Amisos Time of Mithradates VI 119BC Ancient Greek Coin Nike Gorgon i30065

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Greek city of Amisos in Asia Minor

Bronze 19mm (7.14 grams) Time of Mithradates VI, circa 119-63 B.C.

Reference: Sear 3642; B.M.C. 13. 20,74
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Amisos was a flourishing Greek city on the Black Sea coast

commanding an important trade route to the south, Amisos was founded in the 6th

century B.C. It was re-settled by Athenians in the following century and they

renamed the place Peiraeus.

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Mithridates VI or Mithradates VI (Greek:
Μιθραδάτης), from Old Persian
Mithradatha, “gift of
Mithra
“; 134 BC – 63 BC, also known as
Mithradates the Great (Megas) and Eupator Dionysius, was king
of
Pontus
and
Armenia Minor
in northern
Anatolia
(now
Turkey
) from about 120 BC to 63 BC. Mithridates
is remembered as one of the
Roman Republic
’s most formidable and successful
enemies, who engaged three of the prominent generals from the late Roman
Republic in the
Mithridatic Wars
:
Lucius Cornelius Sulla
,
Lucullus
and
Pompey
.

Ancestry,
family and early life

Mithridates was a prince of
Persian
and
Greek Macedonian ancestry
. He claimed descent
from King
Darius I of Persia
and was descended from the
generals of
Alexander the Great
and later kings:
Antigonus I Monophthalmus
,
Seleucus I Nicator
and
Regent
,
Antipater
. Mithridates was born in the Pontic
city of
Sinope
,^[2]
and was raised in the
Kingdom of Pontus
. He was the first son and
among the children born to
Laodice VI
and
Mithridates V of Pontus
(reigned 150–120 BC).
His parents were distant relatives and had lineage from the
Seleucid Dynasty
. His father, Mithridates V,
was a prince and the son of the former Pontic Monarchs
Pharnaces I of Pontus
and his wife-cousin
Nysa
. His mother, Laodice VI, was a Seleucid
Princess and the daughter of the Seleucid Monarchs
Antiochus IV Epiphanes
and his wife-sister
Laodice IV
.

Mithridates V was assassinated in about 120 BC in
Sinope
, poisoned by unknown persons at a lavish
banquet which he held.^[3]
In the will of Mithridates V, he left the Kingdom to the joint rule of Laodice
VI, Mithridates and his younger brother,
Mithridates Chrestus
. Mithridates and his
younger brother were both under aged to rule and their mother retained all power
as regent.^[4]
Laodice VI’s regency over Pontus was from 120 BC to 116 BC (even perhaps up to
113 BC) and favored Mithridates Chrestus over Mithridates. During his mother’s
regency, he had escaped from the plotting of his mother and had gone into
hiding.

Mithridates between 116 BC and 113 BC returned to Pontus from hiding and was
hailed King. He was able to remove his mother and his brother from the Pontic
throne, thus becoming the sole ruler of Pontus. Mithridates showed clemency
towards his mother and brother, imprisoning them both.^[5]
Laodice VI died in prison of natural causes. However, Mithridates Chrestus could
have died in prison from natural causes or was tried for treason and was
executed on his orders.^[5]
When they died, Mithridates gave his mother and brother a royal funeral.^[6]
Mithridates married his first young sister
Laodice
.^[7]
Laodice was 16 years old and was her brother’s first wife. Mithridates married
Laodice to preserve the purity of their blood-line, as a wife to rule with him
as a sovereign over Pontus, to ensure the succession to his legitimate children,
and to claim his right as a ruling monarch.

