Mithridates VI of Pontus

Mithridates VI of Pontus was a powerful Hellenistic king and long-term enemy of Rome. His wars against Roman expansion in Asia Minor and Greece made him one of the Republic’s most formidable eastern opponents.

In Michael Curtis Ford’s The Last King, Pharnaces narrates the rise of his father Mithridates VI, who inherits Pontus as a child and survives court intrigue before seizing personal control of the kingdom. Colleen McCullough’s The Grass Crown places Mithridates VI of Pontus within a narrative shaped by political ambition and government, court politics and dynastic power, and social change and the pressures of ordinary life. Other novels featuring Mithridates VI of Pontus include Steven Saylor’s Wrath of the Furies and Vincent B. Davis II’s While Rome Burned.