Mithridates VI Eupator

Mithridates VI Eupator Dionysios, celebrated as Mithridates the Great, was the King of Pontus whose relentless military and intellectual defiance made him the most dangerous enemy the Roman Republic faced between Hannibal and Julius Caesar. Claiming descent from both Cyrus the Great of Persia and Alexander the Great, Mithridates was a polyglot of extraordinary memory who famously spoke twenty-two languages fluently, allowing him to govern diverse multicultural subjects without interpreters.

Fearing assassination by poison since childhood, Mithridates ingested sub-lethal daily micro-doses of various toxic plants and minerals combined with antidotes—pioneering the universal antidote known as mithridatium and giving his name to the medical practice of mithridatism. Between 88 and 63 BCE, Mithridates waged three protracted Mithridatic Wars against Rome's greatest generals: Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey the Great. After being betrayed by his son Pharnaces at Panticapaeum, he attempted to take poison, but found his body completely immune, ordering a Gallic bodyguard to dispatch him with a sword.