Prusias II. suffered still greater disasters, owing to his own contemptible wickedness. He sent his son Nicomedes to Rome, with secret orders for his assassination. But the plot failed; and Nicomedes II., whose popularity had excited his father’s jealousy, now returned with the support of the Romans and the Pergamene king, and gained possession of the throne. He reigned fifty-eight years with the title Epiphanes (Illustrious). His son, Nicomedes III., in alliance with the Romans, made war seven years with Mithridates, king of Pontus, their most able and resolute opponent. He was twice expelled from his dominions; but after the close of the first Mithridatic War, he reigned peacefully ten years, and, having no children, left his kingdom to the Romans, B. C. 74. VII. PONTUS. =92.= Cappadocia under the Persians had been a satrapy, governed by the descendants of that Ota´nes who conspired with Darius I. against the false Smerdis. (See Book II.) In 363 B. C., a son of the satrap Mithridates revolted, and made himself king of that portion of Cappadocia which lay next the sea, and was thence called Pontus by the Greeks. This kingdom was for a short time subject to the Macedonian power; but Mithridates I., in 318 B. C., became again independent. The annals of the next two reigns are of no great importance. Mithridates III. (B. C. 245-190) enlarged and strengthened his dominion by alliances with the Asiatic monarchs, as well as by wars. His son Phar´naces conquered Sinope from the Greeks, and made it his capital. The next king, Mithridates IV. (B. C. 160-120), aided Rome against Carthage and Pergamus, and was rewarded by the addition of the Greater Phrygia to his dominions. =93.= Mithridates V., the Great, came to the throne at the age of eleven years, his father having been murdered by some officers of the court. The young prince, distrusting his guardians, began in his earliest years to accustom himself to antidotes against poison, and to spend much of his time in hunting, which enabled him to take refuge in the most rough and inaccessible portions of his kingdom. He had, however, received a Greek education at Sinope; and when, at the age of twenty, he assumed the government, he possessed not only a soul and body inured to every sort of peril and hardship, but a mind furnished with all the knowledge needful to a king. He spoke twenty-five languages, and could transact business with every tribe of his dominions, in its own peculiar dialect.