Aspacures II of the Chosroid Dynasty

Chosroid Dynasty

The Chosroids were a dynasty of the kings and later of the presiding princes of the early Georgian state of Iberia, natively known as Kartli, from the fourth to the ninth centuries. Of Iranian origin and a branch of the Mihranid House, the family accepted Christianity as their official religion c...

, was the king of Iberia

Caucasian Iberia

Iberia , also known as Iveria , was a name given by the ancient Greeks and Romans to the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kartli , corresponding roughly to the eastern and southern parts of the present day Georgia...

 (Kartli

Kartli

Kartli is a historical region in central-to-eastern Georgia traversed by the river Mtkvari , on which Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, is situated. Known to the Classical authors as Iberia, Kartli played a crucial role in ethnic and political consolidation of the Georgians in the Middle Ages...

, eastern Georgia

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

) from c. 363 to 365.

His name, recorded by the contemporaneous historian Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus was a fourth-century Roman historian. He wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Antiquity...

 (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 Iranian Sassanid ruler Shapur II

Shapur II

Shapur II the Great was the ninth King of the Persian Sassanid Empire from 309 to 379 and son of Hormizd II. During his long reign, the Sassanid Empire saw its first golden era since the reign of Shapur I...

 after the overthrow of his elder brother, Sauromaces

Sauromaces II of Iberia

Saurmag II |Latinized]] as Sauromaces), of the Chosroid Dynasty, was a king of Iberia from AD 361 to 363 and diarch from 370 to 378...

. His being described as "an impious man and a hater of the faith" by the Georgian chronicler Leonti Mroveli

Leonti Mroveli

Leonti Mroveli 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...

 is significant in this regard: the term implied at that time Zoroastrian religious sympathies; and connote also his pro-Iranian political orientation. Leonti, indeed, then goes on to tell us of his becoming an Iranian vassal.