Mithridates entertained ambitions of making his state the dominant power in
the Black Sea
and
Anatolia
. After he subjugated
Colchis
, the king of Pontus clashed for
supremacy in the
Pontic steppe
with the
Scythian
King
Palacus
. The most important centres of
Crimea
,
Tauric Chersonesus
and the
Bosporan Kingdom
readily surrendered their
independence in return for Mithridates’ promises to protect them against the
Scythians, their ancient enemies. After several abortive attempts to invade the
Crimea, the Scythians and the allied
Rhoxolanoi
suffered heavy losses at the hands
of the Pontic general
Diophantus
and accepted Mithridates as their
overlord. The young king then turned his attention to Anatolia, where Roman
power was on the rise. He contrived to partition
Paphlagonia
and
Galatia
with King
Nicomedes III of Bithynia
. It soon became clear
to Mithridates that Nicomedes was steering his country into an anti-Pontic
alliance with the expanding Roman Republic. When Mithridates fell out with
Nicomedes over control of
Cappadocia
, and defeated him in a series of
battles, the latter was constrained to openly enlist the assistance of Rome. The
Romans twice interfered in the conflict on behalf of Nicomedes (92–95 BC),
leaving Mithridates, should he wish to continue the expansion of his kingdom,
with little choice other than to engage in a future Roman-Pontic war.

Mithridatic Wars

The next ruler of Bithynia,
a title=”Nicomedes IV of Bithynia” href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomedes_IV_of_Bithynia”>
Nicomedes IV of Bithynia, was a figurehead
manipulated by the Romans. Mithridates plotted to overthrow him, but his
attempts failed and Nicomedes IV, instigated by his Roman advisors, declared war
on Pontus. Rome itself was involved in the
Social War
, a civil war with its Italian
allies. Thus, in all of Roman Asia Province there were only two legions present
in Macedonia. These legions combined with Nicomedes IV’s army to invade
Mithridates’ kingdom of Pontus in 89 BC. Mithridates, however, won a decisive
victory, scattering the Roman-led forces. His victorious forces were welcomed
throughout Anatolia. The following year, 88 BC, Mithridates orchestrated a
massacre of Roman and Italian settlers remaining in several Anatolian cities,
essentially wiping out the Roman presence in the region.^[8]
The Kingdom of Pontus comprised a mixed population in its
Ionian Greek
and Anatolian cities. The royal
family moved the capital from
Amasya
to the Greek city of
Sinope
. Its rulers tried to fully assimilate
the potential of their subjects by showing a Greek face to the Greek world and
an Iranian/Anatolian face to the Eastern world. Whenever the gap between the
rulers and their Anatolian subjects became greater, they would put emphasis on
their Persian origins. In this manner, the royal propaganda claimed heritage
both from Persian and Greek rulers, including
Cyrus the Great
,
Darius I of Persia
,
Alexander the Great
and
Seleucus I Nicator
.^[9]
Mithridates too posed as the champion of
Hellenism
, but this was mainly to further his
political ambitions; it is no proof that he felt a mission to promote its
extension within his domains.^[10]
Whatever his true intentions, the Greek cities (including
Athens
) defected to the side of Mithridates and
welcomed his armies in mainland Greece, while his fleet besieged the Romans at
Rhodes
. Neighboring King of Armenia
Tigranes the Great
, established an alliance
with Mithridates and married one of Mithridates’ daughters,
Cleopatra of Pontus
. They would support each
other in the coming conflict with Rome.^[11]

After conquering western
Anatolia
in 88 BC, Mithridates’ turned to
combating increasing Roman power in Anatolia. Tapping into local discontent with
the Romans and their taxes he orchestrated the murder of 80,000 Roman, Italian
and other foreigners in
Asia Minor
in an incident known as the
Asiatic Vespers
.^[12][13]
The Romans responded by organising a large invasion force to defeat him and
remove him from power.

The
a title=”First Mithridatic War” href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Mithridatic_War”>
First Mithridatic War, fought between 88 BC and
84 BC, saw
Lucius Cornelius Sulla
force Mithridates VI out
of Greece proper. After victory in several battles, Sulla received news of
trouble back in Rome posed by his enemy
Gaius Marius
and hurriedly concluded peace
talks with Mithridates. As Sulla returned to
Italy

Lucius Licinius Murena
was left in charge of
Roman forces in Anatolia. The lenient peace treaty, which was never ratified by
the Senate, allowed Mithridates VI to recoup his forces. Murena attacked
Mithridates in 83 BC, provoking the
Second Mithridatic War
from 83 BC to 81 BC.
Mithridates scored a victory over Murena’s green forces before peace was again
declared by treaty.

