CASUALTY RECORD // -65 BCE
Battle of the Lycus
Estimated casualties — killed, wounded, captured, and missing — by side, with confidence labels per surviving record.
Casualties by side
1 sides catalogued · combined 10,000 estimated
Pontic Empire
10,000
Medium-confidence figure
Battle context
The Battle of the Lycus was fought in 66 BC between Roman forces under Pompey the Great and the army of Mithridates VI of Pontus. The Romans secured a decisive victory at relatively low cost, inflicting approximately 10,000 casualties on the Pontic force of 30,000. The battle's consequences extended well beyond the engagement itself: Mithridates fled to the Kingdom of the Bosporus following the defeat and died by suicide a few years later, removing the last resistance that had sustained the Third Mithridatic War. That war, which had drawn Rome into extended and costly conflict with Pontus across several decades, effectively ended as a result of the battle's outcome. The defeat of Mithridates VI, one of Rome's most persistent eastern adversaries, consolidated Roman dominance over the region and closed the long struggle that had defined Roman engagement in Anatolia and the Black Sea periphery.
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