Chapter II

Chapter IIAncient Historical LegendsSection 1. The Legend of HaicArmenians do not call themselves Armenians nor their country Armenia. They are descendants of Haic, as the legend goes, who was the son of Togarmah, the son of Japhet, who was the son of Noah, and they call their country Haiasdan after the patriarchal progenitor of their people.1Haic dwelt in the plain of Shinar and was a prefect or director in the building of the tower of Babel. He was beautiful as a god and strong as a giant, mighty in battle and especially adept in spear throwing. In the days of his youth, Bel or Nimrod, who was the patron god of Babylon, established himself over all and wished to be worshipped. But Haic refused to obey, and taking his sons, who numbered about three hundred, his daughters, his sheep and cattle, he journeyed north until he came to the land of Ararat. Bel tried in vain to persuade his rival to come back.“Thou hast departed and hast settled in a chill and frosty region,” urged the Assyrian god. “Soften thy hard pride, change thy coldness to geniality; be my subject and come and live a life of ease in my domain.”2But Haic refused the cordial invitation, which so much angered Bel that the latter brought his army to force the Armenian hero into submission. Haic, however, was victorious, for he slew Bel with an arrow from his own bow. The place where Bel was buried is called “Kerezman,” meaning grave, and is pointed out to this day. Armenians sing songs and tell stories of the great beauty and valor of Haic. He died at the age of four hundred in about 2028 B.C.3This oldest of Armenian legends, quaint and simple as it is in accounting for the beginnings of a people, savours of the Old Testament and is suggestive of the Assyrian invasion which took place about the ninth century before Christ. It is significant that the Armenians refused the protection of Bel, and that in the very beginning of their legendary history, they insisted on standing firm and maintaining their independence, for no single quality is more characteristic of this people than a proud, haughty, even at times disdainful independence. It is also suggestive that their patriarchal hero was no saint, but a mighty giant, beautiful as he was strong, whose greatest pride was in the throwing of a spear, for his descendants have not been a peaceful people. To be sure, they were the first nation to be converted to Christianity, which would say little fortheir firmness and independence, were it not that the priest with the cross was followed by a powerful king with a sword at the head of an army that had learned to fight as the Romans fought.4The songs that were sung in memory and honor of Haic are seldom sung to-day unless it be in some remote village where the civilization of the Turk has not yet pressed, and there are few such villages if any. For many of them breathe of a national spirit not beseeming a subject nation, and have been suppressed for many years.Section 2. The Legend of Ara and SemiramisDating back to the Assyrian invasion which took place during the seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, one of the oldest of Armenian legends, that of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and Ara, king of Armenia, is told.5Ara was very beautiful, and Semiramis having heard speech of his beauty for many years, wished to possess him. But she dared do nothing for fear of Ninus, protector over Armenia. After the death of Ninus, however, the queen sent messengers to Ara, with gifts and offerings, with prayers and promises of riches, begging him to come to her at Nineveh and either wed her and reign over all that Ninus had possessed, orfulfillher desire and return in peace to Armenia with many gifts. But when the messengers had been turned away repeatedly, Semiramis became angry, and taking her army she hastened to Armenia. The battle was fought on the plain of Ara, called after him Ararat; and although the queen had given careful orders to her generals to devise some means of saving the life of Ara, the Armenian king was slain. She found the dead body among the others that had fallen, and ordered her servants to place it in an upper chamber in her castle. And when the Armenian army again arose to drive away the foe and avenge the death of Ara, thequeen said, “I have commanded the gods to lick his wounds and he shall live again.” She tried to bring Ara back to life by witchcraft and charms, but the body began to decay and she commanded her servants to cast the corpse into a deep pit and to cover it. And having dressed up one of her men in secret, she caused the following proclamation to be spread among the people: “The gods have licked Ara and have brought him back to life again, thus fulfilling our prayers and our pleasures. Therefore from this time forth shall they be the more glorified and worshipped by us, for they are the givers of joy and the fulfillers of desire.” And she erected a statue to the gods, making it seem as though they had brought Ara back to life again. This news was spread over all the country of Armenia, and having satisfied the people, she put an end to the fighting. The twelve-year-old son of the king was taken by the Assyrian queen and appointed ruler over Armenia. She called him Ara, in memory of her love for Ara the Beautiful.To Semiramis is attributed the building