Citation Needed - Mithradates

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

Mithridates or Mithradates VI Eupator (Greek: Μιθραδάτης;[2] 135–63 BC) was ruler of the Hellenistic Kingdom of Pontus in northern Anatolia from 120 to 63 BC, and one of the Roman Republic's most formidable and determined opponents. He was an effective, ambitious and ruthless ruler who sought to dominate Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, waging several hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful wars (the Mithridatic Wars) to break Roman dominion over Asia and the Hellenic world.[3] He has been called the greatest ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus.[4] After his death he became known as Mithridates the Great; due to his affinity for poison he has also been called "The Poison King". Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

And from there, I cross referenced all the children's games I'm best at in a ranking with all the children's games you guys might be good at from worse to best. But it all next week, sure. You know the Squid Games aren't real, right? Sorry, this is just a Squid Game. Oh, is this just a list that you had? Listie had, God, that makes it a stressing amount of sense.

Yeah, the list of that. Okay, but those are guesses. You can't leave out the summer really in. It's literally the first reference to MythRoll ever. This, see this, this right here, is why we can't write in canon order. We have to do it by publicating. I'm not having this fight against Cecil. I'm not having it. Hey, why not? Cecil, be like, what are you guys up to? What do you mean? We're getting ready for your essay this. Yeah,

we're so psyched, but we need your opinion. So we date, mithril, by when it appears in the literature or when it's published. Which one would you do? I mean, it depends on whether you're trying to track its appearance and Lord of the Rings can and or literature, but what does that have to do with Mithra Dades? Who's Mithra Dades? The subject of this week's essay. Yeah. You mean this week's podcast is not about Mithra Dades? No.

No, it's about the King, Mithril Dates. Uhhh... I knew it was too good to be true. I knew it. Cecil, I didn't know. I didn't know. You guys have hurt me for the last time. Cecil, don't do this.

Mithril Dates is actually not really fair right now. Give him time to heal. Okay. He's hurt. Hello and welcome. Citation needed. The podcast where we choose a subject, we read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. This is the internet and that's how it works now.

I'm Heath and we're going to be talking about poison. So I'm joined by our expert panel of toxic masculinity, Cesar Tom Noah and Eli. Poisons in the Doose, he's, and in my case, it's a very small dose. I mean, it's a dose. Eight, fun bag, my way. If you don't blink the tears out, it doesn't count as crying.

I'm not crying. I'm crying. I'm crying. I'm crying. All right, Heath, I found that Jake retening to my manhood. It doesn't at all prove the point. Damn it, it proves the point.

What? It proves the point. There it does it proves the point. What the fuck does? There it does. And I wear pug themed sweater starting in October and my baby's been in two gay pride parades. My masculinity is so pure, you can use it in a humidifier. So. So.

Okay, so. What are we talking about? Whitfield Hades. M-Mathrid Hades. Sure. Yeah, Mithrid Hades. So Noah, why Mithredeities? Well, I just find him a fascinating character whose historical stock has been slipping away to you. For centuries, he was as familiar a historical figure as like Cleopatra, Mark Anthony,

or Pompey, the great. He was subject of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a play by Jean Racine and an opera by Mozart. But nowadays, when he's remembered at all, it's usually in reference to the Iocaine Powder scene in Princess Fries. So, it's a silly and reasoning. I just figured he was due for some historical rehabilitation. Oh, man. I mean, with a poem about him, I can't believe not a tick-tock sensation.

I am innocent. The kids love amers. All right. So who was? Mythre deities. Okay. So the one we're talking about, it's Mythre deities the sixth or Mythre deities you put or Mythre deities you put or Dionysus, or eventually Mithredeides, the great, which the King of Pontus from 120 to 63 BCE. He was as ambitious as he was ruthless, and during his 57 year reign, he became the most effective foreign enemy of the Roman Republic since Hannibal. He was also fascinated with poisons to such a degree

that you could damn near dub him the father of pharmacology, and you can definitely dub him as many have, the poison king. Okay, I'm saving that for whoever the Ruby in Ruby Tuesdays is. I'm just kidding. I feel like everybody was doing poison stuff constantly for like all of old, timey history.

