Empire of the Black Sea

"""With a lucid and captivating style, Duane Roller narrates the long career of Mithridates the Great, one of Rome's most stubborn antagonists, and recounts the larger dynastic and historical context of his reign."" -- Jeffrey Benecker, University of Wisconsin-Madison ""Duane Roller has deployed his enormous experience in ancient history and geography to illuminate the fascinating life and extraordinary ambitions of Mithridates the Great. This book reveals the causes, events, and significance of a king who built a Black Sea empire to rival late Republican Rome. His bloody adventures ended in torment and suicide, but his memory lived on among Romans and their heirs, in art, history, and tragic drama. Throughout, amongst so much that is extraordinary, Roller offers a Mithridates who remains convincingly human."" -- David Braund, University of Exeter ""The kingdom of Pontos creatively integrated Persian and Greek political traditions and was Rome's last rival for domination of the eastern Mediterranean, but the last history of this remarkable state was published in 1879. Duane Roller's thoroughly researched and lucidly written book ably provides readers with a long-overdue, updated narrative."" -- Stanley M. Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles ""Roller...has a knack for combing through hard-to-find subjects. He puts that method to use here in assembling an accessible narrative of the early kingdom and of its demise under Mithridates, whose life and death fully occupies half the book."" --History Today ""With his vivid personality and long reign, Mithridates is the stand-out character of 'Empire of the Black Sea,' a historical survey of the Pontic kingdom by the classicists Duane W. Roller"" --Wall Street Journal ""Roller resurrects much more than a single king in his pioneering history, the first ever English-language analysis of the entire Mithridates dynasty."" --Nature"