Mihrdat III 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. 365 to 380 (diarch 370-378).

Mihrdat succeeded his father, Varaz-Bakur I known as Aspacures to 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...

 and installed by 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...

, the Sassanid king of Iran on the place 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...

. Mihrdat is unknown to Ammianus who continues to refer to him as Aspacures (Amm. 27.12; 30.2).

Around 370, the Iranian intervention in Iberia drew a Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 response, and Ammianus reports an expedition sent by Emperor

Roman Emperor

The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office although at any given time, a given title was associated with the emperor...

 Valens

Valens

Valens was the Eastern Roman Emperor from 364 to 378. He was given the eastern half of the empire by his brother Valentinian I after the latter's accession to the throne...

 to restore Sauromaces to the throne of Iberia. When the Roman legion

Roman legion

A Roman legion normally indicates the basic ancient Roman army unit recruited specifically from Roman citizens. The organization of legions varied greatly over time but they were typically composed of perhaps 5,000 soldiers, divided into maniples and later into "cohorts"...

s reached the river Cyrus

Kura River

Kura is a river, also known from the Greek as the Cyrus in the Caucasus Mountains. Starting in north-eastern Turkey, it flows through Turkey to Georgia, then to Azerbaijan, where it receives the Aras River as a right tributary, and enters the Caspian Sea...

, their commander Terentius and Sauromaces forged a deal with Aspacures to divide the kingdom in two along the river. Aspacures indicated that he had considered defecting to Rome, but feared for the life of his son Vitra, who was by then a hostage at the Sassanid court. He was permitted to retain the control of northeastern Iberia, while Sauromaces was established in southwest. This situation is reflected in 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...

’s story of defection of the people of Klarjeti

Klarjeti

Klarjeti was a province of ancient and medieval Georgia, which is currently part of the Artvin Province in northeastern Turkey. Klarjeti, the neighboring province of Tao and several other smaller districts constituted a larger region with shared history and culture conventionally known as...

 (in Iberia’s southwest) to the Romans.

After the Roman defeat at Adrianople

Battle of Adrianople

The Battle of Adrianople , sometimes known as the Battle of Hadrianopolis, was fought between a Roman army led by the Roman Emperor Valens and Gothic rebels led by Fritigern...

, Sauromaces was probably expelled in 378 and Aspacures presumably regained the whole kingdom.