Armenia and Her People; or, The Story of Armenia by an Armenian

by George H. Filian

ARSHAGOONIAN OR ARSACID DYNASTY.

This dynasty began not far from 150 B.C.,—close to the time when Carthage was utterly destroyed, and Greece was finally subjugated; it ended 428 A.D., about half a century before the extinction of the Western Roman Empire, and about the time Genseric and his Vandals conquered Africa. It is by far the most famous of the Armenian royal houses; for it embraces the very heart of the classic times with which all educated people are familiar, it brings us perpetually in contact with the most brilliant and best-known of classic names, it is sprinkled itself with names towering up familiar and powerful, even among the Greek and Roman magnates; and, in spite of political ups and downs, it covers a time of immense expansion for the Armenian people, of a firmly rooted growth in numbers, wealth, and consciousness of national unity, which has enabled the nation to survive and keep its united being through many centuries of dismemberment, impoverishment, massacre, and attempts at outright extermination again and again. More than all, it covers the time of Jesus Christ, and the conversion of Armenia to his religion, first of all the nations of the earth, as by its history and traditions it ought to have been.

During the time between the disappearance of the line of Haig and the rise of the line of Arshag, Armenia was not by any means wholly without kings of its own; but it was mostly a dependency.

Alexander the Great, after his conquest, put a native governor named Mihran over it; but on Alexander’s death, five years later (323 B.C.), his generals partitioned the Macedonian Empire among themselves, and Armenia fell to Neoptolemus. His government was at once so oppressive, and so contemptuous of native feeling (he and his court were Greeks, and despised all Asiatics), that the people rose and drove him out in 317, under the lead of one Arduat (Ardvates), who remained their king for thirty-three years; but he left no successor, and Armenia was conquered by and became part of the great Syrian Empire founded by Seleucus. It remained so in the main for about three quarters of a century, though the eastern part (Kurdistan), fell under the Parthian kings. Armenia was never a very quiet province, however, and its revolts against the Syrian satraps kept it much of the time in a half-anarchic state. About 210 B.C. Antiochus the Great quelled one of these uprisings, and divided the country into Greater and Lesser Armenia (whose boundaries I have described), putting a separate deputy over each. But after his crushing defeat by the Romans at Magnesia in 189 B.C., and having to buy peace by giving up everything beyond the Halys, each governor proclaimed his province an independent kingdom. Zadriades (Zadreh), in Lesser Armenia founded a family which kept their hold for almost exactly a century, when Tigranes II once more united the two Armenias. Artaxias (Ardashes), in Greater Armenia was powerful as long as he lived, and sheltered Hannibal at his court when the Romans had set a price on the head of their great foe; but about the middle of the century his family was dispossessed by Mithridates of Parthia, who conquered the country. The family name of this Parthian house was Arshag, rendered by the Greeks Arsakes, spelled by the Romans Arsaces. Mithridates made Greater Armenia a kingdom for his brother Wagh-arshag (Val-arsaces), whose family remained in succession to the throne, though sometimes eclipsed for long periods from actual occupation of it, for six hundred years. The new king had the great hereditary ability both in war and statesmanship which characterized the whole Arsacid line, and the Mithridates in particular, and its great knowledge of men. He knew an able man when he saw him, and liked to raise him up; he promoted industry and built cities; he reformed the system of laws and their administration as well.

The new line did not escape the usual fate of Eastern dynasties, of having disputes over the succession, in which their neighbors interfered. In 94 B.C., Dikran or Tigranes II (great-grandson of Wagh-Arshag), owed his possession of the throne of Greater Armenia to his third cousin, Mithridates II (the Great), of Parthia, who exacted seventy Armenian valleys as the price; probably part of Kurdistan. Tigranes, however, paid no more blood-money to anybody when once on the throne. On the contrary, he began at once to overrun and annex the neighboring states. He first conquered Lesser Armenia, and made it one with its sister again; then part of Syria, so long the mistress of his own state; then, in a series of wars with the weak successors of Mithridates, he half destroyed the Parthian Empire itself, not only recovering the seventy valleys he had paid for his throne, but conquering Media, and annexing Mesopotamia and Adiabene. After these conquests he called himself “King of Kings” (that is, emperor, king with other kings under him), which title the Parthian kings had claimed theretofore. He would probably have ended by mastering and restoring the unity of the old Seleucid Kingdom in its widest extent, the whole heart of Western Asia, had he not in an evil hour been induced by that reckless old fighter, his father-in-law, Mithridates of Pontus, to join him in war against the Romans. Tigranes’ own son had quarreled with him, and taken refuge with the King of Parthia, whose daughter he married; and now offered to guide his father-in-law into Armenia if he would invade it as the ally of the Romans. This was done, and Tigranes the elder had to fly to the mountains; but the Parthian king grew tired of the siege of rock castles, and went home, leaving his son-in-law to carry on operations with part of the army. The great Armenian king at once broke loose and annihilated the forces of his son, who fled to Pompey, just invading Armenia with the Roman army. Even the great Tigranes was no match for Rome, and had to surrender. Pompey was not harsh with him, but left him Armenia (except Sophene and Gordyene, which were made into a kingdom for his son), and his Parthian conquests; even going so far as to send a Roman division to wrest these from the Parthian king, who had re-conquered them on Tigranes’ defeat, and restore them to the latter. On the departure of Pompey the Parthian once more reclaimed them, but a compromise was finally made. Phraates of Parthia, however, resumed once more the title of “King of Kings.” Tigranes remained the ally of the Romans till his death in 55 B.C.; a reign of thirty-nine years, on the whole of great glory and usefulness.

