The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy

by Adrienne Mayor

Italian historian Attilio Mastrocinque proposes an intriguing theory. Could the Globe of Billarus be the mysterious Antikythera device, the oldest complex scientific instrument ever discovered? This intricate, gear-driven bronze mechanism—the world’s first computer—was recovered in 1901 by sponge divers from a Roman shipwreck near Antikythera, an island north of Crete. The three-hundred-ton ship sank between 70 and 60 BC on the way to Italy, crammed with plunder from the Third Mithradatic War. The divers also brought up superb marble and bronze statues, jewelry, datable coins, and an ornate bronze throne—all treasures looted from defeated Anatolian cities allied with Mithradates, perhaps including Sinope. The strange bronze instrument apparently belonged to Mithradates or someone in his circle.