In these regions ruled king Mithradates, and that first of all in Cappadocia on the Black Sea or Pontus as it was called, a district in which, situated as it was at the northeastern extremity of Asia Minor towards Armenia and in constant contact with the latter, the Iranian nationality presumably preserved itself with less admixture than anywhere else in Asia Minor.  Not even Hellenism had penetrated far into that region.  With the exception of the coast where several originally Greek settlements subsisted—­especially the important commercial marts Trapezus, Amisus, and above all Sinope, the birthplace and residence of Mithradates and the most flourishing city of the empire—­the country was still in a very primitive condition.  Not that it had lain waste; on the contrary, as the region of Pontus is still one of the most fertile on the face of the earth, with its fields of grain alternating with forests of wild fruit trees, it was beyond doubt even in the time of Mithradates well cultivated and also comparatively populous.  But there were hardly any towns properly so called; the country possessed nothing but strongholds, which served the peasants as places of refuge and the king as treasuries for the custody of the revenues which accrued to him; in the Lesser Armenia alone, in fact, there were counted seventy-five of these little royal forts.  We do not find that Mithradates materially contributed to promote the growth of towns in his empire; and situated as he was,—­in practical, though not perhaps on his own part quite conscious, reaction against Hellenism,—­this is easily conceivable.

Acquisitions of Territory by Mithradates
Colchis
Northern Shores of the Black Sea

He appears more actively employed—­likewise quite in the Oriental style—­in enlarging on all sides his kingdom, which was even then not small, though its compass is probably over-stated at 2300 miles; we find his armies, his fleets, and his envoys busy along the Black Sea as well as towards Armenia and towards Asia Minor.  But nowhere did so free and ample an arena present itself to him as on the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, the state of which at that time we must not omit to glance at, however difficult or in fact impossible it is to give a really distinct idea of it.  On the eastern coast of the Black Sea—­which, previously almost unknown, was first opened up to more general knowledge by Mithradates—­the region of Colchis on the Phasis (Mingrelia and Imeretia) with the important commercial town of Dioscurias was wrested from the native princes and converted into a satrapy of Pontus.  Of still greater moment were his enterprises in the northern regions.(5) The wide steppes destitute of hills and trees, which stretch to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus, and of the Caspian, are by reason of their natural conditions—­more especially from the variations of temperature fluctuating between the climate of Stockholm and that of Madeira, and from the absolute