Just thousands of years of staring at each other really hard, like, okay, we switch now, we mix it all and we drink it the same time To Pick it up the glass pump faking it Scanning everybody's eyes really quick. So couple quick notes on the sources here The first is that there's virtually nothing about this guy that wasn't written by his enemies. Oh hashtag life goals I want that. Now, that's why you know you're winning.

Right. No, shit. When the history of you, when the biographies of you are written by your enemies, you fucking crush it. You shouldn't. They can't ignore you at that. Right. Yeah, right.

Exactly. So now there are some archaeological records, like statues and inscriptions and shit, but in terms of written sources, it's all Roman contemporaries and historians writing about what they call the mythradynic wars. I'll even the name mythrady says a Romanized version of his actual name. Now, Romans often hated each other more than, therefore, at enemies. So that doesn't necessarily mean that we're only seeing him painted the disavailant. Right, like he'll ultimately be defeated by Pompey the Great.

So enemies of Pompey the Great had a vested interest in making him seem like a pretty all right guy. And enemies of Pompey the Great famously include Julius Fuck and Caesar, who is writing us we have. So we actually do have a three-dimensional view of this guy, but it's like, it's still all being told through the lens of Roman prejudice. Oh, Roman prejudice is the name of my Ted Nugent cover band.

Right on the nose. So the other important note on the sources is that there's a lot of bullshit in them. Right. So ancient histories are to historical scholarship is like Eli Essay's art, a citation name. Oh, terribly spelled written in two days. I hate his Jew face. Oh, sorry. That last one wasn't Essay's art, a citation name. Oh, terribly spelled. Written in two days. I hate his Jew face.

Oh, sorry. That last one wasn't essay-related. I'm sorry. We're doing a three beat right now. I was just gonna say face. And Eli said use the word Jew, specific. No, I'm not. I never told him use the word Jew.

He said, he wrote it in. He wrote it just you should say. He should use a hard J right there. I mean, he was my spelledissored, so I think it was here. All right, now, so to be clear, we're not talking about our meat. It's a carrot, I'm not, I would never actually say that. It's not, be clear.

You would just think it's important. I wouldn't, no, I'll go ahead. Now, so to be clear, we're not talking about medieval sources where like talking birds often play integral parts of the stories, but there's a lot of mythical tropes and divine moral lessons that sneak into Roman histories. There are also a lot of parallels that arise from uninspired writers in the ancient world, just cribbing off of other biographies. So you'll see the same stories told about different historical figures over and over again.

The point is, it's impossible to tease out the reality from the fiction, so we kind of have to present both. So let me start off here with a great example of one of those dubious facts. All the ancient sources agree that there were two important comments that heralded Mithradades rise, one on the year of his birth

and another on the year that he ascended to the throne. Now, this is especially interesting since Roman tradition saw comets as harbors of catastrophe, but Pontic traditions saw them as omens of good fortune. And given the sheer number of important historical figures said to be born under the auspice of a comet and the relatively low number of actual visible comets, it'd be easy to dismiss this as the sort of myth-making we find all through the ancient sources. But if it was, then in this case, it turns out that the Han Chinese were in on it because their core astronomers also record visible comments in the years in question. By the way, while we're on the subject of overused clichés relied on

and by uninspired writers, I should know that legend also holds that Mithrid A.D. was struck by lightning as a boy. And though he recovered from it entirely, it said to have left the lightning bolt shaped scar across his forehand. Yeah, did not. And while the origin story is almost certainly made up, I don't think there's any doubt that the scar itself was real. Did he live under stairs and have a postal all over the studio? How do you feel about trans people?

I'm curious about that. I wish everything that hurt us left a scar in the shape of itself. I feel like we just know each other better. Like, whoa, Martini glass and Virginia slams no way. Me too. Twins. All right. So I'm on. Mr. Dany's.

