Uncertain Greek city in Pontus
Bronze 22mm (21.14 grams) Struck circa 130-100 B.C.
Reference: HGC 7, 310; SNG BM Black Sea 973; SNG Stancomb 649; SNG Copenhagen  232
Male head right, wearing strapal cap (bashlyk); Countermark:  facing  gorgoneion in circular incuse.
Eight-rayed star; M in one of the compartments.

* Numismatic Note: This coin may actually be a portrait coin  of Mithradates VI, the Great. The reason for this belief is that HGC 7, 236 of  the city of Amisos in Pontus, describes this male head as being possibly of  Mithradates VI. Rare type.

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Mithridates VI
King of  Kings
Mithridates VI from the Musée du Louvre
Reign	120–63 BC
Successor	Pharnaces II of Pontus
Father	Mithridates V of Pontus
Mother	Laodice VI

Mithridates VI or Mithradates VI (Greek: Μιθραδάτης),  from Old Persian Mithradatha, "gift of Mithra "; 134–63  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 120–63 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 . He  was also the greatest ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus.

Pontus is  a historical Greek designation for a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea , located in modern-day eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey . The name was applied to the coastal  region and its mountainous hinterland (rising to the Pontic Alps in the east) in antiquity by the Greeks who colonized the area and derived from  the Greek name of the Black Sea: Πόντος Εὔξεινος Pontos Euxeinos  ("Hospitable Sea"), or simply Pontos. Having originally no specific name,  the region east of the river Halys was spoken of as the country Ἐν Πόντῳ En Pontōi, "on the [Euxeinos] Pontos", and hence it acquired the name of  Pontus, which is first found in Xenophon 's Anabasis . The extent of the region varied  through the ages but generally extended from the borders of Colchis (modern Georgia ) until well into Paphlagonia in the west, with varying amounts  of hinterland . Several states and provinces  bearing the name of Pontus or variants thereof were established in the region in  the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods, culminating in the late  Byzantine Empire of Trebizond . Pontus is sometimes  considered as the home of the Amazons , with the name Amazon used not only for  a city (Amasya)  but for all of Pontus in Greek mythology .

Map showing the Middle East in 89 BC, with the Kingdom of  Pontus, under Mithridates VI the Great, in green.

History

Pontus became important as a bastion of Byzantine Greek and Greek Orthodox civilization and attracted  Greeks from all backgrounds (scholars, traders, mercenaries, refugees) from all  over Anatolia and the southern Balkans , from the Classical and Hellenistic periods into the Byzantine and Ottoman . These Greeks of Pontus are generally  referred to as Pontic Greeks .

Early inhabitants

Pontus remained outside the reach of the Bronze Age empires, of which the  closest was Great Hatti. The region went further uncontrolled by Hatti's eastern  neighbours, Hurrian states like Azzi and (or, or) Hayasa . In those days,  the best any outsider could hope from this region was temporary alliance with a  local strongman. The Hittites called the unorganised groups on their  northeastern frontier the Kaška . As of 2004 little had been found of them  archaeologically.

In the wake of the Hittite empire's collapse, the Assyrian court noted that  the "Kašku" had overrun its territory in conjunction with a hitherto unknown  group whom they labeled the Muški . Iron Age visitors to the region, mostly  Greek, noted that the hinterlands remained disunited, and they recorded the  names of tribes: Moskhians (often associated with those Muški), Leucosyri , Mares, Makrones , Mossynoikians , Tibareni , Tzans (Armenian: Chaniuk), and  Chaldians (Armenian: Khaghtik).

The Armenian language went unnoted by the Hittites,  the Assyrians, and all the post-Hittite nations; an ancient theory is that its  speakers migrated from Phrygia, past literary notice, across Pontus during the  early Iron Age.^[10]  The Greeks , who spoke a related Indo-European  tongue, followed them along the coast. The Greeks are the earliest long-term  inhabitants of the region from whom written records survive. During the late 8th  century BCE, Pontus further became a base for the Cimmerians ; however, these were defeated by the  Lydians, and became a distant memory after the campaigns of Alyattes II .

Since there was so little literacy in northeastern Anatolia until the Persian  and Hellenistic era, one can only speculate as to the other languages spoken  here. Given that Kartvelian languages remain spoken to the east of Pontus, some  are suspected to have been spoken in eastern Pontus during the Iron Age: the  Tzans are usually associated with today's Laz.

