She Died Old

Fact and fiction about Mithridates VI, king of Pontus, overlap. Supposedly, during his boyhood, he developed strength, wisdom, courage, and aggressiveness — attributes he maximized upon ascending to power — by hiding in the wilderness for nearly a decade from those who assassinated his father.

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Contemporary chroniclers claim he had a prodigious memory and was fluent in the languages of the twenty-two nations in the Black Sea region he conquered. They say he deposed and imprisoned his queen mother, married his sister, and ruled with an iron fist until his death in 63 B.C. His insistence on always being prepared is often mentioned. To guard against being poisoned, a method often used to terminate tyrants, Mithridates ingested increasingly larger, sub-lethal doses of toxins. In “The Shropshire Lad,” English poet A. E. Housman described this self-antidoting technique:

He gathered all that springs to birth From the many-venomed earth; First a little, thence to more, He sampled all her killing store….

The poet went on to relate how such preparedness once saved Mithridates’ life:

They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old.

My grandmother never heard of Mithridates, but would have admired his faith in preparedness, which she shared. Often, she put this defense to use when salesmen, or drummers as she called them, came calling. Granny lived alone in the commissary store, which also housed the farm office. Since Dad spent all his time in the fields, she was usually the only person available to meet with salesmen. One day, a lubricant peddler arrived with a machine that measured viscosity. Prepared as always, Granny wasn’t about to buy anything, but curious to see the machine work, she let him plug it in and give his sales spiel. “Ma’am, this lever allows me to exert unlimited foot-pounds of pressure, as measured by this gauge, on the two bearings whose outer surfaces are touching,” he said. “First, I’ll coat them with our leading competitor’s product.” As he pulled the lever, the bearings emitted an earsplitting squeal and screeched to a stop. “Now, just one small drop of our lubricant will do the trick — no matter how high the gauge goes.” Sure enough, the gauge’s needle reached the red zone, but the bearings continued turning. Granny smelled a rat, or more accurately, the odor of nature’s best lubricant, pure graphite, and was prepared. “Mighty impressive, young man” she said. “What is your product’s brand name?” Proudly, he showed her. She went to the storeroom and returned with a grease tube bearing the same name. “How ’bout coating those bearings with some of this?” Mortified, the drummer declined and departed. Often Granny reminded me, “Boy, few habits prolong one’s time on earth more than preparedness … which she proved: She died old.