Anyway, so Mr. Dany's. Anyway. So, uh, Mr. Dany's was born in Sonopie, uh, a city in Northern Turkey along the coast of the Black Sea. Uh, he was the Prince of Pontus, a kingdom that was like basically Northeast Turkey, but it expanded out to pretty much all of Turkey and the entire coastline of the Black Sea. By the time Mr. Dany's was done with it, uh, he had a mix of Persian and Greek ancestry and kind of build himself as the link between the East and the West,

both in terms of his kingdom and in terms of his culture. To that effect, by the way, he was a legendary polyglot. According to Roman historian Pliny, the elder, he could speak the languages of all 22 nations that he would ultimately come to rule. And some sources have the number of languages he could speak as high as 50. Okay, I love this lie because it inevitably means that there was a day where some guy came in, started babbling about land deeds and Phoenician, and Spring Bill Dames had to be like, mm, yeah, mm-hmm.

Yeah. So he didn't blow his cover as the language guy. Extremely high score. So I do a lingo though. Like, I mean, extremely high score. that I will jerked him off. So. All right. So, Mithredeus the sixth was predictably the son of Mithredeus the fifth. And in the gross ass tradition of ancient royalty, his mom was also his first cousin once removed. Now, as heir to the Pontic throne, Mithredeus had an early interest in poison.

Okay. The average life expectancy of Persian kings at this point in history is measured in femtoseconds or something, and the preferred method of assassination was poison. So as a boy, he spent time learning to ride a horse and shoot a bow and kick some ass like all the other noble kids, but he also spent a lot of time reading about and cataloging all the myriad poisons of the region.

This would always be a promise. But the myriad poisons of the region. This would ultimately blossom. But your thermos have an ex on it. I don't know if it's an ex on it. So weird lunchbox. Go ahead. I'll have some. So this would ultimately blossom into a lifelong obsession and at a certain point a bit of a royal gimmick.

We'll get to all of them. Okay. Vladimir Putin's vision board. It's just a sexy picture of Mithridates with his like finger over his mouth. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Pughins reading the boyhood diary of Mithridates.

Smirrit on the underpants, genius, yes. Score one more for the boy who lived. Oh, so anyway, at age 15, Mithredeity's father is assassinated by, did I already spoil it? Poison. Poison, that'll do it. So Mithredeity's was heir to the kingdom, but he wasn't of age.

So his mother cousin, Leotus II VI, takes over as Queen Regent until the boy comes of age. Mother cousin, please, know what, Heath can only get so erect. Good. That's not true. He's into that. That's not true. Mother cousin, please know what he can only get so Iraq. He's not true. What does it mean? All right. So now this is prime getting murdered territory, right?

Like, sure, you can have complete autocratic rule of this entire wealthy kingdom until this kid that's entirely in your care turns 18. That is sure hope nothing happens to him. To make matters worse, Mithra Dades has a younger brother who has a combination of stupidity and loyalty that mom finds way more desirable than her clever independently minded firstborn. And just to add to the confusion, by the way, that younger brother's name is also Mithra Dades. And what?

Yeah. Shortly after his father's death, Mithra Dades catches wind of an assassination plot by his mother and escapes along with a different, better little brother. One of those weird times in history where mom agrees with the axiotene and they both wish that he was never born. So about the mother, no, would you say that that girl was poison? Oh shit, because he is gonna be immune to her. Well, the one.

Now, please. Now, so once again, I have to emphasize the point. 1987. No, okay. No Eli, hey, fuck you. I mean, and take that as you will. You don't mean like it's hard. It's what I mean, it's hard.

Okay. Now, once again what I mean, it's not hard. Okay. Now, once again, I have to emphasize the point about these mythical tropes. So countless legendary historical figures follow this basic pattern. They're of noble birth, but a powerful ruler wants to kill him while they're still defenseless kids.

