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on hints far more subtle thanthis, and within hours Mithridates was on the run. 3
    The year 300 BC saw the fugitive dug into the mountains of Paphlagonia, on the westernmost border of his family’s future kingdom. With the fortress town of Cimiata as his base, Mithridates took advantage of the confusion elsewhere in Asia Minor to begin gouging himself a little kingdom out of the inland river valleys to the east. The next time Mithridates appears in the historical record is as an ambitious upstart with predatory designs on the town of Amastris on the Black Sea coast. Amastris, founded by a Greek noblewoman, was also claimed by the Greek city of Heraclea, on the grounds that Amastris’ founder had been a Heracliot. However, Heraclea had fallen out with the current Seleucid king, who, partly to spite the Heracliots, handed Amastris to Ariobarzanes, son of Mithridates. The dynasty thus won its first Greek city, a handsome establishment with two good harbours, and a thriving business in exporting boxwood from the immediate interior.
    In 281 BC the Seleucids made an effort to bring the embryonic Pontic kingdom back under their control, but Mithridates fought them off with the help of the newly–arrived Galatians. It is probable that he issued his first coins at this point, defiantly asserting the independence that his kingdom had just so conclusively proven. By the time this Mithridates died in 266 BC, he well deserved his nickname of Ctesias (‘founder’). He left his heir a small but well–appointed realm with considerable potential for expansion.
    All that is known of the heir, Ariobarzanes, once he changed from ruling Amastris to Pontus as a whole, is that the kingdom was so weak that the Galatians successfully ravaged the place on his death. However, this does not mean that Ariobarzanes had not been busy during his reign. One of the distinguishing features of the area that was to become Pontus is a range of mountains created by the earthquake–prone Anatolian fault line. These mountains, home of almost the only temperate rainforests on the Eurasian landmass, separate a coastal plain only a few miles wide from the interior of Asia Minor. The drier, warmer interior of this area is dominated by the systems of the Halys and the Lycus rivers. It is quite possible that Ariobarzanes followed his father’s example and spent his time busily expanding up these river valleys, out of sight of the Greek cities of the coast on whom our historical record relies.
    Certainly by the time Mithridates II came to the throne in about 250 BC he was considered suitable to marry a daughter of the Seleucid royal house, and the proud Seleucids did not marry off their offspring to just anybody. Bloodlines were very important to the royalty of Asia Minor, mainly becausekingdoms were very seldom inherited by those outside a rambling network of relatives by marriage. This was certainly not due to family affection, but because the powerful landowners on whom the kings relied for financial and military support preferred that this was so. For Mithridates II to be admitted to the ranks of the Seleucid family suggests both that the Mithridatid claim to Persian royal blood was credible, and that Ariobarzanes had indeed built a good–sized extension on to the family property. Later, Mithridates VI was to claim Phrygia as part of the Pontic kingdom on the basis that Mithridates II had received it as part of his wife’s dowry.
    Lying just to the southeast of Pontus, Phrygia was not a particularly good fit with the then-existing borders of the kingdom. A mountainous area, it was both where Alexander had cut the Gordian knot and where Midas had his golden touch. However, Phrygia had suffered badly at the hands of the Galatians, and the nascent power of Pergamum had a firm grip on what was left. Mithridates II chose instead to concentrate on the northeastern seaboard, where citizens of the wealthy Greek city of Sinope suddenly became aware that the power