When Rome attempted to annex Bithynia (bequested to Rome by its last king)
nearly a decade later, Mithridates VI attacked with an even larger army, leading
to the
Third Mithridatic War
from 73 BC to 63 BC.
First Lucullus
and then
Pompey
were sent against Mithridates VI, who
surged back to retake his kingdom of Pontus, but was at last defeated by Pompey.
After his defeat by Pompey in 63 BC, Mithridates VI fled with a small army from
Colchis (modern Georgia) over the Caucasus Mountains to
Crimea
and made plans to raise yet another army
to take on the Romans. His eldest living son,
Machares
, viceroy of Cimmerian Bosporus, was
unwilling to aid his father. Mithridates had Machares killed, and Mithridates
took the throne of the
Bosporan Kingdom
. Mithridates then ordered the
conscriptions and preparations for war. In 63 BC,
Pharnaces II of Pontus
, one of his sons, led a
rebellion against his father, joined by Roman exiles in the core of Mithridates’
Pontic army. Mithridates withdrew to the citadel in
Panticapaeum
, where he committed suicide.
Pompey buried Mithridates in the rock-cut tombs of his ancestors in Amasya, the
old capital of Pontus
.

 Assassination conspiracy

During the time of the First Mithridatic War, a group of Mithridates’ friends
plotted to kill him. These
intimates
were Mynnio and Philotimus of Smyrna,
Clisthenes and
Asclepiodotus of Lesbos
. Asclepiodotus changed
his mind and became an
informant
. He arranged to have Mithridates hide
under a couch to hear the plot against him. The other
conspirators
were
tortured
and
executed
.^[14]

Propaganda

Where his ancestors pursued
philhellenism
as a means of attaining
respectability and prestige among the Hellenistic kingdoms, Mithridates VI made
use of Hellenism as a political tool. As protector of Greek cities on the Black
Sea and in Asia against barbarism, Mithridates VI logically became protector of
Greece and Greek culture, and would use this stance in his clashes with Rome.^[15]
Strabo mentions that Chersonesus buckled under the pressure of the barbarians
and asked Mithridates VI to become its protector (7.4.3. c.308). The most
impressive symbol of Mithridates VI’s approbation with Greece (Athens in
particular) appears at
Delos
: a
heroon
dedicated to the Pontic king in 102/1 by
the Athenian Helianax, a priest of Poseidon Aisios.^[15]
A dedication at Delos
, by Dicaeus, a priest of
Sarapis
, was made in 94/93 BC on behalf of the
Athenians, Romans, and “King Mithridates Eupator Dionysus.”^[15]
Greek styles mixed with Persian elements also abound on official Pontic
coins
– Perseus was favored as an intermediary
between both worlds, East and West.^[15]
Certainly influenced by
Alexander the Great
, Mithridates VI extended
his propaganda from “defender” of Greece to the “great liberator” of the Greek
world as war with
Roman Republic
became inevitable. The Romans
were easily translated into “barbarians”, in the same sense as the
Persian Empire
during the
war with Persia
in the first half of the 5th
century BC and during Alexander’s campaign. How many Greeks genuinely bought
into this claim will never be known. It served its purpose, however. At least
partially because of it, Mithridates VI was able to fight the
First War with Rome
on Greek soil, and maintain
the allegiance of Greece.^[15]
His campaign for the allegiance of the Greeks was aided in no small part by his
enemy Sulla, who allowed his troops to
sack the city of Delphi
and plunder many of the
city’s most famous treasures to help finance his military expenses.

Death

When Mithridates VI was at last defeated by Pompey and in danger of capture
by Rome, he is alleged to have attempted
suicide
by poison; this attempt failed,
however, because of his immunity to the poison.^[16]
According to Appian’s Roman History, he then requested his Gaul bodyguard
and friend, Bituitus, to kill him by the sword:

Mithridates then took out some poison that he always carried next to
his sword, and mixed it. There two of his daughters, who were still girls
growing up together, named Mithridates and Nysa, who had been betrothed to
the kings of [Ptolemaic] Egypt and of Cyprus, asked him to let them have
some of the poison first, and insisted strenuously and prevented him from
drinking it until they had taken some and swallowed it. The drug took effect
on them at once; but upon Mithridates, although he walked around rapidly to
hasten its action, it had no effect, because he had accustomed himself to
other drugs by continually trying them as a means of protection against
poisoners. These are still called the Mithridatic drugs.