So they go out, they live off the land, they mingle with the commoners, they be lonely, whatever, only to return eventually avenge their exile and inherit their kingdom. Cyprus the great Moses, Romulus, Jesus, Simba. It's all fun. So who the hell knows how accurate any of this is, but the key is that he goes off and

adures hardship for seven years, then he comes back and kills the fuck out of his mouth. Or I'm sorry, in prison, it's her where she soon after dies of natural causes. And then just a real heath back into the story, he marries his sister. Because the ancient world had like fucking nine names they all had to share, her name is also leoticy. Okay. Yeah. Use it up.

I like it. You know, he never would have survived out there alone, but he was helped by a small, but cheerful band of singing dwarves the whole time So excited to embrace the thing where you just may have the ridiculous thing. That's gonna go great for you You sure are embracing it by their own child now you could you can tell I love in so you lose love in S.U.L.U.S. All right, so by the time it takes the throne, like it's yeah, so it doesn't even what it work. I think Noah was saying something.

So by the time he takes the throne, he's already among the world's leading experts on poisons, but he decides that's not enough. So he says about two courses of action to thwart his next would be assassin, both of which bear his name to this day. Mr. Yuck. So those are all the kingdom putting stickers of unhappy faces on things. His Harold, his Harold comes in. It's just the big shield with Mr. Yuck. All right. So the two methods that bear his name though, the first is that he started a regiment of very small amounts of a few common poisons, including the one that killed his dad with the goal of building a pitholarance and ultimately an immunity to them.

Today, we call that myth or datasm. The other was to develop a universal antidote that could counteract all poisons. Now legend has it that he actually succeeded in this, but the recipe has been lost at time, almost certainly bullshit. But to this day, a theoretical antidote to all poisons is still called a mithradation. Actually, nowadays we call it a juice cleanse. Oh my goodness. Yeah, we call it mithradatism alcoholism.

That's not how it's called. Right, we call it myth-redatism alcoholism. That's not how this is. Right, that's another alternative. Trying to get a moon. Okay, that makes that. Right, that makes that. Yeah, I'm trying to cure everything. It was the second one. Right, yeah, exactly.

No, of course, last I may get sound like he was some kind of fucking Linus, Paul and Greg Rommendell, or something. I need to emphasize that he was a mean motherfucker. So his scientific research often took the form of rounding up a bunch of prisoners or just people on the street giving them each different doses of the same toxic mushroom and then writing down what happened to him.

Wow. Well, he would even do this shit at Banquets as like a party thing. He would shoot a condemned prisoner with a poison tip arrow and then like talk is gassed through all the various stages of misery that person was Death just like a giant live action viewfinder full of dying people And his guest like a slide show. Okay, first they will hate the arrow. That's the first thing you're gonna hate is the arrow We're really gonna notice that

You know, so back one slide, everybody walk left, walk left. I know you're being poisoned, just do, uh, okay. Do you think you ever accidentally shot someone like in the heart and they died right away and he was like, fuck, I have 45 minutes to fill now. Who's drinking it? You would have just got another guy. He'd be like, all right, all right, who's strong that bow? He's like a cupid for like bad relationships.

So shooting like toxic arrows and people. At least he didn't talk about his kids at party. What a gap. Okay. So he didn't know what he cares about your kid. He also had another nifty poison based parlor trick that he busted out at parties. He would drink goblets of snake venom

because he knew that they had to be injected into the blood to be dangerous. And I guess like his guests generally didn't. So it was a cool little trick. Yeah, I used to do that when I kids parties did not go overwhelmed. Let me tell you. Anyway, so around the same time,

there's this pesky empire on the rise, a couple of kingdoms to his west. So by the second century BCE, the Roman Republic was in full on expansion mode and stretched from modern day Portugal all the way to modern day and back then day Syria. They'd gobbled up countless kingdoms along the way and seemed poised to expand out forever. That being said, even early in his reign, Mithridates was immune to way more shit than most kings. All right. Well, it looks like, I'm going to be super hard to kill with cheese or scotch. So that's...

At least in the short term, as I could say for today. Yeah, right. And I think it's time for a quick break for some opera pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing.

I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing.