He was succeeded by his son, Artavasdes (Ardvash) II, who inherited that most dreadful of legacies, a place between the hammer and the anvil. For the next quarter of a century the Romans, and the steadily growing and consolidating power of the Parthian Empire were alternately irresistible in Eastern Anatolia; it was impossible to avoid taking sides, for neutrality meant invasion by one party or the other; and whichever side he took he was sure to be punished for as soon as the other came uppermost. If Artavasdes had been as dexterous as Alexius Comnenus himself, he could hardly have escaped ruin; that he kept his throne for over twenty years is proof that he was not unworthy of his father. First came the invasion of Parthia by Crassus; Artavasdes, faithful to his father’s Roman allegiance; asked him to make the invasion by way of Armenia, and offered to help him. Crassus refused, but the Parthian king, Orodes, invaded Armenia; however, he made peace, and betrothed his eldest son, Pacorus, to Artavasdes’ daughter, just before news was brought him of the annihilation of Crassus’ army, guaranteed by Crassus’ severed head and hand. The civil wars at Rome for years to come broke the Roman power, and the Parthians (with the good-will of the inhabitants, who detested the Roman proconsuls), swept westward, compelled submission or alliance from all the countries to the Taurus, and even annexed all Syria for a time, just as seven centuries later the Syrians, from hate of the Byzantine governors, gave up their cities to the Saracens. But the Roman power once more rallied; the Parthians were driven out of Syria, and Pacorus was killed; the aged Orodes, under whom the Parthian Empire proper reached its pinnacle, died, leaving the throne to one of those jealous murderous despots so familiar in Eastern history, who made a general slaughter of his brothers, and even murdered his son, to remove any possible leader of a revolt, and Artavasdes once more returned to the Roman alliance. In the year 36 A.D., Mark Antony undertook the task Crassus had so terribly failed in seventeen years before, of striking at the heart of Parthia; but this time the invasion was by way of Armenia. It was almost as frightful a disaster as the former; a third of the army of 100,000 men was destroyed by the enemy, 8,000 died of cold and storm in the Armenian mountains, the wounded died in enormous numbers; but that Artavasdes let the army winter in his country it would have perished as completely as Crassus’ did. In spite of this, the Romans, wanting a scapegoat, laid the whole blame on Artavasdes, without a shadow of reason that can be shown. It was the last time for a century and a half that the Romans attacked Parthia. In default of that plunder, they resolved to have Armenia, and a couple of years later, in the year 33 A.D., they seized Artavasdes by treachery, and occupied the country. The Parthians at once took up the cause of his son, Artaxes, and made war on the Romans to seat him on the throne; and when the Roman troops were withdrawn to help Antony’s cause, which was lost in the battle of Actium, the Parthians overran Armenia, and killed all the Romans in the country, and made their candidate king as Artaxes II. This was in 30 B.C., and in the same year his father, Artavasdes, who had been carried to Alexandria by Antony, was beheaded by Cleopatra. But the very next year the worthless tyrant Phraates of Parthia was driven from the throne by a rebellion, and Artaxes made peace with Rome.

