The personal details of Hypsicratea’s life are tormentingly meager for readers keen to hear the whole story of a real Amazon and a famous historical figure. Because Mithradates was ultimately defeated (by Pom-pey in 63 BC), the history of his lifelong resistance to Roman dominance was written by the victors, writers who lived under later Roman rule. Only two works survive from antiquity with information about Hypsicratea.2 Yet we know more about Hypsicratea than we do about the legendary Thalestris—and Hypsicratea’s reality was recently confirmed by archaeology.
The earliest account of Hypsicratea comes from a collection of historical deeds compiled by the Roman moralistic writer Valerius Maximus. Hypsicratea might have only recently died at the time of Valerius’s writing in AD 14-37. In Valerius’s telling, Hypsicratea and Mithradates exemplified perfect married love. “The queen Hypsicratea loved her husband Mithradates with boundless affection" wrote Valerius. “She was happy to trade her splendid beauty for a masculine style, for she cut her hair and accustomed herself to riding horses and using weapons so that she could participate in the king’s toils and share his dangers. Indeed, when Mithra-dates was cruelly defeated by [the Roman general] Pompey and fleeing through the lands of wild peoples, Hypsicratea was his unflagging companion in body and soul. For Mithradates, her extraordinary fidelity was his greatest solace and most pleasant comfort in those bitter times and hardships. He considered that even while he was wandering in adversity he was always at home because Hypsicratea was in exile along with him.”3
This vignette is remarkable for its celebration of ideal companionship based on “genuine parity” between a man and a woman. As one modern scholar points out, this portrayal of unusual equality was accepted in patriarchal Rome because of the “special circumstances of geography and ethnicity.” The Romans expected barbarian women to behave like free men. Marriages based on companionship are a strong feature of the traditional Nart sagas of the Caucasus region; one romantic myth describes how a mythic hero and heroine couple always feel “at home” when they are together in their wagon. Later, in the Middle Ages, Boccaccio and Christine de Pizan took up the love story of Hypsicratea and Mithradates as an example of a companionate marriage between a king and his female squire disguised as a young man, and this relationship became a favorite motif in medieval tales of chivalry. Numerous paintings of Queen Hypsicratea and Mithradates on horseback leading armies appear in medieval manuscripts and medallion-coins were struck with Hypsicratea’s imagined portrait.4
What was the source of Valerius’s touching portrait of this couple? After the Mithradatic Wars, the Romans developed admiration for their old enemy and avid curiosity about his life. Anecdotes about Hypsi-cratea the Amazon circulated in Rome, and her alliance with the king was likely mentioned in some of the many lost works consulted by Valerius, such as Cornelius Nepos, a biographer active during the Mithradatic Wars. Valerius was also a friend of Sextus, a son of Pompey, the Roman general who finally defeated Mithradates. Pompey captured many of Mithradates’s family, followers, and allies (including women warriors, below) and brought them to Rome, along with the king’s archives and personal papers—even his love letters and records of his dreams. People close to Mithradates and veterans of the wars may have imparted memories or knowledge of Hypsicratea; the king’s correspondence could also have held information.5
Our second source is Plutarch (ca. AD 100), who consulted many sources for his biography of Pompey. Plutarch described Hypsicratea as a concubine (rather than wife) who served as the king’s attendant and groom. Plutarch’s picture is more accurate than that of Valerius, who suggests that she became a warrior to please Mithradates. Hypsicratea was a barbarian horsewoman who rode a “Persian steed and was dressed and armed like a Persian man. . . . She never tired of rough riding and combat,” wrote Plutarch. In stamina and courage she was Mithradates’s peer. Given the king’s love of literature, art, history, and his respect for smart, strong-willed women, we can guess that he also considered Hyp-sicratea an intellectual equal.6
No sources explain how they met. Historical evidence suggests that Hypsicratea joined Mithradates’s cavalry in 69-67 BC. In 69 BC, based in Armenia with King Tigranes, Mithradates assembled a great army to recover his kingdom of Pontus from the Romans. He gathered a force of about seventy thousand foot soldiers and thirty-five thousand cavalry from the warlike nomad tribes of Armenia, Colchis, Caucasia, and the Caspian Sea region. A flexible, light cavalry adept at lightning strikes and guerrilla tactics became the core of his new strategy to defeat the cumbersome formations of Romans hobbled by the rugged, unfamiliar terrain between the Caucasus and the Caspian. Among the nomadic peoples of these lands each man and woman was a potential warrior, raised to ride for miles on sturdy ponies and nimble horses, shooting arrows and hurling spears with deadly aim. At least some of Mithra-dates’s cavalry recruits were female; Hypsicratea may have been one of them. Another possibility is that she was among the volunteer warriors of the hinterlands of Pontus who eagerly swelled the ranks of his large army as he surged to victory there in 67 BC. In his history of the Mithra-datic Wars, Appian (b. AD 95) commented that Mithradates’s allies “included those who occupy the territory around the river Thermodon, called the country of the Amazons.”7 The general timing of their meeting is secure, but many questions remain. Was she a lone freelance fighter.? A member of a party of male and female riders.? Did she lead a band of women warriors to join forces with King Mithradates, like a real-life Penthesilea offering her services to King Priam to defend the kingdom of Troy from invaders?
Nothing is known of Hypsicratea’s tribe or homeland (in the same general territory given for Thalestris, Alexander’s lover; chapter 20). An able-bodied horsewoman signing on for war duty in Mithradates’s army would have been between sixteen and thirty (decades younger than Mithradates, robust in his midsixties). Hypsicratea’s name is Greek, the feminine form of Hypsicrates. Hypsi means “high, lofty” and krates means “power, strength.” Was this a translation of her real name.? Did she receive this Greek name when she joined Mithradates’s cavalry because she was tall or hailed from the mountains? Plutarch tells us that because of her “manly spirit and extravagant daring” Mithradates liked to call Hypsicratea by the masculine form of her name, “Hypsicrates.” This affectionate nickname made his friend an honorary male and was a token of his esteem.8
World History