Ancient Greek  colonization

The first travels of Greek merchants and adventurers to the Pontus region  occurred probably from around 1000 BC, whereas their settlements would become  steady and solidified cities only by the 8th and 7th centuries BC as  archaeological findings document. This fits in well with a foundation date of  731 BC as reported by Eusebius of Caesarea for Sinope , perhaps the most ancient of the Greek  Colonies in what was later to be called Pontus.^[12]  The epical narratives related to the travels of Jason and the Argonauts to Colchis , the tales of Heracles ' navigating the Black Sea and Odysseus ' wanderings into the land of the Cimmerians , as well as the myth of Zeus constraining Prometheus to the Caucasus mountains as a punishment for his  outwitting the Gods, can all be seen as reflections of early contacts between  early Greek colonists and the local, probably Caucasian, peoples. The earliest  known written description of Pontus, however, is that of Scylax of Korianda , who in the 7th century BC  described Greek settlements in the area.

Persian Empire  expansion

By the 6th century BC, Pontus had become officially a part of the Achaemenid Empire , which probably meant that  the local Greek colonies were paying tribute to the Persians. When the Athenian  commander Xenophon passed through Pontus around a century  later in 401-400 BC, in fact, he found no Persians in Pontus.

The peoples of this part of northern Asia Minor were incorporated into the third and  nineteenth satrapies of the Persian empire. Iranian influence ran deep, illustrated most famously by the temple  of the Persian deities Anaitis, Omanes, and Anadatos at Zela, founded by victorious Persian generals in the 6th century BCE.  The site flourished and became so important that it was here that the people of  Pontus made their most sacred vows. Even in Strabo 's day it was still a dynamic center of  Persian culture and religion. Persian names, particularly Pharnakes, are found  scattered around the kingdom and are held most prominently by the ruling  Mithradatids, who are also the best evidence for Persian colonization of the  area. They were a powerful and noble Persian family, probably directly related  to Darius the Great himself, which in the 5th and  4th centuries BCE had held sway as dynasts over the regions of Mysia and Mariandynia on the Propontis and farther east along the south  shore of the Black Sea . As the Encyclopaedia Iranica states, even when the  Mithradates known as “Founder” proclaimed himself king in the early years of the  3rd century BCE, and the family adopted some of the ways of Hellenism and  Hellenistic courts, in particular the use of Greek as the official language,  they continued proudly to proclaim their royal Achaemenid lineage: their search  for respectability and legitimization through Persian descent attests a deep and  powerful Persian ethos in the people of Pontus.

Pontus came out from Persian domination when the Kingdom of Cappadocia separated from the Achaemenid  Empire, taking Pontus with it as one of its provinces. Subsequently, Pontus  itself separated from the Kingdom of Cappadocia under Mithridates I Ktistes ("Ktistes", Κτίστης  meaning "The Founder", Constructor in Greek) in 302 BC and became independent.  As the greater part of the kingdom he eventually established lay within the  immense region of Cappadocia, which in early ages extended from the borders of Cilicia to the Euxine (Black Sea), the kingdom as a whole was  at first called "Cappadocia towards the Pontus", but afterwards simply "Pontus",  the name Cappadocia being henceforth restricted to the southern half of the  region previously included under that title.

Kingdom of Pontus

The Kingdom of Pontus extended generally to the  east of the Halys River. The Persian dynasty which was to found this kingdom  had during the 4th century BC ruled the Greek city of Cius (or Kios) in Mysia , with its first known member being Ariobarzanes I of Cius and the last ruler based  in the city being Mithridates II of Cius . Mithridates II's son,  also called Mithridates, would become Mithridates I Ktistes of Pontus.

As the Encyclopaedia Iranica states, the most  famous member of the family, Mithradates VI Eupator , although undoubtedly  presenting himself to the Greek world as a civilized philhellene and new  Alexander, also paraded his Iranian background: he maintained a harem and  eunuchs in true Oriental fashion; he gave all his sons Persian names; he  sacrificed spectacularly in the manner of the Persian kings at Pasargadae (Appian, Mith. 66, 70); and he  appointed “satraps”  (a Persian title) as his provincial governors. Iranica further states, and  although there is only one inscription attesting it, he seems to have adopted  the title “king of kings.” The very small number of Hellenistic Greek  inscriptions that have been found anywhere in Pontus suggest that Greek culture did not substantially penetrate  beyond the coastal cities and the court.

During the troubled period following the death of Alexander the Great , Mithridates Ktistes was  for a time in the service of Antigonus , one of Alexander's successors , and successfully maneuvering in  this unsettled time managed, shortly after 302 BC, to create the Kingdom of  Pontus which would be ruled by his descendants mostly bearing the same name,  until 64 BC. Thus, this Persian dynasty managed to survive and prosper in the Hellenistic world while the main Persian Empire had fallen.

