Kingdom of Pontus

The Kingdom of Pontus was the Hellenistic kingdom of the Black Sea's southern shore, lasting from 281 to 63 BC. Its Mithridatic kings were Persians turned Greek: claiming descent from Darius the Great, ruling from Amaseia and later Sinope, speaking Greek in administration while keeping Persian blood and Anatolian gods. For two centuries Pontus grew fat on grain, timber and mines, quarrelling with Bithynia and Pergamum, until Mithridates VI the Great, the poison-proof king who dosed himself against assassins, swallowed Colchis, Cappadocia and the Crimea and seized Rome's Asian province in one massacre. Rome answered with three Mithridatic Wars. Sulla, Lucullus and finally Pompey ground the great king down across twenty-five years; abandoned by his armies and his son, Mithridates ordered his own death in 63 BC. Pompey annexed the kingdom, and the Black Sea that Greeks had called hospitable became a Roman lake, with only client princes keeping the Pontic name alive into imperial times.