Mithridates I of Pontus
Mithridates I of Pontus, whom the Greeks called Ctistes, the Founder, was a Persian noble who escaped the wars of Alexander's successors with six horsemen, took a fortress in the hills of Paphlagonia, held the Black Sea coast of Anatolia against everyone who came, and in 281 BC, the year the last of Alexander's generals died, put on the diadem and became the first king of the state that his descendant Mithridates VI would fight Rome with for a quarter of a century. He was the son of a Persian dynast of Cius on the Propontis, one of a family that had governed the region for the Great Kings and had gone on governing it for the Macedonians. His father was put to death by Antigonus the One-Eyed in 302 on suspicion of dealing with Cassander, and the son, warned by Antigonus's own heir Demetrius, who was his friend, fled east with a handful of followers and took Cimiata, a stronghold on the slopes of Mount Olgassys. Plutarch tells the story in the life of Demetrius: Antigonus had dreamed of a field of gold sown and reaped by Mithridates, and Demetrius, sworn to silence, wrote in the sand with his spear the words fly, Mithridates. From Cimiata he took the Greek city of Amastris and the country round it and the coast as far as Amisus, while Lysimachus and Seleucus were busy destroying each other. When both were dead in 281 he took the title of king. He held it against the Seleucids with the help of the Gauls who had just crossed into Asia, beating a Ptolemaic force sent against him, and gave them land in exchange. The kingdom was Persian in its cult and its aristocracy and Greek in its coinage and its cities, and its kings were named Mithridates and Pharnaces in alternation for two hundred years. He reigned thirty-six years counting from his flight and died about 266. His tomb was cut in the rock at Amasia, the first capital, where the tombs of his successors are still to be seen above the river.
- Lived: 349 BCE – 266 BCE
- Nationality: Persian
- Roles: king, monarch, founder