The history of Artavasdes’ reign is in essence the history of the next four centuries, save that the results were incomparably worse. We have been dealing with a time at least of steady, single-handed government, of able rulers either inside or outside, of some sort of ability to keep the civil structure of the country from breaking to pieces; but even that disappears over long periods in the early centuries of the Roman Empire. One great secret of Armenia’s misery during these ages of woe—indeed, to a large extent during all the ages since—lies in the fact that she is a borderland; a buffer between great states, and indeed between great natural divisions of climate and society. She is the boundary between semi-tropic Central Asia and temperate Eastern Europe, touching the land of the fig and the silk-worm on the one side, and that of the apple and the mountain goat on the other; between Scythian steppes and Syrian deserts. In these earlier ages she was fought for between east, west, and south,—Parthia, Rome, and a Syro-Egyptian power of some sort; in these days divided between east, west, and north,—Persia the successor of Parthia, Turkey the successor of Rome, while the southern power is ages dead, and a great northern power, Russia, has grown up in the steppes. Had Armenia been smaller, or more level, she would have perished without a struggle, perhaps rather would never have existed; but her territory is so large and so defensible that her history could have been predicted,—final dismemberment between great states surrounding her, yet not without ages of desperate struggle. She was not large enough to be permanently the seat of empire; she was far too large for either rival to let pass wholly into the hands of the other—so she was pulled to pieces. But she wanted to control her own destiny, and made a long and heroic fight before being dismembered.

To write the history of the next few centuries would tire out all my readers, and would not do any good; it was a long duel between Rome and Persia for the ownership of Armenia, in which the prosperity and happiness of their unhappy foot-ball nearly perished. Almost the whole foreign policy of Parthia was to control, or to have a paramount influence in Armenia; almost the whole foreign policy of Rome in the East was to do the same thing. For nearly a century following Artavasdes’ deposition, though the Romans professed to govern the country and the Parthians sometimes held it, and both sides repeatedly put kings on its throne, it was actually in a state of pure anarchy. Every great family, seeing it must depend on its own strength for preservation, extended its rule over as wide a district as would submit; nearly two hundred houses acted with perfect independence of each other, and of the nominal government, and some of them established principalities of considerable size. After this, though the country was for century after century just the same shuttlecock between the rival states, the feudal anarchy was somewhat reduced, the turbulent nobility better held in check, but it was impossible that there should be really firm and orderly government when a king could not be secure of his throne for a year on one side or the other, and dared not render his powerful subjects disaffected by making them obey the laws. We may be sure that the government was really an oligarchy under the forms of a monarchy, and even the title “King of Armenia” during this period must not be taken to mean too much. There were sometimes separate kings of Upper and Lower Armenia, one under Roman, and one under Parthian influence; the independent princes often made head against both, and outlying principalities, like those of Osrhoene and Gordyene probably got hold of more or less Armenian territory in the melee. No king of Armenia after Tigranes ever held sway over all of old Armenia for any length of time, if at all. But any king who got an acknowledged position at all was invariably an Arshagoonian; the people considered that line the only rightful kings. Artavasdes III, whom the Romans seated in power just before the birth of Christ; Tigranes IV, who expelled him by Parthian aid the year of Christ’s birth; Vonones, a deposed Parthian king, who got himself chosen king as the Roman favorite in 16 A.D., but was persuaded by Tiberius to retire; Arsaces, son of the king of Parthia, assassinated by the king of Iberia whose brother was the Roman candidate, about the time of the crucifixion; Ervand, who made himself master of the land after a fashion, in 58; Dertad (Tiridates), set up by the Parthians in 52, and acknowledged by the Romans in 66; Exedarus (Eshdir?) son of the Parthian king, given the throne with Roman consent about 100, pulled down by his uncle in 114, resulting in the conquest of the country by Trajan; Sohaemus, set up by the Romans about 150, dethroned by the Parthians in 162 in favor of another Arsacid, restored by the Romans in 164; and the other fleeting monarchs of this long nightmare were all of the same line of Arshag, which in Armenia survived for over two centuries its brother line in Parthia, the last of whom, Ardvan (Artabanus), was slain in battle in 224 by Ardashir (Artaxerxes), first of the Sassanian house, and founder of the Persian Empire. But I must go back a little.

The most important event in the history of any nation is its conversion to Christianity, and therefore we wish to know when the Armenians first came to believe in Christ, and how it came about. Of course it did not come all at once; but it came very early, and the story of the first converts is very curious. According to the Armenian church history, and also the great Christian father Eusebius, it came through King Abgar or Apkar (Abgarus), the fifteenth king of the little kingdom of Osrhoene, in northern Mesopotamia, whose capital was the flourishing city of Edessa, now Oorfa; it lay next the southern border of Armenia.

The church history gives the following account:

“The origin of Christianity in Armenia dates from the time of its king Abgar, who reigned at the beginning of the Christian era; he had his seat of government in the city of Edessa, and was tributary to the Romans.

“Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Judea, was hostile to king Abgar, but was unable to injure him except by exciting the Romans against him. He therefore accused him falsely, to the Emperor Tiberius, of rebellious projects. King Abgar, on being made acquainted with this accusation, hastened to send messengers to the Roman general Marinus, then governor of Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, for the purpose of vindicating himself. During their stay in Palestine these messengers—among whom was Anane, Abgar’s confidant—hearing of the wonders that were wrought by our Saviour, determined to visit Jerusalem, in order to gratify their curiosity.

“When, therefore, their mission was concluded, they proceeded thither and were filled with wonder at witnessing the miracles performed by Jesus our Lord.

“On returning to Armenia they related all the particulars to their master. Abgar, after having listened to their narrative, became satisfied that Jesus was the son of God, and immediately wrote to him as follows:

“ ‘Abgar, son of Arsham, to Jesus, the great healer, who has appeared in the country of Judea at the city of Jerusalem—greeting Lord,—I have heard that thou dost not heal by medicines but only through the Word; that thou makest the blind to see, the lame to walk; that thou cleansest the lepers and makest the deaf to hear; that thou castest out devils, raiseth the dead, and healest through the word only. No sooner had the great miracles that thou performest been related to me, than I reflected, and now believe that thou art God and the son of God, descended from heaven to perform these acts of beneficence. For this reason I have written thee this letter, to pray thee to come to me, that I may adore thee and be healed of my sickness by thee, according to my faith in thy power. Moreover, I have heard that the Jews murmur against thee, and seek to slay thee. I pray thee, therefore, come to me; I have a good little city, which is enough for both of us, and there we can peaceably live together.’ ”

The messengers sent with the letter were instructed to offer sacrifices for the King at the temple in Jerusalem; and one of them was a painter, who was to make a portrait of the Saviour, that if he would not come, the king might at least have his features. Jesus received the letter joyfully,—as it was the day of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the messengers did not venture to approach him, and it was taken to him by the apostles Philip and Andrew,—and dictated the following answer to the apostle Thomas:

“Blessed be he who believes in me without having seen me; for thus it is written of me: Those who see me shall not believe in me; and those who do not see me, they shall believe and be saved. Inasmuch as you have written to me to go to you, know that it is necessary I should fulfill here all for which I have been sent. And when I shall have done so, I shall ascend to Him who sent me; and then I will send you one of my disciples, who shall remove your pain, and shall give life to you and those around you.”

The painter could not execute his order on account of the multitude; the Saviour at last noticed him, and causing him to approach, passed a handkerchief over his face and miraculously imprinted on it a perfect likeness of his countenance, and then gave it to him, and bade him take it to his master as a reward for his faith. The king received the letter and portrait with great joy, and put them in safe custody, and awaited the fulfillment of our Lord’s promise.

After the Ascension, Thomas, the disciple, sent Thaddeus, one of the seventy, to Abgar, as our Lord had directed. Thaddeus went to Tobias, a prince of the Pakradoonian tribe, and consequently a Jew by blood, who received the apostle into his house, and became a believer. Thaddeus then began to perform many miracles upon sick people, and his fame being spread throughout the city, reached King Abgar, who sent for Prince Tobias and desired him to bring the apostle to him. This was done, and Thaddeus healed the king in his sickness, and instructed him in the faith. He did likewise to all the people of the city, and baptized them, together with the king and his court. All the temples dedicated to idols were shut up, and a large church was built. Thaddeus then created a bishop to rule the new congregation, selecting a silk-mercer, the king’s cap-maker, for that office, and giving him the name of Adde. It is related that upon the principal gate of Edessa was the statue of a Greek idol, which all who entered the city were obliged to reverence. King Abgar ordered this to be taken away, and placed in its stead the sacred portrait of our Lord, with this inscription: “Christ God, he who hopes in thee is not deceived in his hope;” at the same time ordering all those who entered the city to give it divine honor. This conversion of King Abgar and of the Edessians took place in the thirtieth year of the Vulgar Era, or in the thirty-third year after the birth of Christ.

Shortly after, Thaddeus, desiring to spread the light of the Gospel in other parts of the country, went to Inner Armenia to visit Sanadrug, who then resided in the province of Shavarshan or Ardaz. Sanadrug soon became a Christian and was baptized, together with his daughter Santukht, and a great number of the chiefs and common people. Here Thaddeus also consecrated a bishop, named Zachariah, and then proceeded to Upper Armenia; but finding the people there unwilling to listen to his preaching, he left them and went to the country of the Aghuans.

