It was rather the peculiarly Oriental lack of initiative; and in these peaceful lands, amidst these effeminate nations, strange and terrible things might happen, if once there should appear among them a man who knew how to give the signal for revolt.
Mithradates Eupator There reigned at that time in the kingdom of Pontus Mithradates VI surnamed Eupator (born about 624, 691) who traced back his lineage on the father's side in the sixteenth generation to king Darius the son of Hystaspes and in the eighth to Mithradates I the founder of the Pontic kingdom, and was on the mother's side descended from the Alexandrids and the Seleucids.

After the early death of his father Mithradates Euergetes, who fell by the hand of an assassin at Sinope, he had received the title of king about 634, when a boy of eleven years of age; but the diadem brought to him only trouble and danger.
His guardians, and even as it would seem his own mother called to take a part in the government by his father's will, conspired against the boy-king's life.

It is said that, in order to escape from the daggers of his legal protectors, he became of his own accord a wanderer, and during seven years, changing his resting-place night after night, a fugitive in his own kingdom, led the homeless life of a hunter.

Thus the boy grew into a powerful man.

Although our accounts regarding him are in substance traceable to written records of contemporaries, yet the legendary tradition, which is generated in the east with the rapidity of lightning, early adorned the mighty king with many of the traits of its Samsons and Rustems.
These traits, however, belong to the character, just as the crown of clouds belongs to the character of the highest mountain-peaks; the outlines of the figure appear in both cases only more coloured and fantastic, not disturbed or essentially altered.