Aspacures II (or Varaz-Bakur I, ka, ვარაზ-ბაკურ I), of the

Chosroid Dynasty The Chosroid dynasty (a Latinization of ''Khosro anni'', ka, ხოსრო ��ანები), also known as the Iberian Mihranids, were a dynasty of the kings and later the presiding princes of the early Georgian state of Iberia from the 4 ...

, was the king of

Iberia The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...

(

Kartli Kartli ( ka, ქართლი ) is a historical region in central-to-eastern Georgia traversed by the river Mtkvari (Kura), on which Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, is situated. Known to the Classical authors as Iberia, Kartli played a crucial rol ...

, eastern

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

) from c. 363 to 365. He was the second son of

Mirian III of Iberia Mirian III ( ka, მირიან III) was a king of Iberia or Kartli (Georgia), contemporaneous to the Roman emperor Constantine the Great ( r. 306–337). He was the founder of the royal Chosroid dynasty. According to the early medieval Ge ...

and Nana of Iberia. His name, recorded by the contemporaneous historian

Ammianus Marcellinus Ammianus Marcellinus (occasionally anglicised as Ammian) (born , died 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity (preceding Procopius). His work, known as the ''Res Gestae ...

(XXVII 12. 16), is evidently a Latinized rendition of Varaz-Bakur or Varaz-Bakar of the later, early medieval, Georgian chronicles. According to Ammianus, Aspacures was made king of Iberia by the

Sassanid The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...

King

Shapur II Shapur II ( pal, 𐭱𐭧𐭯𐭥𐭧𐭥𐭩 ; New Persian: , ''Šāpur'', 309 – 379), also known as Shapur the Great, was the tenth Sasanian King of Kings (Shahanshah) of Iran. The longest-reigning monarch in Iranian history, he reigne ...

after the overthrow of his nephew Sauromaces. His being described as "an impious man and a hater of the faith" by the Georgian chronicler Leonti Mroveli is significant in this regard: the term implied at that time

Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheisti ...

religious sympathies; and connote also his pro-Iranian political orientation. Leonti, indeed, then goes on to tell us of his becoming a Sassanid vassal.

Cyril Toumanoff Cyril Leo Toumanoff (russian: Кирилл Львович Туманов; 13 October 1913 – 4 February 1997) was a Russian-born Georgian historian and genealogist who mostly specialized in the history and genealogies of medieval Georgia, Armenia, ...

(1963), ''Studies in Christian Caucasian History'', pp. 460-461. Georgetown University Press.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aspacures 02 Of Iberia Chosroid kings of Iberia 4th-century monarchs in Asia 4th-century monarchs in Europe Vassal rulers of the Sasanian Empire Georgians from the Sasanian Empire