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Kingdom of Bosporus
Sauromates I
– King:
90-124 A.D.
Bronze ’48 Nummia’ 25mm (8.47 grams) Struck circa 90-124 A.D.
Reference: Sear GIC 5457; B.M.C.13.60,25; MacDonald 408
BACIΛЄWC CAYPOMATOY, Chair surmounted by
crown, between shield and spear (on left) and human-headed sceptre on right.
MH within wreath.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured,
provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of
Authenticity.
Tiberius Julius Sauromates I Philocaesar Philoromaios Eusebes, also
known as Sauromates I (Greek:
Τιβέριος Ἰούλιος Σαυροματης Α’ Φιλόκαισαρ
Φιλορώμαίος Eυσεbής, Philocaesar Philoromaios Eusebes, means
lover of Caesar, lover of Rome who is the Pius one, flourished the second
half of the 1st century and the first half of the 2nd century, died 123) was a
prince and
Roman Client King
of the
Bosporan Kingdom
.
Sauromates I was the son and heir of the Bosporan King
Rhescuporis I
by an unnamed wife. He was of
Greek
,
Iranian
and
Roman ancestry
. The name Sauromates is a
name of Sarmatian
origin. His paternal grandparents
were the previous ruling Bosporan Monarchs
Cotys I
and
Eunice
.
Through his paternal grandfather, Sauromates I was a descendant of the Roman
Triumvir Mark Antony
from his second marriage to his
paternal cousin Antonia Hybrida Minor (second daughter of
Roman Republican
Politician
Gaius Antonius Hybrida
, Antony’s paternal
uncle), thus Sauromates I was related to various members of the
Julio-Claudian dynasty
. He was also a
descendant of Roman Client Rulers
Polemon I of Pontus
,
Pythodorida of Pontus
and
Cotys VIII
of
Thrace
. Through his paternal grandfather,
Sauromates I was a descendant of
Greek Macedonian Kings:
Antigonus I Monophthalmus
,
Seleucus I Nicator
and
Regent
,
Antipater
. These three men served under King
Alexander the Great
. He is also descended from
the Monarchs
Mithridates VI of Pontus
and his first wife,
his sister
Laodice
and the previous Bosporan King
Asander
.
When Rhescuporis I died in 90, Sauromates I succeeded his father as Bosporan
King and reigned until his own death in 123. He was a contemporary of the
Roman Emperors
Domitian
,
Nerva
,
Trajan
and
Hadrian
. Sauromates I continued his father’s
legacy of rebuilding the Bosporan Kingdom. In 68, Rhescuporis I had restored the
Bosporan Kingdom, previously a part of the
Roman province
of
Moesia
Inferior, as a semi-independent Roman
Client State. On coins, his royal title is in Greek: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΣΑΥΡΟΜΑΤΟΥ
or of King Sauromates.
Sauromates I is mentioned in the letters of
Roman Senator
Pliny the Younger
. About 103, Pliny served as
the Roman Governor of
Bithynia
. Sauromates I sent his ambassador (legatus)
to travel to Bithynia to deliver two letters to Pliny. The nature of these
letters is unknown. The first letter requested Pliny, for a messenger to use a
diploma (a permit to use an official wagon) to assist the messenger’s journey,
which Pliny respected. The second letter was for Trajan. Pliny learned no more
than that it contained news which Trajan needed to know. An imperial freedman
called Lycormas took the second letter from Bithynia to
Rome for Trajan, a journey that would have taken 6–8 weeks.
Either Rhescuporis I or Sauromates I established
Phanagoria
as the new capital city of the
Bosporan Kingdom. From the late 1st century,
Panticapaeum
, the original capital city, had
gradually lost its importance. Phanagoria became the new capital city because of
the increasing popularity of the city’s titulary goddess,
Aphrodite
, and her cult.
In 105, Sauromates I, entrusted and appointed a priest as an official to
oversee the restoration of the porticos
at the temple at Hermonassa
. Out of his
personal religious devotion in 110, he erected a temple dedicated to Aphrodite
in Gorgippia
. In an honorific inscription
dedicated to Sauromates I, found in
Nicaea
, Sauromates I was given the honorific
title Ktistes or Founder. He was awarded this title because of his
goodness, generosity and his contributions throughout the Bosporan and
Anatolia
.
At Panticapaeum, there is in Latin an honorific inscription, dedicating and
honoring Sauromates I:
- ‘King Tiberius Julius Sauromates, an outstanding friend of Emperor and
the populus Romanus‘.
Sauromates I married an unnamed woman and had a son called
Cotys II
. Cotys II would succeed his father.
Through his son, Sauromates I would have three descendants ruling the Bosporan
that would bear his name.
In the
Roman Republic
, and later the Empire, the
curule seat (sella curulis, supposedly from currus,
“chariot”) was the chair upon which senior magistrates or promagistrates owning
imperium
were entitled to sit, including
dictators
,
masters of the horse
,
consuls
,
praetors
,
censors
, and the
curule aediles
. Additionally, the
Flamen
of
Jupiter
(Flamen Dialis) was also allowed to sit
on a sella curulis,though this position lacked imperium.