of the ancient city of Van on the shores of the beautiful lake of Van, where she made her summer residence until the time of her departure.6She might well have lingered there, for the Armenians have a proverb, “Van in this world, paradise in the next.” Nevertheless, Semiramis and Ara are mythical characters, although the latter is spoken of in the history of St. Martin as having lived along about 1769 B.C.7As regards the popular belief in the legend, however, there is not the slightest doubt. This is proved by the fact that even to-day the city is called “Sham-iram-agerd” by the Armenians, meaning the city of Semiramis. Lynch says that Ara and Semiramis are Tannuz and Istar, the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth, and that the quest of the Assyrian queen may be connected with the introduction into Armenia of the worship of Istar whose name is mentioned in one of the cuneiform inscriptions at Van.8However, the results of modern scholarship are by no means conclusive on this point, as we shall see.Section 3. Historical Background of the Legend of Ara and SemiramisMoses’ history was read by St. Martin who became exceedingly interested in Van, and in the cuneiform inscriptions spoken of. It was due to him that the French government dispatched a mission to Armenia in 1827, under the direction of a young German Professor, Friedrich Edward Schulz. Schulz was murdered by the Kurds, a thing which rarely happens in Armenia, and his work was left incomplete. He had succeeded, however, in making copies of forty-two inscriptions, which were publishedin 1840, and proved to be remarkably accurate. Shortly afterward, orientalists made great discoveries in the Mesopotamian valley, but the inscriptions at Van did not tally with any syllabaries discovered up to that time, nor could they be translated in any known language. A number of them were found to be Assyrian, but the great majority were peculiar to Van, and entirely baffled the students. Not until 1880 were they finally unravelled. M. S. Guyard discovered at that time that the concluding phrase of many Vannic texts represented an imprecatory formula found in exactly the same place in Assyrian counterparts. This discovery enabled Professor Sayce, of Oxford, to decipher the inscriptions at a rapid rate.Among the important facts discovered were that the nation was a rival nation of Assyria, and that its people were called Khaldeans, or children of Khaldis, much in the same way as the Assyrians reflected the name of their god, Assur. The country was a theocracy and Khaldis was supreme. In the tablets, his wrath was invoked against whomever should destroy them. The capital city was Dhuspus, modern Van, which is the Disp, or Tsp of Armenian writers, and the Turuspa of Assyrian annals. The Assyrians styled the kingdom Urardhu, or Urarthu, which is the name appearing in the Bible in the familiar form Ararat.The earliest inscriptions date back to the ninth century before Christ, and as the language is neither Semitic nor Indo-European, the people could neither have been Assyrians whose language was Semitic, nor Armenians, whose language is Indo-European. The first mention made of Urardhu was in the reign of Ashur-Nazir-Pal (885–860 B.C.) whose successor, Shalmanasar II (860–825 B.C.) was the first Assyrian king to invade Armenia.9Raffi, however, (the son of the famous Armenian poet) speaks of an account given by Assur-Nazir-Haban (1882–1857 B.C.) of one of his victories. “They” (i.e., the people of Ararat or Urarthu), he said, “fled to the impregnable mountains so that I might not be able to get at them, for the mighty summits were like drawn swords pointing to the skies. Only the birds of heaven soaring on their wings could reach them. In three days I was there spreading terror in places where they had taken refuge. Their corpses like autumn leaves filled the clefts. The rest escaped to distant inaccessible heights.”10This, clearly, is a much older record than any that Lynch found trace of, and although Raffi cites no authority for the quotation, I presume that it has been taken from a recent discovery. If this be true the Khaldeans were a very ancient people. One of the tablets shows that King Memas was the principal author of the magnificent canal which conducts the water of the riverKhoshab to the suburbs of Van, and which is to-day called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis.11The line of Vannic kings is traceable as far down as 644 B.C.Most of these inscriptions are to be found on a huge isolated rock, situated in the curve of the bay, and known as the “rock of Van.”12Among them are inscriptions left by Xerxes (485 B.C.), the Persian conqueror whose father’s empire (Darius, 521–486 B.C.) succeeded the loose Scythian rule.But the ancient Khaldean kingdom had already vanished when Xerxes’ victorious army overran the country, for shortly after the great influx of Scythians and the break-up of Assyria, came another horde from the west, perhaps to fill up the void left by the Scythian ravages. It is at this time that the Armenian people are first heard from, and it is this horde, therefore, that is regarded as the foundation stock of the Armenian people. They seem to have been an Indo-European people residing in the territory north of the Black Sea, for, coming from the west they must have entered Asia from