Antonia Tryphaena: a Hellenistic Queen in the Network of the Roman Imperial System
Antonia Tryphaena: a Hellenistic Queen in the Network of the Roman Imperial System

Summary/Abstract: Four women, indisputably linked through kinship, became actively intertwined through their origin and dynastic marriages, in the network of political life along the Black Sea coast: the Bosporan Kingdom, Thrace and the Pontus. Pythodoris І, Antonia Tryphaena, Pythodoris ІІ and Gepaepyris managed to benefit from their social status and to transform it into grounds for spreading their personal influence at the borderline between two ages in history: Hellenistic and Imperial. Antonia Tryphaena, daughter of Polemo І, King of Pontus, Cilicia and the Bosporus, and of his wife Pythodoris І, Queen of the Pontus, famous in ancient times for having ruled over an enormous territory after the death of her two husbands, was the link between the two dynasties – Thracian and Bosporan – in the early 1st century AD. As wife of the Thracian king Kotys, his widow and mother of his children, Tryphaena turned into an active participant in the last stage in the history of the Thracian kingdom. After her husband’s death, she succeeded in benefiting from her social status, her personal authority and financial potential, thus spreading her influence and securing to her heirs places in the world controlled by the Roman Empire, worthy of their origin.

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