According to Livy
the curule seat, like the
Roman toga, originated in
Etruria
, and it has been used on surviving
Etruscan monuments to identify magistrates, but much earlier stools supported on
a cross-frame are known from the
New Kingdom of Egypt
. According to
Cassius Dio
, early in 44 BC a senate decree
granted
Julius Caesar
the sella curulis
everywhere except in the theatre, where his
gilded
chair and jeweled crown were carried in,
putting him on a par with the gods. As a form of
throne
, the sella might be given as an
honor to foreign kings recognized formally as friend (amicus) by the
Roman people
or
senate
.
The curule chair is used on Roman medals as well as funerary monuments to
express a curule magistracy; when traversed by a
hasta
(spear), it is the symbol of
Juno
.
The curule chair was traditionally made of or veneered with
ivory
, with curved legs forming a wide X; it
had no back, and low arms. Although often of luxurious construction, the Roman
curule was meant to be uncomfortable to sit on for long periods of time, the
double symbolism being that the official was expected to carry out his public
function in an efficient and timely manner, and that his office, being an office
of the
republic
, was temporary, not perennial. The
chair could be folded, and thus an easily transportable seat, originally for
magisterial and promagisterial commanders in the field, developed a hieratic
significance, expressed in fictive curule seats on funerary monuments, a symbol
of power which was never entirely lost in post-Roman European tradition.
6th-century consular ivory
diptychs
of Orestes and of Constantinus each
depict the consul seated on an elaborate curule seat with crossed animal legs.
Along the Silk Road
the folding seat of the
Eastern Roman Empire
made its way to China, where in various forms including the hu chuang—
the “barbarian bed”— it “transformed the dress, architecture and lifestyle of
the Chinese” In
Han China
the folding chair made its first
literary mark in the 2nd century AD, used out-of-doors in a military rather than
domestic setting, and from the way it was addressed in a poem by
Yu Jianwu
, written about 552
By the name name handed down you are from a foreign region
coming into [China] and being used in the capital
With legs leaning your frame adjusts by itself
With limbs slanting your body levels by itself…
it is clear the cross-framed folding seat was intended.
In Gaul the
Merovingian
successors to Roman power employed
the curule seat as an emblem of their right to dispense justice, and their
Capetian
successors retained the iconic seat:
the “Throne of
Dagobert
“, of cast bronze retaining traces of
its former gilding, is conserved in the
Bibliothèque nationale de France
. The “throne
of Dagobert” is first mentioned in the 12th century, already as a treasured
relic, by Abbot Suger
, who claims in his
Administratione, “We also restored the noble throne of the glorious King
Dagobert, on which, as tradition relates, the Frankish kings sat to receive the
homage of their nobles after they had assumed power. We did so in recognition of
its exalted function and because of the value of the work itself.” Abbot Suger
added bronze upper members with foliated scrolls and a back-piece. The “Throne
of Dagobert” was coarsely repaired and used for the coronation of
Napoleon
.
James I of England
(ruling 1603–13)
with a royal cross-framed armchair and standing on an
Oriental carpet
, by
Paul van Somer
Engraving of a sealing of Peter II, ca 1196—1213
In the 15th century, a characteristic
folding-chair
of both Italy and Spain was made
of numerous shaped cross-framed elements, joined to wooden members that rested
on the floor and further made rigid with a wooden back. 19th-century dealers and
collectors termed these “Dante
Chairs” or “Savonarola
Chairs“, with disregard to the centuries intervening between the two
figures. Examples of curule seats were redrawn from a 15th-century manuscript of
the Roman de Renaude de Montauban and published in Henry Shaw’s
Specimens of Ancient Furniture (1836).
The 15th or early 16th-century curule seat that survives at
York Minster
, originally entirely covered with
textiles, has rear members extended upwards to form a back, between which a rich
textile was stretched. The cross-framed armchair, no longer actually a folding
chair, continued to have regal connotations.
James I of England
was portrayed with such a
chair, its framing entirely covered with a richly patterned
silk damask
textile, with decorative nailing,
in
Paul van Somer
‘s portrait (illustration,
left). Similar early 17th-century cross-framed seats survive at
Knole
, perquisites from a royal event.
The form found its way into stylish but non-royal decoration in the
archaeological second phase of
neoclassicism
in the early 19th century. An
unusually early example of this revived form is provided by the large sets of
richly carved and gilded pliants (folding stools) forming part of long
sets with matching tabourets delivered in 1786 to the royal châteaux of
Compiègne
and
Fontainebleau
.
With their Imperial Roman connotations, the backless curule seats found their
way into furnishings for Napoleon, who moved some of the former royal pliants
into his state bedchamber at Fontainebleau. Further examples were ordered, in
the newest Empire taste:
Jacob-Desmalter
‘s seats with members in the
form of carved and gilded sheathed sabres were delivered to
Saint-Cloud
about 1805.
Cross-framed drawing-room chairs are illustrated in
Thomas Sheraton
‘s last production, The
Cabinet-Maker, Upholsterer and General Artist’s Encyclopaedia (1806), and in
Thomas Hope
‘s Household Furniture
(1807).
With the decline of archaeological neoclassicism, the curule chair
disappeared; it is not found among
Biedermeier
and other Late Classical furnishing
schemes.
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