The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy,   ISBN:9780691126838

Customer Rating: 

This book combines two qualities that I find essential in a history work: It is extensively, indeed exhaustively researched, and it is eminently readable and accessible.

I have been primarily a student of Roman/Byzantine history, while naturally developing a fair amount of knowledge about the history of the Gauls/Franks, Persians, Carthaginians, and Persians, among others. I know Hannibal because I know Fabian (and Scipio), Vercengetorix because I know Caesar, and so on, but I knew little about Mithradates prior to reading this work. I was particularly interested to learn that Mithradates was a historical character of considerable fame throughout the middle ages and renaissance. While I have of course previously read of the campaigns of Sulla and Pompey in Asia, this had always been from the Roman point of view, with little effort to provide insight into Mithradates, their primary opponent, and his realm. Apparently the old boy has fallen out of fashion for a hundred years or so.

As I read "The Poison King", I found myself constantly amazed at the wealth, activity, cultures, and leadership in Pontus. While many of the detailed records of his life are lost or colored by their Roman filter, Mithradates remains a compelling and fascinating character based upon what we know and may reasonably infer or surmise. It is surely not overstatement to say that he was Rome's most feared enemy for fifty years. If you are interested in the Eastern theater of Rome's empire prior to the fall of the Republic, I think you have to regard this as a must-read.

Regarding some of the negative reviews: I almost have believe we didn't read the same book. I read the work with care, after reading at least two negative reviews here, and keeping their negative commentary in mind I found no merit in their views. I'd say someone has an axe to grind, or is sufficiently concerned with modern politics to be unable to discern a truly objective, scholarly, and entertaining work of ancient history. I will say that this is primarily a work of history, not merely military history.

Customer Rating: 

Ordinarily a text written about ancient history is often thought to be dry and boring, but in this case, Adrienne Mayor has managed to keep the imagination alive about a lesser known opponent of Rome. From the outset, Mayor's thesis suggests more about the culture of the day a time in the Roman Republic that lay quiet until the triumvirate. It is a lucid and clear text that makes one question how parts of the Roman civilization remained vulnerable to attack. She provokes the reader into thinking that there may be more to learn about Rome from sources of the time, which are few. I'm pleased to use the text in my classes because it is a fun read. Another feature that Mayor should be praised for is the comparison table in chapter one that compares the fates of other disasters with this casualty inflicted by Mithradates. I think that without this text, we might not know more about Mithradates and his affect on Rome and the Ancient Near East.

Customer Rating: 

This is a marvelous book of historical value, that reads like a modern thriller. The detail is mesmerizing and the story is true. As a bookseller, this is a definite "hand sell", which is when you put the book in the customer's hand and guarantee their satisfaction. That is not done often, but when you love a book, you honor your commitment. Adrienne Mayor has done a rare feat, made dusty history exciting and contemporary. She is a talented scholar who brings the past to life in all the details and storyline. I read this in one fast weekend and am still remembering how it thrilled me. It's a rare thing when a book such as this excites the general audience. The Midwife's Tale, a prize-winner by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, comes to mind in comparing this quality writing and the impact it provides to the reader. A must read and highly recommended! Let me know if you disagree, I can't imagine why...

Customer Rating: 

First off, I'd pass on this biased book. I should have known it was going to be garbage when I had to endure two pages of Bush bashing in the introduction. I mean, really? Keep your own unrelated political leanings out of your work, it makes the rest of your errors more tolerable.

Second, for someone who seems to write so much on history, this book is full of errors. For starters, the Gladius style swords used by the Romans were not "machetes", but short thrusting swords. A machete is a chopping weapon. There is a world of difference in the design and application of these weapons. The Romans actually derided other soldiers who used chopping weapons as being ineffective and undisciplined.

Third, the Roman javelin, the "Pilum", is not a "Light javelin" (per the author) but a heavy javelin, designed to penetrate armor and shields with a max effective range of around 20-30 meters.

