Aristarchus was appointed, in 63 BC, by Pompey on his conquest of Colchis, a region on the Black Sea, in the course of the Third Mithridatic War which pitted Rome against Mithridates VI of Pontus. Aristarchus's becoming "a dynast of the Colchians" is reported by Appian. The fact of appointment of a new ruler in Colchis is also known to Strabo, but he does not specify the dynast's name. As Aristarchus's extant drachms confirm he was "over Colchis", but he was not a king despite being so called by the 4th-century historian Eutropius.[2][3]
Aristarchus was probably one of the local aristocrats, skeptouchoi ("sceptre-bearers"), who chose to side with the Romans during the war with Mithridates. The only other skeptouchos known by name, Olthaces, was made prisoner by Pompey and paraded in the streets of Rome as part of his triumphal procession. The extent of Aristarchus's possessions is not known. He could have sat at Phasis, at modern Poti, the end-point of Pompey's Colchian campaign, or Dioscurias, an important Hellenistic city, probably near modern-day Sukhumi, where one of his coins has been found. The year 12 on Aristarchus's coinage indicates that his rule in Colchis continued to at least 52 or 51 BC and probably later, until c. 47 BC, when the late king Mithridates's son, Pharnaces II, took advantage of a civil war in Rome and conquered Colchis.[2][3]
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