I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop-up of nothing. I'm not a pop- much snake venom I can drink. Yes. Yes, I are. So, so here's the thing. Are you true? Do you dare me to drink some? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. What's there? You dare me to drink a whole cup of snake venom right now. No, no, no, sir, we don't.

We actually really need to talk about it. I will. I will. I'm not. I've got it. We've done this before. So the thing about the armies in the east. Okay, two cups of snake venom. Sir, Tyre, may I speak freely? Of course we're all friends here. Yeah. Do you just like drinking snake venom? Because you're the king and you can just have snake venom

if you want. No, thank you. You don't have to make it like a thing. Well, I'm demonstrating that I am a master of voice. I don't want to drink snake venom. Yuck, it gross. Okay. So if we can get back to what we were talking about,

you know, I'm sorry, I feel bad. You were trying to do a military thing and I interrupted you. Yeah, no, okay. It's fine, sir. So, as an apology, I will be... You're gonna drink a bunch of snake venom. But drink a bunch of snake venom, okay.

Can I try it? No, it's mine. And we're back. When we left off, Mithridadis had invented Jim Baker's silver solution way back in the day that he was living in. Then it got lost to time. So what's next? Uh, Jim Baker finds it. But no, so don't ask yourself the jail.

Sorry, sorry, in this story. Um, so okay. So for pretty much the day he deposed his mom, Mithridate, he said about expanding his kingdom. His goal was to create an empire that completely surrounded the Black Sea and covered all of Anatolia. Now, the first step in doing this is to seemingly impossible task of subduing the Scythians. Nobody had ever done that before. Now, he's not actually after any Scythian land, but he is after a bunch of kingdoms

that were scared as all hell of the Scythians. So he basically got Crimea, the Bosphoring Kingdom, and a couple of other smaller places to agree to his rule if he could protect them from the Scythians. So he won like five kingdoms by defeating one different kingdom in a couple of apps. Ah, I get it. The US did the same thing when we invaded a rack.

We got like bonus. But that's true. Oh, uh, operation enduring fiefdom. Freedom. But it's not that you're close. Freedom. I don't know. So.

So with the northern end of his empire well on its way, he turns his attention south to the rest of modern day Turkey. Uh, at this point, he allies with a Bethanyan king named Nicomedes III in an effort to subdue and partition Galatia. And apologies if I'm tossing out a ton of unfamiliar geography. I said that. But all you need to know here really is that he's partnering with the kingdom to his west to partition a kingdom to that guy's west. Nice. And I was convinced Nicomedes to go along with a deal where Mithridates kingdom will ultimately surround his. Now, eventually this occurs to Nicomedes, so he tries to reverse course and team up with

the Robins to push Mithridates back to Pontus. Mithridates would win this conflict with Nicomedes, but he didn't get much out of it. Nicomedes III was succeeded by his son Nic Nick Amidus IV, and was essentially a Roman puppet. So this put Mr. Dady in a position where he either had to scale back his imperial ambitions or enter into a direct conflict with Rome. Of course, Kingdom's standing up to Rome didn't have a great track record in recent history and Kingdom's going to war with empires, something like eight times their size didn't

have a great track record at any point in history. I hate to well actually you here, but Afghanistan would like you to hold its beer. Actually, one is not a track record, but myth or dainty's still one place, but but but Mr. Dady's had an advantage he figured he could exploit. He would poison all the water. Well, no, so Rome was actually already at war with itself. Right.

So this is all happening right in the middle of a social war where Rome's Italian allies rose up in rebellion and wouldn't give in until a hundred thousand dead guys later. So they weren't exactly an ideal ship to mobilize for a foreign war and far off Asia Minor. I feel like Mipidabies was underestimating the ability for floated empires to be an endless wars. Can I say that?

Yeah. If there was a theme to his existence, yeah. So knowing all this shit about the Roman internal conflict, Mithridate sets about trying to kill off Nicomedi's the fourth with like one or two degrees of plausible deniability, hoping to provoke the Romans into a retaliation. So now at this point, Roman generals have every incentive to invade foreign lands.