Seeing a certain Bituitus there, an officer of the Gauls, he said to
him, “I have profited much from your right arm against my enemies. I shall
profit from it most of all if you will kill me, and save from the danger of
being led in a Roman triumph one who has been an autocrat so many years, and
the ruler of so great a kingdom, but who is now unable to die by poison
because, like a fool, he has fortified himself against the poison of others.
Although I have kept watch and ward against all the poisons that one takes
with his food, I have not provided against that domestic poison, always the
most dangerous to kings, the treachery of army, children, and friends.”
Bituitus, thus appealed to, rendered the king the service that he desired.^[17]
(XVI, §111)

Cassius Dio
Roman History, on the other
hand, records his death as murder:

Mithridates had tried to make away with himself, and after first
removing his wives and remaining children by poison, he had swallowed all
that was left; yet neither by that means nor by the sword was he able to
perish by his own hands. For the poison, although deadly, did not prevail
over him, since he had inured his constitution to it, taking precautionary
antidotes in large doses every day; and the force of the sword blow was
lessened on account of the weakness of his hand, caused by his age and
present misfortunes, and as a result of taking the poison, whatever it was.
When, therefore, he failed to take his life through his own efforts and
seemed to linger beyond the proper time, those whom he had sent against his
son fell upon him and hastened his end with their swords and spears. Thus
Mithridates, who had experienced the most varied and remarkable fortune, had
not even an ordinary end to his life. For he desired to die, albeit
unwillingly, and though eager to kill himself was unable to do so; but
partly by poison and partly by the sword he was at once self-slain and
murdered by his foes.^[18]
(Book 37, chapter 13)

At the behest of Pompey, Mithridates’ body was later buried alongside his
ancestors (in Sinope, Book 37, chapter 14).
Mount Mithridat
in the central
Kerch
and the town of
Yevpatoria
in Crimea commemorate his name.

Mithridates’ antidote

In his youth, after the assassination of his father Mithridates V in 120 BC,
Mithridates is said to have lived in the wilderness for seven years, inuring
himself to hardship. While there, and after his accession, he cultivated an
immunity to poisons by regularly ingesting sub-lethal doses of the same.^[15]
He invented a complex ‘universal antidote’ against poisoning; several versions
are described in the literature.
Aulus Cornelius Celsus
gives one in his
De Medicina
and names it Antidotum
Mithridaticum, whence English
mithridate
.

^[19]
Pliny the Elder’s version comprised
54 ingredients to be placed in a flask and matured for at least two months.
After Mithridates’ death in 63 BC, many imperial Roman physicians claimed to
possess and improve on the original formula, which they touted as Mithradatium.
In keeping with most medical practices of his era, Mithridates’ anti-poison
routines included a religious component; they were supervised by the Agari,
a group of Scythian
shamans
who never left him. Mithridates was
reportedly guarded in his sleep by a horse, a bull, and a stag, which would
whinny, bellow, and bleat whenever anyone approached the royal bed.^[20]

Mithridates as
polyglot

In
Pliny the Elder
‘s account of famous
polyglots
, Mithridates could
speak the languages of all
the twenty-two
nations he governed.^[21]
This reputation led to the use of Mithridates’ name as title in some later works
on comparative linguistics, such as
Conrad Gessner
‘s Mithridates de differentis
linguis, (1555), and Adelung and Vater’s Mithridates oder allgemeine
Sprachenkunde (1806–1817).^[22]

Wives,
mistresses and children

Mithridates VI had wives and mistresses, by whom he had various children. The
names he gave his children are a representation of his Persian, Greek heritage
and of his ancestry.