Abgar, in his zeal for the faith he had just embraced, wrote to the Emperor Tiberius in favor of Christ, informing him how the Jews unjustly crucified him, exhorting him at the same time to believe and command others to adore the Saviour. Many letters passed between the two monarchs on the subject of his divine mission. He also wrote to Ardashes, king of Persia, and to his son Nerseh, the young king of Assyria, exhorting them to become believers in Christ. However, before he received replies to these, he died, in the third year of his conversion to Christianity.

His death seemed at first to have undone all his work. His son Anane apostatized and tried to make his people do the same; he reopened the heathen temples, resumed the public worship of the idols, and ordered the sacred handkerchief removed from the city gate. Adde the bishop walled up the latter. The king ordered the bishop to make a diadem for him as he had for his father; the bishop refused to make one for a head that would not bow to Christ, and the king had the bishop’s feet cut off while he was preaching, causing his death,—the first Christian martyr on record. By a just retribution, the savage king met his own death by a marble pillar in his palace falling on him and breaking his legs.

Meantime Abgar’s nephew, Sanadrug, had set up his standard in Shavarshan or Ardaz, proclaiming himself king of Armenia,—one of the countless chieftains who took advantage of Armenian anarchy to carve out principalities for themselves. On the death of Anane he marched to Edessa, claiming it as his own inheritance. The people admitted him on his oath not to harm them; but once inside he massacred all the males of the house of Abgar. He spared his aunt, Queen Helena, Abgar’s widow, who became widely famed as a Christian philanthropist, and was buried with great pomp before one of the gates of Jerusalem, where a splendid mausoleum was erected over her remains. He himself had apostatized, and ordered all his people to do likewise; but most of them refused to obey, and Thaddeus, hearing of it at Caesarea, in Cappadocia, started for Edessa to reconvert him. On his way he fell in with a Roman embassy to Sanadrug, composed of five patricians headed by one Chrysos; he converted and baptized them all, conferred priest’s orders on Chrysos, and they gave up all their property and became preachers of Christ. They were known as followers of Chrysos, and all eventually obtained the crown of martyrdom.

On the news of these conversions, Sanadrug invited Thaddeus to Shavarshan; on his arrival he put him to death, and with him his own daughter, Santukht, who would not give up her faith in Christ. At her death various miracles were wrought, which caused many conversions to Christianity; among them a notable chief, who was baptized with all his family, was renamed Samuel, and was put to death by the king’s order.

A princess named Zarmantukht also became a convert, with all her household, two hundred people in all; the whole of them suffered martyrdom in consequence.

Dr. Philip Schaff says: “It is now impossible to decide how much truth there may be in the somewhat mythical stories of correspondence between Christ and Abgarus, and the missionary activity and martyrdom of Thaddeus, Bartholomew, Simon of Cana, and Judas Lebbeus. But it is certain that Christianity was introduced very early in Armenia.” I, however, consider what I have told to be true.

After this time, Christianity spread in Armenia as it did in other parts of the Greek Empire; rapidly in the cities, where intelligence was quick, and new ideas were welcomed; slowly in the country districts, where people did not readily change. Its first result everywhere was not so much to make people believe in it as to make them disbelieve in Paganism; for every person who actually came to believe in Christ, there were fifty who ceased to believe in Jupiter, or Bel, or Thoth, Venus or Astarte. There would be a flourishing Christian church in a great city when most of the people did not have any faith in any religion. But everybody who had a family came gradually to think very well of a religion that gave them the power to teach children righteousness, and enforce it by the command of God; and the respectable classes became more and more Christian. But the fact that till two or three centuries after Christ there was no general attempt on the part of the pagan governments to put down the Christians by persecution, shows that not till then did they become so numerous as to frighten the governments for fear they would before long have a majority; persecution means fear. The governments let the Christians pretty much alone, except for little fits of anger now and then, till they were afraid the growth of the sect would overthrow themselves or bring on civil war. The Christians had become well established in Armenia within a century or so after the death of Christ; but it was over a century and a half before they seemed an imminent menace to the ruling class. Then a furious persecution began, about the same time as that of Diocletian in the Roman Empire, and indeed, part of the same movement. Diocletian had set the persecuting King Tiridates on his throne, and Tiridates had passed his life from boyhood almost to old age in the Roman service, and had the same ideas as the pagan Roman upper classes. Yet in the providence of God this same Tiridates made Christianity supreme in Armenia, fifteen years before Constantine made it supreme in the Roman Empire, thus making Armenia the first Christian nation.

Gregory the Illuminator and King Dertad.