It's how they make their money. It's how they pay their soldiers. It's how they win their glory. So he knows it's not going to take much in the way of provocation and he's right. In 89 BCE, he lures the Bethanyan army along with two Roman legions into an invasion of Pontus that was illegal, even by Roman standards of the time. And then he whipped the everloven fucked out.

Okay. Who agreed to the snake venom drinking contest as the way we saw? We're so much bigger than we're doing regular fighting. That was fine. That was going to be the plan. Pontus' girlfriend throws a drink in the Benthien's army's face. Are you going to let him get away with that, babe? Now, at this point, with a decisive victory address about basically every kingdom in Anatolia was inclined to ally with him.

They were all very much worried about Roman encroachment, and now that there was somebody on the block that could apparently stand up to the Romans, they were quick to line up behind the new guy. Of course, Bithur Deity's also knows that their allegiance is fickle and they're liable to switch sides back to Rome if he loses a battle or two, so it can cocks a plan to make sure that Rome wouldn't want them back even if they offered an instigate something called the azeatic vespers, which I've heard referred to as the Roman 9-11. Right. Because a world leader made the whole thing up to invade Iraq.

Okay. Azeatic vespers sounds like a brand to slip on shoe. Now, to me, it sounds like an old-timey disease. Like, oh, yeah. Oh, that's the aianic Vespers. Too much blood. That's almost certainly the problem. I gotta sleep with this mask on.

I'm gonna put this in the old-em upside down. Get the bile out of them. Well, so Tom, too much blood was actually the problem. Um, okay. So, that's fair. That's fair. So, okay, so, Roman, this time, they were colonists, right? So when they invaded a country, they didn't start with soldiers or bureaucrats.

They started with merchants and bankers, right? They'd move in for business. They'd create these little Roman enclairs in their cities, which then provided the Roman armies and excuse that they ever had to come in, right? Like, oh, well, it may be your city, sure, but there's a settlement of Roman citizens there and Rome is obligated to protect them. So every major city in Anatolia has a sizable population of Romans. And in 88 BCE, Mithredeanys decides to target every last one of them.

In a remarkably well-timed maneuver, he convinced basically every kingdom in the region to turn on those Romans on the same day at the same hour. In fact, she's a sync up our sundials in three. Yeah, yeah, cliff. So in an act of brutally coordinated genocide, as many as 80,000 Romans were killed, men, women and children. On the copter outside counting down from 60. Do we have to worry about that? Uh, where are they at? What are they at right now?

X X V I I I. So are they doing Mississippi's? If they're doing Mississippi's, we have more time. So it's social war. No, don't have to respond to a massacre on that scale. So this kicks off the first mythradyk war. Now, yeah, mythradyk is what actually be the way to one mythradyk's two mythradyk, that'd be the way to go. Now, it's worth it. We're making that happen.

Now, it's worth emphasizing here that Pontus is a fantastically rich kingdom. So every ambitious Roman general knows that whoever goes up against mythradykady stands to gain enormous wealth On top of that They're dubbing him the new Hannibal so it comes with a great deal of valor as well So obviously they're all clamoring for this assignment. Obviously. I mean this feels like the same idiot mentality that causes people to rush to buy Powerball tickets when the jackpot becomes like a billion dollars. Like sure, the rewards are enormous,

but you're choosing only to play when there's a vastly lower chance of winning. Like I'm not saying this isn't a right plum, but you can't eat the fucking plum if you have a sword in your guts. Right. Well, it's like that. Plus if you lose it, Powerball,

you become part of a life action poisoning viewfinder. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. In Jersey, that actually is the case. ball. You become part of a live action poisoning viewfinder. In Jersey, that actually is the case. TV show. Yeah. Now ultimately, the Senate awards this command to the promising young general Lucius Cornelia Sulla. That this isn't an episode about Sulla or the fall of the Roman Republic.

So I don't want to go into too much detail, but all you need to know for the purposes of this story is that Sella has a rival general named Marius, and he's way more worried about that rival than some backwater hit king from far away Pondas. Oh man, they should have worked together because then they could have been the Marius brothers. That's pretty good. Actually, that's why I like that.

