A Grain of Salt

Mithridates was a very paranoid man. Maybe with good reason. After having killed off, at various times, his parents, his children, his wife (who was also his sister) and quite a few of his enemies, he realized that he might be in danger of retribution. Pontus, the place he called home, was a little too close to Rome and his wavering political allegiance caused Rome some concern. He began to take, in small doses, a number of poisons in order to build up a resistance to them. By the time Lucullus handed over the reigns of war to Pompey, the wiley old Mithridates was pretty near immune to all types of poison generally available at the time. When Pompey crushed his forces in Pontus, Mithridates packed it in and poisoned himself. It didn't work.

Or so the story goes. I'm not sure I can believe that a man, who spent as much time as Mithridates did building up an immunity to poison, would be so stupid. The source of the story
is Pliny the Elder, who was known to pull a story or two out of his ass, but it has been generally accepted for the last two thousand years, so who am I to complain. At any rate, after finding himself still alive Mithridates had a slave stab him a couple of times and then out of fear of reprisal the slave stabbed himself too. Pompey, coming across all this, in the end, was said to have found an elixir which Mithridates apparently had developed as an antidote for his poisoning habit. A mithridate is now known as an anitdote although you won't find that definition in Webster's.

The clue to the veracity of this story, I think, lies in the last line of the 72 ingredients said to be in Mithridates concoction. The antidote should, and I quote, "...be taken fasting, plus a grain of salt." Who can you trust?