In the continual struggle between Rome and Parthia for the control of Armenia, the Parthian kings had one great advantage; they were Arsacids, and could put their sons or brothers on the Armenian throne with the good-will of the people, thus strengthening their dynastic position without much cost in military force. Often, too, the Armenian kingship was obtained by Parthian princes, who fled after a family quarrel, or after deposition or other misfortune. One of these Armenian kings was Chosroes, who reigned in the time of Ardashir, the first king of Persia, before spoken of. It is not certain just who he was; some say a brother of Ardvan, the last king of Parthia; some say the son of Ardvan, who fled after his father’s death. Anyway, he was a mortal enemy of Ardashir, and was at first supported by the Romans. Ardashir invaded Armenia, but was beaten later. Chosroes quarreled with the Romans, who withdrew their support, and assailed him, but he defeated them; and when Ardashir again invaded the country, Chosroes again drove him back. The old days of Tigranes seemed to have returned, and Armenia to be on the road again to unity and independence; and Chosroes was called the Great. Ardashir was furious at being baffled, and is said to have offered his daughter’s hand and a share in the kingdom to any one of his leading nobles who would assassinate Chosroes. An Arsacid named Anag accepted the offer, though he had a wife already, and went with his family to Armenia, pretending to be in flight from Persian troops. Chosroes gave him a military escort into the province of Ardaz, where he lived for a time in the very place St. Thaddeus’ bones were deposited. Later on, Anag removed to Vagharshabad (the present city of Etchmiazin, where the Armenian Catholicos resides), Chosroes’ royal city. Here Anag seizing his opportunity, stabbed Chosroes to the heart. In his flight he was drowned in trying to cross the Aras, and his family were massacred by the soldiery.

Ardashir had gotten rid of his unconquerable enemy, and without having to pay the stipulated price. He at once entered Armenia and put to death every member of Chosroes’ family save a boy and a girl, Tiridates and Chosrovitukht, who were somehow smuggled away, and the old game of Perso-Roman foot-ball over Armenia went on as before. Tiridates entered the Roman army, when grown up, and became distinguished there, evidently inheriting his father’s military ability; and remained in the Roman service certainly to the age of over 45, and perhaps till over 50. That the Romans waited all this time before using him as a candidate for the Armenian throne seems strange; but the reason probably is that the early years of his manhood fell in a time when Rome was weak and Persia strong. The great Shahpur, Ardashir’s son, reigned in Persia till about 272; the imbecile Gallienus of Rome reigned from 260 till 268, and was succeeded by a crowd of emperors able indeed, but too short-lived to carry out any steady policy, or drive the Persians out of their strong places. The first emperor who found himself in a position to restore the Roman power in the East was Diocletian, who came to the Roman throne in 284, and it is significant that he made Tiridates king of Armenia only two years later. As Diocletian was a soldier of fortune, probably he had known and respected Tiridates long before. Anyway, in 286 Rome once more had her turn in Armenian affairs, and with one short interval, kept absolute control of the country for over half a century.

Now there had been born in Armenia about 257 a child who had early been taken to Caesarea by Christian relatives, baptized, named Gregory, and reared in the Christian faith. On reaching maturity he married a Christian girl by whom he had two sons; but after three years they separated by mutual consent. The wife entered a convent. Gregory, hearing of Tiridates’ renown in the Roman army, went and obtained service near the prince’s person, to be able to have influence with him if he ever regained his kingdom. They became fast friends. When Tiridates was proclaimed king, he went first to Erija, in the province of Egueghatz, where was a temple of Anahid (Diana), whom the Armenians worshiped as guardian goddess of the country; and making offerings to her of garlands and crowns, asked Gregory to join him in his idolatry. Gregory refused to worship anything but the one God. Tiridates ordered him imprisoned for a while, thinking the loathsome dungeon of that time would change his resolution; finding him still firm, he had him tortured in a dozen frightful ways, and at last taken to the fortress of Ardashad and thrown into a deep pit, where criminals were left to starve. There Gregory remained fourteen years, supported all that time by the charity of a pious Christian woman. After about ten years of reign, Tiridates was driven from his throne by Persians, and once more became a wanderer; but two years later he was reinstated by the Romans, and finished his life on the throne. In gratitude for this second restoration, he had daily offerings made to the heathen gods all over his kingdom; and on being told that the Christians refused to comply, ordered all recusants to be tortured, and their property confiscated.

