Название: The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy
Автор: Adrienne Mayor
Издательство: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691126836
Год: 2009
Формат: EPUB
Страниц: 472
Размер: 5,9 МБ
Язык: Английский
Machiavelli praised his military genius. European royalty sought out his secret elixir against poison. His life inspired Mozart's first opera, while for centuries poets and playwrights recited bloody, romantic tales of his victories, defeats, intrigues, concubines, and mysterious death. But until now no modern historian has recounted the full story of Mithradates, the ruthless king and visionary rebel who challenged the power of Rome in the first century BC.
In this richly illustrated book—the first biography of Mithradates in fifty years—Adrienne Mayor combines a storyteller's gifts with the most recent archaeological and scientific discoveries to tell the tale of Mithradates as it has never been told before. The Poison King describes a life brimming with spectacle and excitement. Claiming Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia as ancestors, Mithradates inherited a wealthy Black Sea kingdom at age fourteen after his mother poisoned his father.