Letter-Writing and Rhetoric in the Mithridates Letters

Mithridates is the name this site attaches to a later letter-book, not to an autograph of Mithridates VI of Pontus (first century BCE). Later reports place the composition in the first or second century CE, in the voice of that king in the wars with Rome.

What this site holds is one heading: Letter composition. The historical king’s own books are not here. One report sends such letters as an appendix to Sallust, a Latin historian.

The Greek, where the letters are Greek, is λόγος in a borrowed mouth. This is a later composition under a royal name, not Pontic state papers, and not a Latin autograph of the king.