The author feels that it is due to both his Armenian readers and
himself to explain why, in some points, he has deviated alike from
the Armenian historians and his own conviction. It is because on
these points, the Armenian records are in irreconcilable conflict
with those of Rome or Persia, or both, and in a book mainly for
Anglo-Saxon readers it is not possible to defy the general consensus
of western scholarship, which, in my judgment, has not given proper
weight to Armenian sources. I will specify only two or three items;
if my Armenian friends notice other contradictions of their accepted
history they will be safe in setting them down to the same cause.
It is a commonplace of Armenian history that St. Gregory, the
Illuminator, the Christianizer of Armenia, was the son of Anag, the
murderer of King Chosroes (see page 72) born about the time of the
murder, and made himself the companion of Chosroes' son, Tiridates,
partly in order to atone for his father's crime. I am very reluctant
to omit this fact; but the birth of Gregory and the death of Ardashir
will not fit according to western dates, though they are coherent
from Armenian.
I have also given twenty years' rule and a good character to King
Artavasdes, who reigned three and was a coward.
Most unwillingly of all, I have changed a very full and eulogistic
account of Moses Khorenatzi, the great national historian of Armenia,
for a meager and depreciating one. That he lived in the fifth century
and wrote as an eye and ear witness, instead of being a not wholly
veracious compiler of two centuries later, and that his history is
sound and consistent, is my firm belief. That his work is better
known than all other Armenian works together, and is the one native
book that has become a standard western classic, shows the powerful
genius of the man.