1. First wife,
   his sister Laodice
   . They were married from
   115/113 BC till about 90 BC. Mithridates with Laodice had various children:
   • Sons: Mithridates,
     Arcathius
     ,
     Machares
     and
     Pharnaces II of Pontus
   • Daughters:
     Cleopatra of Pontus
     (sometimes called
     Cleopatra the Elder to distinguish her from her sister of the same name)
     and Drypetina. (Her name is a diminutive form of
     Drypetis
     and she was Mithridates’ most
     devoted daughter. She never lost her baby teeth, so she had a double set
     of teeth in adulthood^[23]
2. Second wife, the Greek Macedonian Noblewoman,
   Monime
   . They were married from about 89/88
   BC till 72/71 BC. By whom, he had:
   • Daughter:
     Athenais
     , who married King
     Ariobarzanes II of Cappadocia
3. Third wife, Greek woman
   Berenice of Chios
   , married from 86 BC –
   72/71 BC
4. Fourth wife, Greek woman
   Stratonice of Pontus
   , married from after 86
   BC – 63 BC
   • Son:
     Xiphares
5. Fifth wife, unknown
6. Sixth wife, Caucasian woman
   Hypsicratea
   , married from an unknown date
   to 63 BC

One of his mistresses was the Galatian Celtic Princess
Adobogiona
. By Adobogiona, Mithridates had two
children: a son called
Mithridates I of the Bosporus
and a daughter
called Adobogiona.

His sons born from his concubine were Cyrus, Xerxes, Darius,
Ariarathes IX of Cappadocia
, Artaphernes,
Oxathres, Phoenix (Mithridates’ son by a mistress of Syrian descent) and
Exipodras. His daughters born from his concubine were Nysa, Eupatra, Cleopatra
the Younger, Mithridatis and
Orsabaris
. Nysa and Mithridatis, were engaged
to the
Egyptian Greek Pharaohs

Ptolemy XII Auletes
and his brother
Ptolemy of Cyprus
.

In 63 BC, when the
Kingdom of Pontus
was annexed by the Roman
general Pompey
the remaining sisters, wives, mistresses
and children of Mithridates VI in Pontus were put to death. Plutarch writing in
his lives (Pompey v.45) states that Mithridates’ sister and five of his children
took part in Pompey’s triumphal procession on this return to Rome in 61 BC.

The Cappadocian

Greek nobleman
and
high priest
of the temple-state of
Comana, Cappadocia

Archelaus
had descended from Mithridates VI.^[24]
He claimed to be a son of Mithridates VI,^[25]
however chronologically Archelaus may have been a maternal grandson of the
Pontic King, who his father was Mithridates VI’s favorite general may had
married one of the daughters of Mithridates VI.^[26]

The legend also appears in
Alexandre Dumas
‘s novel
The Count of Monte Cristo
. The demise of
Mithridates VI is detailed in the 1673 play
Mithridate
written by
Jean Racine
. This play is the basis for several
18th century operas including one of
Mozart’s
earliest, known most commonly by its
Italian name,
Mitridate, re di Ponto
(1770). He is the
subject of the opera
Mitridate Eupatore
(1707) by
Alessandro Scarlatti
. In
The Grass Crown
, the second in the
Masters of Rome
series,
Colleen McCullough
, the Australian writer,
describes in detail the various aspects of his life – the murder of
Laodice (sister-wife of Mithridates VI of Pontus)

Roman Consul, quite alone and surrounded by the Pontic army, orders Mithridates
to leave Cappadocia immediately and go back to Pontus – which he does.

In
Dorothy L. Sayers
‘
Detective Novel
“Strong
Poison“, from 1929, the protagonist,
Lord Peter Wimsey
, refers to Mithridates’
measures to survive poisoning; as well as
Albert Einstein
‘s theory of
Special Relativity
, when the protagonist warns
not to trust someone who looks straight in your eye: as they’re trying to
distract you from seeing something, “..even the path light travels is bent”.

The Last King is an
historical novel
by
Michael Curtis Ford
about the King and his
exploits against the Roman Republic. Mithridates is a major character in
Poul Anderson
‘s novel The Golden Slave.
Mithridates of Pontus is mentioned by
E. E. “Doc” Smith
in
Triplanetary
, the first novel of the famous

Lensman
science fiction series. In the
story, Mithridates was supposed to be one of the humans possessed by a member of
an evil alien race bent on remaking human civilization into its own image.