About this time Diocletian determined to find and marry the handsomest woman in his empire, and sent officers all over in search of noted beauties. One party, hearing that a nun named Ripsime was very beautiful, entered her convent by force, had a portrait made of her, and carried it to the emperor. Diocletian was enchanted with it, and ordered preparations made for the nuptials; but the abbess, Kayane, to save the nun from sin, and the community from danger, broke up the convent, and the inmates with several priests—seventy in all—went to the East, and scattered themselves in different localities. Ripsime and Kayane, with thirty-five companions, reached Ardashad in Armenia, and took refuge in a building among the vineyards, where wine vats were stored. Diocletian had search made for his flown bird, and, hearing that her company had gone to Armenia, commanded Tiridates to send her back to him unless he wished to keep her for his own wife. Tiridates had her hunted out, and the officers bringing a report of her extraordinary beauty, so great that people flocked to admire her, he ordered her brought to him, intending to marry her. Kayane exhorted her not to deny Christ for the sake of earthly honors, and she refused to go. She was carried by force, however, and the king undertook to gain a husband’s rights at once; but the virgin, strengthened by divine power, resisted him successfully. Tiridates then had the Abbess Kayane brought to him to overcome the girl’s scruples; but instead, she once more exhorted Ripsime to keep herself pure in spite of all offered grandeur. The king once more endeavored to deflower the maiden, and was once more beaten; and Ripsime, opening the doors and passing out through the astonished guards, walked out of the city, to her companions in the vineyard, went to a high place, and knelt down in prayer. The incensed Tiridates sent a body of guards to put her to death by the most dreadful tortures, which was done, and her body cut into small pieces. Her companions gathered to bury her remains, and were at once butchered by the soldiery, as well as a sick one, who had stayed behind in the wine press. The bodies of the thirty-four martyrs were thrown into the fields as food for the beasts of prey. The next day Tiridates had Kayane and two other companions put to death. These events occurred on the 5th and 6th of October, 301.

Shortly after, God visited the king and many of his household with a dreadful disease for his persecution of the saints. They ran around like mad people or demoniacs. While they were in this state, the king’s virgin sister Chosrovitukht had a divine revelation that she should go to Ardashad and release Gregory from the pit, and he would heal them all. As he had been thrown there fourteen years ago, and was believed to be long dead, no attention was paid to it; but the next day it was repeated five times with threats, and a chief named Oda was sent, who brought him back alive, to their great amazement and joy. They prostrated themselves before him and asked forgiveness, but he told them to worship only their Creator. Then he demanded to be shown the bodies of the holy martyrs lately just slain for belief in Christ; they were found after nine days and nights untouched, and he gathered them up and put them into the wine press, where he also established himself. First he ordered the king and all the people to fast five days, and commended them to the mercy of God; and after that for sixty consecutive days he preached the word of God, instructing them in all the mysteries of the Christian religion. On the sixty-sixth day they again besought him to heal them, but first he made them build three chapels for the relics of the martyrs, each in a separate coffin, wall in the place where he had seen a vision of the Son of God coming down from heaven, and erect a crucifix before which the people should prostrate themselves. Finally, seeing that they all believed in the true God, St. Gregory bade them kneel down and pray to Him for healing; he himself prayed for them at the same time, and a miraculous cure was at once effected on all the sufferers.

This done, Gregory and Tiridates set about exterminating idolatry; they smashed the idols and demolished the temples, the new converts joyfully assisting them. The work of conversion went on rapidly, under the wonderful preaching of the Saint, and the zeal of the king; all the people converted were baptized by immersion. In eight years the majority of the Armenian nation, many millions in number, had become Christians. That religion was made the State creed of Armenia in 310, while the Council of Nice, which did the same work for Rome, was not held till 325.

Gregory deserves every credit for this magnificent work; but I cannot help wishing he had been less zealous in destroying the pagan literature, which is a very great loss to the world. However, Christianity is worth it, if we could not have it at a less price.

Schools, as well as churches and benevolent institutions, were organized in great numbers under Christian auspices during the next two or three centuries, and a brilliant band of scholars and preachers went out from them, the equals of any in their age, and perhaps in any age. I will give sketches of some of the principal figures, but first let me briefly tell the history of Armenia during that period.