Europe by crossing the straits. The ancient Khaldeans were assimilated to some extent, but for the most part, they were driven to the north and south, where they have left traces that have been recognized and recorded by Xenophon and Herodotus.13That the civilization and culture of the ancient Khaldeans were utilized is beyond doubt. Their most ancient cities, Van, Armavir, were foundations of Vannic kings, while recently it has been disclosed that the city of Hajk, southeast of Van, shows some of the familiar features of a Khaldean settlement. But their supreme god during the pre-Christian era was not Khaldis, but the Persian Ormuzd, which indicates that the Persians exercised an even greater influence.How then could Semiramis ever have come to Van in quest of an Armenian king, since it seems that the Scythians had already conquered Assyria before the great influx of Armenian hordes? Nor does it seem that the city of Van was built by the Assyrian queen, for the inscriptions make no mention of her name. King Memas who, in the view of Lynch, constructed the famous canal, was in all probability the author of the garden city. The belief, according to Lynch, as already stated, is that this legend is the Armenian version of the old Hellenic myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, taken over during the domination of the Seleucid dynasty which followed the conquest of Alexander about 325 B.C.14But this is unreasonable. That a myth should be taken over by a subject people and the characters rechristened is not difficult to understand,but that the name of one of them should be applied to the ancient city is very improbable to say the least. Furthermore, the legend is flavored rather strongly with Persian voluptuousness, and is not at all suggestive of Greek delicacy and refinement. Nor is the fact that the horde overran the country after the destruction of Assyria in any way conclusive, for if there were any assimilation at all, as there must unquestionably have been, the Khaldean culture and history was to that extent the actual possession of the Armenians. Even intermarriage would perhaps be unnecessary, for what Irishman who has been in the United States two months does not speak of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as his forefathers? It is to be noted also that to this day the canal spoken of is called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis, by all Armenians.15On the whole it seems to me conclusive, therefore, that the legend of Semiramis and Ara has its roots in Armenian history, and is not at all a version of the Hellenic myth.Section 4. The Legend of VahaknThe legend of Vahakn, king and god of Armenians, is very clearly attributable to the Greek period, which followed the Persian conquest under Xerxes. Vahakn was deified because of his great valor and made the fire-god of the Armenian people.16He was called “Vishapakagh,” uprooter of dragons, since he cleared Armenia of monsters and saved it from evil influences. His exploits were known in the abode of the gods as well as in Armenia. The most famous of them was the theft of corn from the barns of King Barsham of Assyria, from whom he ran away and tried to hide in heaven. Because of the ears he dropped in his rapid flight, there arose the Milky Way which is called in Armenian the “track of the corn stealer.”17Moses of Khorene writes as follows:Concerning the birth of this king the legends say,“Heaven and earth were in travail,And the crimson waters were in travail,And in the water, the crimson reedWas also in travail.From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,From the mouth of the reed issued flame,And out of the flame sprang the young child,His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,And his eyes were suns.”18With our own ears did we hear these words sung to the accompaniment of the harp. They sing moreover that he did fight with the dragons, and overcame them; and some say that his valiant deeds were like unto Hercules. Others declare that he was a god, and that a great image of him stood in the land of Georgia, where it was worshipped, with sacrifices.19The wife of Vahakn was Astghik, the goddess of beauty, a personification of the moon, corresponding to the Phoenician and Sidonian Astarte. This is suggestive of Greek influence, for Venus, the Greek goddess of beauty, was also the wife of a fire-god, Vulcan.20The flight of Vahakn before the Assyrian king is certainly more suggestive of the fear in which the Assyrians must have been regarded than of the valor of their god. The originators of the legend were good psychologists, however, in regarding the instincts of fear and of pugnacity as compatible. For even the slayer of demons must some day face his superiors in strength, and when he does, will he not be afraid? In fact he would be more afraid than another, for he could not well impute more mercy to his superior than he himself had shown to his inferiors.The vein of humor is too rich to be left unnoted. If the Greeks could laugh at their gods, and even mock them, the Armenians could also make sport of them. For what could be more delightfully humorous than the picture of a bearded god, a slayer of dragons, whose hair was of flame and whose eyes like suns, stealing corn from the Assyrian king and dropping the ears from his shoulders in his hasty