Tanta Syme

Tanta Syme was a Sevician statesman, senator, and politician who served in the Senate of Sevicia for more than 30 years between 620 and 650 A.S. Aside from his political standing, Syme is best remembered as the private tutor, personal mentor, and father figure of Cloe of Ida, who served as the Imperator of Sevicia from 634 to 636.
== Background and early life ==
Syme was born in the Sevician capital of Morosea in the year 588 to rich trader parents who had come from further west in the Empire. A native Itrusic, Syme was descended from a long line of merchant salesman and women from around the Cape of Sevicia, and specifically from the city of Caelum. He spent a number of years in the city of Vinarrin and considered attending the prestigious Crownhood Military Academy, but ultimately decided against it. While in Vinarrin he met Roland Persa, a councillor and state official from the city of Ida, with whom he developed a close personal friendship that would last more than half a century. In the year 618 he was named polos of the Downwater district of Morosea and two years later he was elected to the Senate of Sevicia. He would ultimately spent 33 non-consecutive years in the Senate, from 620 to 648 and then again from 651 to 656.
== Political career ==
Unlike a great many of Sevicia's Senate, Syme was considered to be a progressive. His political opinions and voting history were shaped by a desire to extend democratic and social privileges to the disenfranchised among Sevicia's lower peasant and working classes. His most notable contribution came in 631, where at the request of long-time friend Roland Persa, Syme took Persa's daughter, Cloe, as his political protege and student. A fast learner, Cloe, with the help and guidance of Syme, soon became a popular figure in Sevician political society. In 634, at the age of just 23, she was elected to the supreme office of Imperator, to serve as Sevicia's 57th official monarch.
Cloe ruled for six years between 634 and her untimely death in 640, during which time Syme remained a close personal confidant and mentor to her. When she died in 640, Syme was among those to eulogise her at her public funeral outside the Forefathers Mausoleum. He spent the next eight years as a member of the senate before retiring in 648. Three years later he would stand for re-election to the senate and win convincingly, where he served as an elder statesman of sorts for the next five years.
== Later life ==
Syme retired for a second and final time from public life in 656, at the age of 58. He remained in Morosea with his wife for a further eighteen years, before passing away in late 674 of a heart attack. He was remembered by his wife and two children.
== See also ==
Cloe of Ida
Morosea, the capital of Sevicia
The Empire of Sevicia
Category:People