Mithridates VI Eupator king of Pontus and the venomous snakes

摘要

We read with interest the paper by Elham Behzadyand Payam Behzadi published in Central EuropeanJournal of Urology (2016; 69: 404-410) entitled“The role of toll-like receptors (TLRs) in urinarytract infections (UTIs)” [1]. In this article, these authorsquote (their reference n.7) a paper written byus entitled “Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus andmithridatism”, whichappeared in Allergy (2012; 67:138-140) [2] and attach to us fake statements thatwe never made and that we entirely disagree with.Particularly we want to stress that:1. Mithridates VI king of Pontus (132-63 BC) neverruled Iran (Parthia). At that time, in fact, Iran wasunder the Arsacid domination. An Aarsacid king,Mithridates II the Great (123-88 BC) effectively governedParthia but he was not king of Pontus. Thetwo kings Mithridates VI of Pontus and MithridatesII of Parthia shared the same name and lived in theMithridates VI Eupator king of Pontus and the venomous snakessame time. This can explain some confusion but thetwo rulers must nott be mistaken fork each other.2. Most importantly, our paper [2] was written torefute an article by Ring and Gutermuth statingthat Mithridates VI Eupator, king of Pontus, usedincreasing doses of snake venom to make himselfimmune against poisons [3]. In our paper [2] westressed that snake venoms are universally knownto be, essentially, a mixture of enzymatic proteinsthat, if consumed by mouth, are digested and, therefore,inactivated in the gastro-intestinal tract. Wealso clearly reported that, in the first century BC,the loss of toxicity of snake venoms, if they are takenby mouth, was already known as it is reported, forexample, by the Roman writer Lucan (Bellum Civile/Pharsalia 9.614). Therefore, it is quite unlikely thata snake venom was used by Mithridates VI king ofPontus to strengthen himself against poisons.