The Poison King: The Life And Legend Of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An amazing story of a poison-obsessed resister to Roman imperial domination. With Hannibal (who can be senses, off stage) and Jugurtha, he completes the trinity of scourges of The Empire. The scholarship and archaeology that supports this biography is impressive and adds to this work which is very readable and not dry and textbook-like.
The epilogue speculations on Mithradates cheating death and then his final wife Hypsicratea persisting in secret posing as a male historian strikes me as fanciful and detracts from the more sober tone of the rest of the book.
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