Bronze TVRONOS / CANTORIX

The Sequani occupied the territory of modern Franche-Comté and were among the more politically volatile Gallic peoples of the late republic period — they invited Ariovistus and his Germanic Suebi across the Rhine around 71 BC to gain advantage over their rivals the Aedui, a decision that contributed directly to the conditions Caesar used to justify his Gallic intervention. TVRONOS and CANTORIX are believed to be magistrate or chieftain names, a naming convention on Sequani bronzes that gives these issues unusual prosopographical value for reconstructing tribal leadership structures otherwise absent from written sources.