Editorial Princeton
Fecha de edición noviembre 2009
Idioma inglés
EAN 9780691126838
472 páginas
Libro
encuadernado en tapa dura
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. He fled into exile and returned in triumph to become a ruler of superb intelligence and fierce ambition. Hailed as a savior by his followers and feared as a second Hannibal by his enemies, he envisioned a grand Eastern empire to rival Rome. After massacring eighty thousand Roman citizens in 88 BC, he seized Greece and modern-day Turkey. Fighting some of the most spectacular battles in ancient history, he dragged Rome into a long round of wars and threatened to invade Italy itself. His uncanny ability to elude capture and surge back after devastating losses unnerved the Romans, while his mastery of poisons allowed him to foil assassination attempts and eliminate rivals.
ADRIENNE MAYOR es investigadora en estudios clásicos e historia de la ciencia en la Stanford University. Está especializada en Historia Antigua y en el conocimiento de la naturaleza contenido en los mitos precientíficos y en las tradiciones orales. Su trabajo de investigación se centra en los antiguos precursores de la ciencia popular , las alternativas y sus semejanzas con los métodos científicos modernos. Es autora, entre otros libros, de Amazonas, guerreras del mundo antiguo y de Mitrídates el Grande, enemigo implacable de Roma, ambos publicados por Desperta Ferro Ediciones, así como de numerosos artículos para revistas como Journal of American Folklore, Archaeology, Natural History, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History y Foreign Affairs. También es colaboradora habitual de la web de historia de la ciencia Wonders and Marvels.
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