Rome and the Near East

Rome faced many formidable enemies over the course of nearly 1,000 years, but perhaps none were as enigmatic and forgotten as King Mithridates VI of Pontus. Despite numerous ancient sources detailing the life of the foreign monarch and his wars with Rome, and despite being an interesting character who endured years as a fugitive in his youth, enjoyed a fascination with poisons, and held mercy and pragmatic ruthlessness in a delicate balance, very few scholarly books and works have been produced about the king. It may be that his largely unsuccessful military campaigns have contributed to his disappearance from active historical examination, but despite his poor record in engagements against the Romans, the Kingdom of Pontus dominated much of Asia Minor in the 1st century BCE, and the Romans themselves considered the kingdom one of its most dangerous enemies. According to Plutarch, when Mithridates died, the Roman soldiers felt that "in the person of Mithridates ten thousand enemies had died." By then, it had required three of Rome's most famous generals - Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey - to finally subdue his kingdom.

Among all the periods in ancient Egyptian history, the Ptolemaic Kingdom and its most famous ruler, Cleopatra, may be the most well-known today. By the 4th century BCE, it appeared as though ancient Egypt was in its final death throes. It had long ceased to be an influential kingdom in the Near East and Mediterranean regions, and it had been ruled over by a succession of foreign peoples including Libyans, Nubians, Assyrians, and Persians. But just when Egypt seemed doomed to pass forever into obscurity, it was reinvigorated by outsiders, most notably Alexander the Great. While in the process of campaigning to destroy the Achaemenid Persian Empire and conquer the world in 331 BCE, he made a pit stop in Egypt that forever changed the course of Egyptian history.