So. So Sella gets to Anath, that's why I like that. So so so so it is to Anatholia. He immediately starts kicking ass. The Pontega army as well, supplied Mr. Dates is a clever commander and she put the Roman legions are unrivaled in the Mediterranean at this point. So and and so this is good as they come as as far as generals. But the whole time that he's winning these battles in this war, shits going south from back in Rome. Marius is rising in influence and there's actually a legitimate risk that he's winning these battles in this war, shits going south from back in Rome.

Marius is rising in influence and there's actually a legitimate risk that he's going to lose his command halfway through the fucking war. So he talks to Mithridates into signing this uber lenient peace treaty that basically requires Mithridates to, you know, say he's sorry like he means it and then sell a heads back to Rome. Yeah. Sellers great, great grandson is now sentencing capital insurrectionists to writing, I'm sorry guys, a thousand times in the chat.

I don't take that at this point. If I get to watch them do that, that would be something. Yeah. Now, needless to say, this sweetheart deal did not sit well with Sala's army, the Roman Senate, or the Roman people. They want to, Mithradades brought back in chains and strangled in the public square for the massacre. So the Senate refused to ratify Salazar's treaty, but that actually meant that Mithredeiti's

got off even easier because he doesn't even have to say it like he means it anymore. Right? So this leads more or less directly to the second Mithredeiti war where Pontus wins one big battle against a tiny four cent against him and says, okay, I want another one of those. Like I really mean it treaties and I won't kick your ass again. And yes, okay. All of old time in military history was kids in the backyard. It's all time outs and interference and like, we're getting to it, but starting now, corner of the shed. It's all. I remember the song about this, actually, was like, I got a one little battle. My mom got scared. She said, you make peace of soul and come call back home here.

West, Anatolia. Drinking venom is how it's. All right. So, so after that, there's a decade or so of tenuous piece between Mithredeides and Rome, but that ends when Bethinia's puppet king dies and leaves his whole kingdom to Rome, according to a will that the Romans presented. Uh, anyway, so so the Romans try to annex Bethinia. Mithredeides said, the fuck you will and we get the Mithredeidec war, which lasts more than 10 years. Ultimately though,

Mithredeides forces are defeated by future triumph here and Caesar Nemesis, Pompey, the great, and then Mithredeides is driven into exile in the North. But no one up there has seen his like venomous mug trick, so that's not all that bad. I mean, it's like a new audience.

It's like a new audience. It's like a new audience. It's like a new audience. What a kingdoms are passed down in wills. In wills. You know, there was that one emperor though, who's just like, okay, and to my cat mittens, I believe the spoils and lands of three generations of proud warriors.

I leave nothing to whiskers. He knows why. I feel like there were a lot of amperors like that. So by the time of his exile, he's been on the throne for 57 years. I bet his legs fell asleep. We've all been there. You get like a couple of spinky balls and candy crush. Yeah, no, right. Exactly. All right. So, but this guy's in his 70s, right? It's most motherfuckers would just take their giant pile of money and all their wives or whatever.

And they'd settle down at exile. But even septuagenarian, Mithridate, he's wasn't that kind of guy. So instead, he starts re-raising armies with the ambitious to the point of insanity plan of following in a Hannibal's footsteps and bringing his army over the Alps to invade Italy from the North. Jesus. That's weird because when you said you'd think most guys would just settle down with their giant pile of money, I thought you many filmed a transphobic stand-up. How times have changed, huh?

Right. Well, I don't know. We pre-record the state should help maybe invading Italy from the north right now. We don't know. Of course. So many leaders of many nations have gone with this. Like, you know, I want to go out and blaze a glory idea. But to do that, it requires a whole fucking army going along with you. And the mid-30s army was way less sold on the blaze of glory idea than he was. So ultimately they decided to turn on him and install his son, Farnesys, the second as their new king.

