Plate with a portrait cameo depicting Mithridates VI Eupator (135–63 BC), the ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus in northern Anatolia, one of the Roman Republic’s most formidable and determined opponents. He was an effective, ambitious, and ruthless ruler who sought to dominate Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, waging several hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful wars (the Mithridatic Wars) to break Roman dominion over Asia and the Hellenic world. He cultivated an immunity to poisons by regularly ingesting sub-lethal doses; this practice, now called mithridatism, is named after him. After his death, he became known as Mithridates the Great.

After the engraving from “Iconographie grecque” (Pl.42) by Ennio Quirino Visconti published in 1808 in Paris, depicting an ancient silver coin.