Jack-of-All-‘Saves’
How Mithradates United the Foes of Rome By Transforming into Their ‘Messiah’, Part 2
Semiotics of Salvation
Using existing Greek and Persian traditions, Mithradates presented himself as a savior of the Helleno-Persian world against an encroaching threat from the West: Rome. The Helleno-Persian King achieved this by embodying “messianic” traditions that existed within both cultures: the Eastern savior-king and the Greek divine-redeemer.
For the Perso-Anatolians, he was cast as a political messiah sent by God to punish the wicked. Mithradates’ star-signaling birth was said to fulfil Persian prophecies of a coming savior from the East, as did his name, “Mithras-sent.”
While to the Greeks, he was presented as a Greek redeemer who offered an escape from the general malaise brought on by prolonged Roman occupation. For example, he established a mythical connection with Dionysus, the god of liberation and new beginnings, and took the theonym as an extension of his own name: Mithradates Eupator Dionysus.
Via this hybridized and universalizing propaganda Perso-Anatolians and Greeks were united.
This is the second part of a two-part series exploring the savior that ancient Greece and the Near East were expecting and how…
