Note 219 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

This was the king Mithradates, installed by Claudius in the year 41, who some years afterwards was deposed and replaced by his brother Cotys; he lived afterwards in Rome, and perished in the confusions of the four–emperor–year (Plutarch, Galba, 13, 15). The state of the matter, however, is not clear either from the hints in Tacitus, Ann. xii. 15 (comp. Plin. H. N. vi. 5, 17), or from the report (confused by the interchange of the two, Mithradates of Bosporus, and Mithradates of Iberia) in Petrus Patricius fr. 3. The Chersonese tales in the late Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, de adm. imp. c. 53, do not, of course, come into account. The bad Bosporan king Sauromates, Κρισκωνόρου (not Ῥησκοπόρου) υἱός, who with the Sarmatians wages war against the emperors Diocletian and Constantius, as well as against the Chersonese faithful to the empire, has evidently arisen from a confusion of names between the Bosporan king and people; and just as historical as the variation on the history of David and Goliath, is the despatch of the mighty king of the Bosporans, Sauromates, by the small Chersonesite Pharnaces. The kings’ names alone, e.g. besides those named, the Asander, who comes in after the extinction of the family of the Sauromatae, suffice. The civic privileges and the localities of the city, for the explanation of which these mirabilia are invented, certainly deserve attention.