The rivalry between Rome and Persia grew fiercer than ever with the introduction of Christianity, for now religious hate was added to political ambition; and on the side of Persia the Armenian difficulties were doubled, for a considerable part of the Armenians were still Zoroastrians, and sympathized with the Persians against their own government, while many of the Persians had become Christian, and opposed their pagan rulers. Thus the Persians felt that they had a civil war on their hands as well as foreign wars, and persecuted their Christians horribly. On the other hand, they had the help of the pagan part of the Armenians in invading or controlling that state; still again, the Armenian Christians now favored the Romans much more strongly than they had before, because Rome was now Christian; while on top of all were the great barons, almost independent of the nominal kings, and who favored neither party but wanted their feudal independence. Yet the Roman control of the kingship, for what it was worth, lasted without a break for over half a century after the victory of Christianity, and over three-quarters of a century from the accession of Tiridates; which was due largely to the great ability of the Roman emperors Diocletian and Constantine, and the excellent administration and military organization they left, which saved the eastern provinces from Persia for over a quarter of a century after Constantine’s death. Shahpur II, of Persia, won many victories, but he could not hold even the places he captured, and he gained no territory till the death of “Julian the Apostate” in his Persian campaign of 363. His weak and frightened successor Jovian surrendered a great section of the Eastern Roman territory, and still more disgracefully agreed that the Romans should not help their ally Arshag (Arsaces), king of Armenia, against Shahpur. Armenia was at once invaded, but she felt her national existence at stake, and fought with desperation. Though Shahpur had the help of two apostate Armenian princes, Merujan and Vahan, and other native traitors, who ravaged the country and fought their king because he was a Christian, Arshag held out four years, aided by his heroic though unprincipled wife Parantzem, and his able chief commander Vashag. Vagharshabad, Ardashad, Ervandshad, and many other cities were taken and destroyed; finally Arshag and Vashag were captured. Arshag’s eyes were put out, and he was thrown into a Persian dungeon in Ecbatana; Vashag was flayed alive, and his skin stuffed and set near the king. Queen Parantzem still refused to surrender, and with 11,000 soldiers and 6,000 fugitive women held the fortress of Ardis fourteen months, till nearly all of them were dead from hunger or disease; then she opened the gates herself. Instead of honoring her, Shahpur, who was a worthy predecessor of the Turks, had her violated on a public platform by his soldiers, and then impaled (368). Meantime, her and Ashag’s son, Bab (Papa), had escaped to Constantinople and asked the help of the co-Emperor Valens. That emperor hated to break the treaty, and involve Rome in a new eastern war; but he could not suffer Persia to be strengthened by the possession of all Armenia, and the Roman statesmen had determined to end the long struggle over Armenia by dividing it between Persia and themselves. Bab was secretly helped by the Romans; he kept up a guerrilla warfare in the mountains, and a large part of the Armenian people were prepared to welcome him back to his rightful throne. The Romans tried to keep within the letter of their treaty by not letting him assume the title of king. The Persians considered his support by Greek troops a breach of the treaty, none the less, and Valens alternately aided and disavowed him. The matter was not mended by the worthless character of Bab himself, who murdered his best friends on the least suspicion, and had the incredible baseness to hold a secret correspondence with Shahpur, the worse than murderer of his parents. Finally the Romans, convinced that he must be under their watch if they were to have any security of him, tolled him down to Cilicia, and prevented him from returning by guards of soldiers. He made his escape, and professed his allegiance to the Romans as before; but Valens resolved to be rid of him, and had him murdered by Count Trajan, the Roman commander in the East.

Meantime a powerful Roman army under Count Trajan, and the chief Persian host, had actually camped opposite each other on the borders of Armenia (371); but neither side wanted a general war just then,—Rome must have her hands free for the Goths, and Persia hers for the Mongols. Finally, in 379, Shahpur died, and there was an instant and entire change in Persian policy toward Rome, and even toward Christianity for a while. His brother and successor, Ardashir, was an old man, and reigned but four years; his successor, Shahpur III, at once sent embassies to Rome, and made a treaty of peace (384). Finally, on the succession of Bahram IV (Kirman Shah), in 390, that monarch arranged a treaty of partition with Theodosius, the Roman emperor, by which Armenia ceased to exist. The western portion became a Roman province; the then reigning sovereign, Arshag IV, was made governor to keep the people contented. The eastern, and much the larger section, was annexed to Persia, under the name of Persarmenia; and to please the people, an Arsacid, Chosroes IV, was made governor, and the dynasty was continued in its rule over the Armenians till after the great Perso-Roman war of 421–2, and the persecution of Christians by Persia, which was the pretext of it. The persecution and the war led to a movement for Armenian independence; after it was over, Bahram V of Persia (Gor, the Wild Ass, “the mighty hunter”) put a new vassal, Ardashes IV, into the governorship; but the great Armenian barons would not give up the struggle, and this last of the Arshagoonian dynasty was removed in 428 and Persian governors substituted.

Thus ended the rule of the line of Arshag. It was a mighty race, and swarms with brilliant names; but in Persia it was justly displaced by one of better public policy, and in Armenia the position of the country was fatal to it.