In the novel Mithridates is Dead (Spanish:
Mitrídates ha muerto
),
Ignasi Ribó
traces parallelisms between the
historical figures of Mithridates and
Osama Bin Laden
. Within a postmodern narrative
of the making and unmaking of history, Ribó suggests that the
September 11 attacks
on the United States
closely paralleled the massacre of Roman citizens in 88 B.C. and prompted
similar consequences, namely the imperialist overstretch of the American and
Roman republics respectively. Furthermore, he suggests that the ensuing
Mithridatic Wars
were one of the key factors in
the demise of Rome’s republican regime, as well as in the spread of the
Christian faith in Asia Minor and eventually throughout the whole Roman Empire.
The novel implies that the current events in the world might have similar,
unforeseen consequences.

In
Greek mythology
,

Nike was a
goddess
who personified
victory
, also known as the Winged Goddess of
Victory. The Roman equivalent was
Victoria
. Depending upon the time of various
myths, she was described as the daughter of
Pallas
(Titan) and

Styx (Water) and the sister of
Kratos
(Strength),
Bia
(Force), and
Zelus
(Zeal). Nike and her siblings were close
companions of Zeus
, the dominant deity of the
Greek pantheon
. According to classical (later)
myth, Styx brought them to Zeus when

the
god was assembling allies for the
Titan War
against the older deities. Nike
assumed the role of the divine
charioteer
, a role in which she often is
portrayed in Classical Greek art. Nike flew around battlefields rewarding the
victors with glory and fame.

Nike is seen with wings in most statues and paintings. Most other winged
deities in the Greek pantheon had shed their wings by Classical times. Nike is
the goddess of strength, speed, and victory. Nike was a very close acquaintance
of Athena
, and is thought to have stood in
Athena’s outstretched hand in the statue of Athena located in the Parthenon.
Nike is one of the most commonly portrayed figures on Greek coins.

Names stemming from Nike include amongst others:
Nicholas
, Nicola, Nick, Nikolai, Nils, Klaas,
Nicole, Ike, Niki, Nikita, Nika, Niketas, and Nico.

In Ancient Greece
, the Gorgoneion (Greek:
Γοργόνειον) was originally a horror-creating
apotropaic

pendant
showing the
Gorgon‘s head. It was assimilated by the
Olympian deities

Zeus
and Athena:
both are said to have worn it as a protective
pendant.
It was assumed, among other godlike attributes, as a royal
aegis,
by rulers of the Hellenistic age, as shown, for instance, on the

Alexander Mosaic and the

Gonzaga Cameo.

Homer
refers to the Gorgon on four occasions, each time alluding to the head alone, as
if the creature had no body.
Jane Ellen Harrison
notes that “Medusa is a
head and nothing more…a mask
with a body later appended”. Up to the 5th
century BC, the head was depicted as particularly ugly, with a protruding
tongue,
boar

tusks, puffy cheeks, her eyeballs staring fixedly on the viewer and
the snakes twisting all around her.

The direct frontal stare, “seemingly looking out from its own iconographical
context and directly challenging the viewer”, was highly unusual in ancient
Greek art. In some instances a beard (probably standing for streaks of blood)
was appended to her chin, making her appear as an
orgiastic deity
akin to
Dionysus.

Gorgoneia that decorate the shields of warriors on mid-5th century Greek
vases are considerably less grotesque and menacing. By that time, the Gorgon had
lost her tusks and the snakes were rather stylized. The
Hellenistic
marble known as the

Medusa Rondanini illustrates the Gorgon’s eventual transformation
into a beautiful woman.

The aegis (Greek:
Αιγίς), as stated in the
Iliad
, is the
shield
or
buckler
of
Athena
or of

Zeus, which according to
Homer
was fashioned by
Hephaestus
. “…and among them went bright-eyed
Athene, holding the precious aegis which is ageless and immortal: a hundred
tassels of pure gold hang fluttering from it, tight-woven each of them, and each
the worth of a hundred oxen.”

Virgil imagines the
Cyclopes
in Hephaestus’ forge, who “busily
burnished the aegis Athene wears in her angry moods–a fearsome thing with a
surface of gold like scaly snake-skin, and he linked serpents and the
Gorgon
herself upon the goddess’ breast—a
severed head rolling its eyes.”^[2]
furnished with golden tassels and bearing the
Gorgoneion
(Medusa‘s
head) in the central boss. Some of the
Attic
vase-painters retained an archaic
tradition that the tassels had originally been
serpents
in their representations of the ægis.
When the Olympian deities overtook the older deities of Greece and she was born
of
Metis
(inside

Zeus who had swallowed the goddess) and “re-born” through the head of
Zeus fully clothed, Athena already wore her typical garments.

