АНТОНИЯ ТРИФЕНА ОТВЪД АНОНИМНОСТТА В ЛИТЕРАТУРНИТЕ ИЗВОРИ
ANTONIA TRYPHAINA BEYOND THE ANONYMITY IN THE LITERARY SOURCES

Summary/Abstract: The theme of the last kings who ruled Thrace before it was officially annexed as a Roman province evoked new interest in the past several years. After the distant 1752, when F. Cary performed the primary systematisation of the Thracian dynastic history and linked the representatives of the Thracian and Bosporan dynastic homes, that last stage in the relative autonomy of the Thracian kingdom, as well as its link with the Northern Black Sea region, attracted sustainable research interest. A new – Sapaian – dynasty was introduced in circulation at the end of the 19th century, being defended or refuted over time, and relatively many stemmata presenting the genealogy of the last representatives of Thracian rule were constructed. An attempt is made in this text to look at that part of Thracian history through the image of a woman who had remained anonymous for the ancient authors, but has been amply attested through epigraphics and numismatics. Antonia Tryphaina is consistently represented in seven epigraphic monuments as the daughter of kings (Polemon I of Pontos and Pythodoris І), as Kotys’ wife and hence “herself queen”, as “mother of kings” next to her sons. In numismatics she is known from being presented as “queen” on coins dating from the period of her autonomous rule, as well as from her joint rule with her son Polemon. Antonia Tryphaina benefited from the privileges of her origin and marriage to become involved in the political life during the first half of the 1st century AD and to introduce her children into its intricacies. Being the representative of two ages, through the noble origin of her family from the Hellenistic/Hellenised Anatolia, she represented the declining Hellenistic tradition in Asia Minor. On the other hand, through the limitations that the desire to participate in the political life in her time imposed upon her, she was under the direct influence of the imperial family and turned into the ideal image of an amica populi Romani.

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