Parthia, Armenia, and Pontus, each vying to recreate the glories of the Persian Empire. By the 80s BC, the Pontic Empire of Mithridates had grown so bold that it invaded and annexed the whole of Rome’s eastern empire and occupied Greece itself. But as Rome emerged from the devastating effects of the First Civil War, a new breed of general emerged with it, eager to re-assert Roman military dominance and carve out a fresh empire in the east. In Rome’s Great Eastern War, Gareth C. Sampson analyses the military campaigns and battles between a revitalized Rome and the various powers of the eastern Mediterranean hinterland. He demonstrates how this series of conflicts ultimately heralded a new phase in Roman imperial expansion and reshaped the ancient East.