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 4t ...

, 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 role ...

, 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 Geo ...

and

Nana of Iberia Nana ( ka, ნანა) was a Queen consort of the Kingdom of Iberia as the second wife of Mirian III in the 4th century. For her role in the conversion of Georgians to Christianity she is regarded by the Georgian Orthodox Church as saint and is ...

. His name, recorded by the contemporaneous historian

Ammianus Marcellinus Ammianus Marcellinus (occasionally Anglicisation, anglicised as Ammian) (born , died 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Ancient history, antiquity (preceding Procopius). His w ...

(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 reigned fo ...

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 Leonti Mroveli ( ka, ლეონტი მროველი) was the 11th-century Georgian chronicler, presumably an ecclesiastic. ''Mroveli'' is not his last name, but the adjective for the diocese of Ruisi, whose bishop he probably was.Rayfiel ...

is significant in this regard: the term implied at that time

Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religions, Iranian religion and one of the world's History of religion, oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian peoples, Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a Dualism in cosmology, du ...

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 Georgetown University Press is a university press affiliated with Georgetown University that publishes about forty new books a year. The press's major subject areas include bioethics, international affairs, languages and linguistics, political sc ...

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