Artaxerxes, Cyrus and Mithridates
This punishment was, allegedly, devised by the ancient Persians as far back as 500BCE. The first person to be accused of leveraging such a horrible sentence is the Persian emperor Artaxerxes.
The poor man who was executed in this way was a Persian soldier by the name of Mithridates.
In 404BCE, there was a struggle for power in Persia following the death of Darius II. Cyrus and Artaxerxes were fighting over their father’s throne and engaged in battle at a town called Cunaxa.
During the fighting, Mithridates struck Cyrus in the head killing him. In the commotion, no one quite knew what happened but Cyrus was dead and Artaxerxes had the throne to himself.
Plutarch, whose writings is what colors nearly all of the events surrounding Artaxerxes, wrote about the death of Cyrus:
Cyrus being made elate with victory, and full of confidence and force, passed through enemy lines, crying out, and that more than once, in the Persian language, “Clear the way, villains, clear the way;” which they indeed did, throwing themselves down at his feet. But his tiara dropped off his head, and a young Persian, by name Mithridates, running by, struck a dart into one of his temples near his eye, not knowing who he was, out of which wound much blood gushed, so that Cyrus, swooning and senseless, fell off his horse. — The Life of Artaxerxes
Later that evening, after the battle, while the men were drinking and toasting their victory, a drunk Mithridates boasted that he were the one that killed Cyrus on the field. It was his blow that had felled the pretender. Naturally, he thought that this was a great deed that was to be shared. He had killed Prince Cyrus and ended the civil war.
He was horribly, horribly wrong.
Artaxerxes was furious over the death of his brother and ordered Mithridates to be killed via the boats.
Plutarch describes the execution as such:
[The king] decreed that Mithridates should be put to death in boats; which execution is after the following manner: Taking two boats framed exactly to fit and answer each other, they lay down in one of them the malefactor that suffers, upon his back; then, covering it with the other, and so setting them together that the head, hands, and feet of him are left outside, and the rest of his body lies shut up within, they offer him food, and if he refuse to eat it, they force him to do it by pricking his eyes; then, after he has eaten, they drench him with a mixture of milk and honey, pouring it not only into his mouth, but all over his face. They then keep his face continually turned towards the sun; and it becomes completely covered up and hidden by the multitude of flies that settle on it. And as within the boats he does what those that eat and drink must needs do, creeping things and vermin spring out of the corruption and rottenness of the excrement, and these entering into the bowels of him, his body is consumed. When the man is manifestly dead, the uppermost boat being taken off, they find his flesh devoured, and swarms of such noisome creatures preying upon and, as it were, growing to his inwards. In this way Mithridates, after suffering for seventeen days, at last expired. — The Life of Artaxerxes
A horrible way to die, especially for a man who thought that he had performed a great act of heroism for the man who would ultimately sentence him to this fate. That was how things worked in the ancient world sometimes.
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