title: The Arrival of the Romans
abstract: Abstract Mithridates II was succeeded by his ephemeral son, Mithridates III, and then by 220 bc his son, Pharnakes I, was on the throne. He was a powerful and aggressive monarch who ruled for over thirty years and greatly expanded the territorial extent of the kingdom. He lived in an era of great change in the Hellenistic world, as the Romans began to become involved in the destinies of the eastern Mediterranean states: Pharnakes reached out to the Romans in the 180s bc concerning territorial di