And Farnesys first act to skin is to make a deal with Pompey where they can have Mithredeities in exchange for ending the Roman occupation of Pontus. So now like sad old bitter Mithredeities realizes that he's doomed to the fate he most feared defeat. He'll be taken back to Rome in chains. He'll be paraded through the streets and pompies triumph and if past behavior was any indication he will be strangled to death at the end of that parade. So rather than submit to that fate, he turns to his old friend poison. to that fate, he turns to his old friend Poison. He's got a dagger with a secret handle that contains a vial of deadly poison, so he takes it and then he doesn't die because you know, myth or data, so that's the whole thing. They name that.

In fact, the story is that he keeps taking different poisons and he gets sick as all fuck, but none of them will kill him and eventually he has to talk his bodyguard and to stab him to death, but his bodyguard doesn't want to kill his king. Anyway, it's absolutely nonsensically untrue, but I absolutely have to include that and thing. Yeah. Right before he died, he started penning that song. He's like, and there's a black fly in my shard of name. All right.

If you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? I apparently can too make it do full essays about Mediterranean stuff without mentioning trusskins. Oh, you're so blessed. No, this isn't part of the essay. This is part of the question at the end. I do the essay. Limital, are you ready for the quiz?

I am. All right, Noah, a bit of a myth redatest myself. How? Hey, I've made myself immune to sugar by drinking nothing, but mango now. Oh, no, no. See, editing D and D minus has made my feelings unheard of.

Or see, I have a Twitter. Yeah, yeah, that's gonna mess me up. That is correct. Twitter, yeah. Noah, at's correct. That's gonna mess in you. That is correct. Twitter. Yeah. Noah, at first I thought building up a tolerance to toxic things was nonsense. But then I remembered what? A, pumpkin spice lattes.

B, multi-level marketing. C, Jordan Peterson. I'm gonna go with D Eli spelling, secret answer. Oh, I should have included, I'm gonna type that in, because it's the better answer. So, okay. Pumpkin spice lattes takes so much shit. I kinda like them.

I gotta be honest. Refine. Fine. You think they're medium? No, they're fine. They're fine. I don't understand. I love hating things. I do not understand hating the pumpkin.

I love hating things. We at an entire industry is how I feed my baby. Grandma, let's watch a movie that ain't verifas our faith and I'm like, and people are like, I like the pumpkin sweeten. I'm like are like the pumpkin sweet and I'm like have the pumpkin sweet man One more question for you know What was the best name for Mithridates kingdom a Katarcinic be fantastic boy San marino Pakistan Thrac, or D.

Contamination. Oh, nice. Nice. I've all done so all around, but I'm gonna have to go with my favorite will be C. Pakistan Thrac. Yes.

You are incorrect. I'm sorry, it's contamination. Oh, I was. It's contamination. It was close. It was close. It's close. It was close. It's close.

It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close.

It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close.

It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's close. It's keep doing work, it's like poison, the more you do.

That is my new job. That is my new job. It's my new job eventually. Yeah, it is poison, one labor myth or dais. So. All right, well, for Tom, Noah, Cecil and Eli, I'm he, thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then, Tom,

be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear Tom and Cecil on Cognitive Disnance. And you can hear Eli knowing myself on God awful movies the skating atheist skeptic rat and D&D minus and You know what we're not asking for money this time for us if you're feeling generous go to modest needs dot org Amen help out with some vulgarity for charity people could really use it. That's great. Yeah That's that But then maybe give us money in a few weeks dude dude. But like, for now, it's not-

Yeah, I'm saying the first thing. And not never give us money. It's never, it's never. It's eventually. They're not mutually exclusive. You can do both. Right. Exactly.

But eventually, it's more importantly, the first modest needs, modest needs.org, check it out. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media, or take a look at show notes, and go to citationpod.com. Quick, man, we must find a poison that can kill me before the Romans get here. Oh, ah, hold stool.

Oh, we're gonna work. We're gonna work. No, no, I think we better try a mug of snake venom again. Yeah, yeah, I'll get a two liter. Get a two liter this time. try a mug of snake venom again. Yeah, I'll get it. Yeah, yeah, no, I get a two liter, get a two liter this time.