Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

by Edith Hall

Of mixed Persian and Macedonian descent, Mithridates exploited his hybridity to bolster his claim to be a new Greco-Persian unification hero. His name means “gift of Mithras,” and on his father’s side he claimed the Zoroastrian Darius I as ancestor; when it was strategically advisable, as in relation to some eastern tribes, he presented himself as Persian. On the other side, he claimed direct descent from Alexander the Great and took care to present himself as the heir to Alexander’s imperial mission as well. Like Alexander, he encouraged artists and coin designers to identify him with Dionysus, Heracles, and Perseus, along with his winged horse Pegasus; although Perseus was Greek as could be (he was held to have founded Mycenae), his name had led Xerxes to identify him as ancestor of the Persians hundreds of years before.