When the Olympian shakes the aegis,
Mount Ida
is wrapped in clouds, the thunder
rolls and men are struck down with fear. “Aegis-bearing Zeus”, as he is in the
Iliad, sometimes lends the fearsome goatskin to
Athena
. In the Iliad when Zeus sends
Apollo
to revive the wounded
Hector of Troy
, Apollo, holding the aegis,
charges the Achaeans, pushing them back to their ships drawn up on the shore.
According to
Edith Hamilton
‘s Mythology: Timeless Tales
of Gods and Heroes

^[3], the Aegis is

Zeus‘
breastplate
, and was “awful to behold.”

In
Greek mythology
, the Gorgon (plural:
Gorgons) (Greek:
Γοργών or Γοργώ Gorgon/Gorgo) was a terrifying female creature. It
derives from the Greek word gorgós, which means “dreadful.” While
descriptions of Gorgons vary across Greek literature, the term commonly refers
to any of three sisters who had hair of living, venomous snakes, and a
horrifying gaze that turned those who beheld it to stone. Traditionally, while
two of the Gorgons were immortal,
Stheno
and
Euryale
, their sister
Medusa
was not, and was slain by the mythical
hero Perseus
.

Gorgons were a popular image of Greek mythology, appearing in the earliest of
written records of Ancient Greek religious beliefs such as those of
Homer
. Because of their legendary gaze, images
of the Gorgons were put upon objects and buildings for protection. For example,
an image of a Gorgon holds the primary location at the
pediment
of the temple at
Corfu
. It is the oldest stone pediment in
Greece and is dated to c. 600 BC.

Samsun is a
city
in northern
Turkey
, on the coast of the
Black Sea
, with a population of over 1 million.
It is the capital city of
Samsun

Province
and an important
port
. Samsun was founded as the colony
Amisos (alternative spelling Amisus, Eis Amison – meaning to
amisos took the name Samsunta or Samsus (Eis Amison – Samson –
Samsounta) as in Greek + ounta “Greek toponomical suffix”.^[1]
) by settlers from
Miletus
in the 7th century BC.

 

Samsun

Location of Samsun

Coordinates:

41°17′N
36°20′E

//

 History

Samsun’s original name was Enete (from Hitits.) Samsun’s ideal combination of
fertile ground and shallow waters attracted numerous traders. Greek colonists
settled in the 6th century BC and established a flourishing trade relationship
with the ancient peoples of
Anatolia
. At that time, Samsun was part of the
Greek
colony of Amisus. In the 3rd century BC,
Samsun came under the expanded rule of the
Kingdom of Pontus
. The Kingdom of Pontus had
been part of the empire of
Alexander the Great
. However, the empire was
fractured soon after Alexander’s death in the 4th century BC. At its height, the
kingdom controlled the north of
central Anatolia
and mercantile towns on the
northern Black Sea shores.

The Romans
took over in 47 BC, and were replaced by
the
Byzantines
after the fall of Rome. In 1200
Samsun was captured by the
Seljuks
, to be later taken over by the
İlhanlılar
. Samsun was incorporated into the
network of Genoese trading posts and was taken by the
Ottomans
in the beginning of the 15th century.
Before leaving, the
Genoese
razed the town.

Atatürk founded the Turkish republic movement at Samsun and it served as its
base during the Turkish War of Independence.

The city is both an
Eastern Orthodox
and a
Roman Catholic

titular see
.

 Geography

Samsun is situated between two river deltas which jut into the
Black Sea
. It is located at the end of an
ancient route from
Cappadocia
: the Amisos of antiquity lay
on the headland northwest of the modern city. To Samsun’s west, lies the
Kızılırmak
(“Red River”, the Halys of
antiquity), one of the longest rivers in
Anatolia
and its fertile delta. To the east,
lie the
Yeşilırmak
(“Green River”, the Iris of
antiquity) and its delta.