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.