Fourth, the Hellenistic light infantry, the "Peltasts" (and their Roman counter-parts, the Velites) didn't use "Light Swords". I'm curious what constitutes a "light" sword anyway. Given the author's ignorance of other Roman weapons and tactics, I'm sure this will be a very interesting explanation. Peltasts were light infantry because they wore almost no armor (besides a helmet), had small crescent shaped shields, and threw javelins at the opposition before falling back or to the flanks of the heavier, armored, infantry.

Another thing, there were no "Knights" at this time, or even "Men-at-Arms" as commonly used in historical discussions. There were light and heavy cavalry, with the heavy cavalry being called Cataphracts (or Kataphraktoi). They fought differently and while on the surface looked the same (Big troops with lots of armor on horses), were very different from their much later European counterparts.

Those are just the initial errors. Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but if you can't get the basics right, it really does call into question the rest of your work. This author is so biased and tainted in her hatred for everything "Western" that she tries to spin everything about Mithridates into something good. Her obsession with "multi-culturalism" is all encompassing. You hardly go more than 3-4 pages without having to read her gushing love of multi-culturalism and how wonderful it is. Too bad it didn't work out that way for Mithridates.

This book is short on the details of the facts we actually know (the tactics and strategies used during the various battles) and long on supposition, flights of fancy, and telling us all how wonderful PC multiculturalism is and how bad we Modern day Romans cum Americans are. There are much better books out there, which while they may have been written by "racist" old white men (per the authors insinuations and outright statements), are actually more useful because they stick to..*gasp!* the facts.

Customer Rating: 

I found The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor to be a highly interesting book, well written and quite informative. Having written that, I would say that she wrote a very strongly biased spin toward King Mithradates VI of Pontus. First of all, she like to compared Mithradates to Alexander the Great, I am sure that this mindset was made to compliment Mithradates although bit insulting to poor Alexander. So how biased was the book in favor of Mithradates? Here is a good example, on page 183 when she wrote "Undefeated but displeased, he (Mithradates) sailed away to the coast of Lycia......" Of course, Mithradates won't have sail away if he was victorious and took the city of Rhodes but since that siege was a total failure on his part, he "sailed away" undefeated according to the book. The book also revealed that Mithradates spent most of his early years preparing for war with Rome but when the wars came, he was constantly defeated, over and over again. Only time he was successful were when Rome were seriously distracted from other crises nearer to their home base. Mithradates appears to be more successful in killing helpless Roman civilians then Roman legionaries.

But despite of what I have written, make no mistake that this is a highly informative book but it would really help if you have some foreknowledge of time period involved. Mithradates, despite of the book's best efforts to paint him as knight in shinning armor against Rome's imperial designs, proves to be another despot ruler who had too much money and time on his hand. Book revealed ironically that Mithradates also had imperial designs of his own and that made him no better then Rome. It is interesting to note here that the book went into details of Mithradates' edict to mass murder 80,000 Romans/Italians under his control when he initially overran Asia Minor. I would like to point out that Hitlerian prose of blaming the victims for their fate is a lousy way to justified such massacre. The book gave Mithradates a nice spin job but couldn't hide the fact that he was just another despot who murder masses with ease. Only Rome's distractions throughout his reign kept him alive and active but he was no Alexander the Great although if I had to make a comparison like the author did, I would paint Mithradates more closer to Darius III. Like Darius, Mithradates had wealth and huge armies of multi-racial/cultural people. And like the way Darius always lost to Alexander's vastly smaller but highly trained army, Mithradates constantly lost to smaller more disciplined forces of Rome whenever they can spare the time and the energy to go after him. Mithradates' survival had nothing to do with him personally but more due to Rome's distractions during this same period.

Despite of my complaints, this book still deserves a three star (3.5 really) rating because I was able to learned so much about Mithradates then ever before. I was able to see through spin jobs on this monarch and read the material presented with a certain amount of grain of salt. But what I learned still surpassed anything previous and the author wrote a very readable book although her spin jobs did make me smiled quite a bit. As long as you know what you are reading, this book does come highly recommended to anyone interested in first century BC history dealing with the Roman Republic and its neighbors.