This kingdom reached its greatest height under Mithridates VI or Mithridates Eupator, commonly  called the Great, who for many years carried on war with the Romans. Under him,  the realm of Pontus included not only Pontic Cappadocia but also the seaboard  from the Bithynian frontier to Colchis , part of inland Paphlagonia , and Lesser Armenia . Despite ruling Lesser Armenia,  King Mithridates VI was an ally of Armenian King Tigranes the Great , to whom he married his  daughter Cleopatra. Eventually, however, the Romans defeated both King  Mithridates VI and his son-in-law, Armenian King Tigranes the Great, during the Mithridatic Wars , bringing Pontus under Roman  rule.

Roman province

 

With the subjection of this kingdom by Pompey in 64 BC, in which little changed in the  structuring of life, neither for the oligarchies that controlled the cities nor  for the common people in city or hinterland, the meaning of the name Pontus  underwent a change. Part of the kingdom was now annexed to the Roman Empire , being united with Bithynia in a  double province called Pontus and Bithynia: this part included only the  seaboard between Heraclea (today Ereğli ) and Amisus (Samsun),  the ora Pontica. The larger part of Pontus, however, was included in the  province of Galatia.

Hereafter the simple name Pontus without qualification was regularly employed  to denote the half of this dual province, especially by Romans and people  speaking from the Roman point of view; it is so used almost always in the New Testament . The eastern half of the old  kingdom was administered as a client kingdom together with Colchis . Its last king was Polemon II .

In AD 62, the country was constituted by Nero a Roman province . It was divided into the three  districts: Pontus Galaticus in the west, bordering on Galatia ; Pontus Polemoniacus in the  centre, so called from its capital Polemonium ; and Pontus Cappadocicus in  the east, bordering on Cappadocia (Armenia Minor). Subsequently, the Roman  Emperor Trajan moved Pontus into the province of  Cappadocia itself in the early 2nd century AD. In response to a Gothic raid on Trebizond in 457 AD, the Roman  Emperor Diocletian decided to break up the area into  smaller provinces under more localized administration.

 

With the reorganization of the provincial system under Diocletian (about AD  295), the Pontic districts were divided up between three smaller, independent  provinces within the Dioecesis Pontica :

• Galatian Pontus, also called Diospontus, later renamed Helenopontus by Constantine the Great after his mother . It had its capital at Amisus , and included the cities of Sinope , Amasia , Andres , Ibora , and Zela as well.
• Pontus Polemoniacus, with its capital at Polemonium (also called Side ), and including the cities of Neocaesarea , Argyroupolis , Comana, and Cerasus as well.
• Cappadocian Pontus, with its capital at Trebizond, and including  the small ports of Athanae and Rhizaeon . This province extended all the  way to Colchis.

Byzantine  province and theme

The Byzantine Emperor Justinian further reorganized the area in 536:

• Pontus Polemoniacus was dissolved, with the western part (Polemonium  and Neocaesarea) going to Helenopontus, Comana going to the new province of Armenia II , and the rest (Trebizond and  Cerasus) joining the new province of Armenia I Magna with its capital at  Justinianopolis.
• Helenopontus gained Polemonium and Neocaesarea, and lost Zela to Armenia II. The provincial governor was relegated to the rank of moderator.
• Paphlagonia absorbed Honorias and was put under a praetor .

By the time of the early Byzantine Empire, Trebizond became a center of  culture and scientific learning. In the 7th century, an individual named  Tychicus returned from Constantinople to establish a school of learning. One of  his students was the early Armenian scholar Anania of Shirak .

Under the Byzantine Empire, the Pontus came under the Armeniac Theme , with the westernmost parts (Paphlagonia)  belonging to the Bucellarian Theme . Progressively, these large  early themes were divided into smaller ones, so that by the late 10th century,  the Pontus was divided into the themes of Chaldia , which was governed by the Gabrades  family, and Koloneia. After the 8th century, the area experienced a period of  prosperity, which was brought to an end only by the Seljuk conquest of Asia Minor in the 1070s and  1080s. Restored to the Byzantine Empire by Alexios I Komnenos , the area was governed by  effectively semi-autonomous rulers, like the Gabras family of Trebizond.

Empire of Trebizond

Following Constantinople's loss of sovereignty to the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Pontus retained  independence as the Empire of Trebizond under the Komnenos dynasty. Through a combination of  geographic remoteness and adroit diplomacy, this remnant managed to survive,  until it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1461 after the Fall of Constantinople itself. This political  adroitness included becoming a vassal state at various times to both Georgia and  to various inland Turkic rulers. In addition, the Empire of Trebizond became a  renowned center of culture under its ruling Komnenos dynasty.