flight across heaven? The character thus brought out, together with the richness of imaginative quality, especially in the song of his birth, the wholesome and unveiled anthropomorphism (wholesome because it is unveiled), and the correspondence between the Greek fire-god Vulcan whose wife was Venus, the goddess of beauty, with the fire-god Vahakn whose wife Astghik was also goddess of beauty, stamp the legend with its unmistakable origin in Greek mythology.Section 5. The Historic Background of the Legend of VahaknThe Greek period from which this legend dates began with the defeat of the Armenian king Vahy, who was overcome by Alexander theGreat somewhere about 328 B.C.21The Greeks chose their own representative to rule over the province, who at the time of Alexander’s death was Seleucus. Historians have taken the name of this governor to indicate the dynasty of Greek supremacy which followed; i.e., the Seleucid dynasty. This method of the Greeks of selecting their own man to govern a subject people, which was of course in pursuance of their policy of superimposing their own culture upon all subject nations, was contrary to the policy of the Parthians, Romans, and Persians, who allowed the Armenians to maintain their national independence provided they permitted the use of their armies and duly paid their taxes. And it is this policy of the Greeks that accounts for the fact that large portions of Greek mythology and religion were taken over by the Armenians.Although the period of political supremacy was short-lived, the influence of Greek culture continued to permeate the social life of the people through the reign of the Arsacid kings.22In 246 B.C. Arsaces, a Parthian, made himself master of the Parthians, Persians, Medes, Babylonians, and lastly Armenians.23His grandson, Arsaces the Great, conquered as far as India, and after seating himself securely upon the throne of Persia, placed his brother Valarsace upon the Armenian throne, so founding the Persian and Armenian Arsacid dynasties (150 B.C.).24The Persian Arsacidae became extinct in A.D. 226 when they were overthrown by the Persian Sasanidae, whereas the Armenian Arsacidae line continued up until A.D. 428, when the Armenian kingdom was divided between Persia and Rome by Shapuh, the Persian monarch, and Theodosius II.25This makes a period of 578 years (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) during which Armenia was governed by her own line of kings, and enjoyed the liberties of national independence. To be sure after the conquest of Lucullus and Pompey (66 B.C.) Armenia became tributary to Rome, but the right of succession remained with the Armenian royal family, even during Roman supremacy, so that the national life was in no manner interfered with.26The greatest Armenian king of the Arsacidae line was Tigranes the Great, who extended his domains by conquest and established himself in his capital, Tigranacerta, with a court of matchless splendor.27He is spoken of by historians as a king of kings, and as having ruled with a pomp, splendor, and pride never before known. Defeated by Pompey within the walls of his own capital city, his kingdom became tributary to Rome.Section 6. The Period of National IntegrationThe continuity of the period of the Armenian Arsacidae makes it the time when the process of national solidification and unification was carried out to the point that made Armenia a nation, and beyond this point. Raffi asserts that the introduction of Greek culture during the Arsacid dynasty not only changed the religion of Armenians, but also so affected their language and customs that they became different from the Persians, which is proof that a process of social readjustment was going on.28It was during this period that the wandering minstrels spoken of by Langlois journeyed from one end of the nation to the other, singing their songs, repeating the national legends, relating the news of the world and the court gossip which probably made up the largest portion of it.Les chants de l’antique Arménie rappellent principalement des événements la plupart héroiques et légendaires, accomplis à des époques très différentes, ce qui donne à penser qu’ils ont dû être composés à diverses reprises, par des rhapsodes dont les noms ne nous sont point parvenus. Les sujets traités dans ces chants demontrent clairement qu’ils n’ont été inspirés ni à des prêtres païens, ni à des poètes qui auraient vécu sous leur influence, en vue d’être recités dans des fêtes religieuses ou en face des autels. Au contraire, on reconnait de prime abord que ces chants sont l’oeuvre de bardes nationaux, ayant un libre acces dans les palais des souverains et à la cour des satrapes. C’est ce qui fait supposer que ces poèmes sont peutêtre dûs à des ménestrels, à la solde des rois et des nobles et ayant pour emploi de célébrer leurs vertus et leurs prouesses.29This is putting the case conservatively, for Moses speaks often of “les chantres” and “les chants.” They traveled as far as Persia and returned, for it is related by the Italian Countess Evelyn Martinengo how a wandering minstrel, who had just returned from that country, was entertained by an Armenian patriarchal family living in the kind of undergroundhabitation described in the beginning of this thesis.30No one was ever more welcome than the minstrel. He was assigned to the guest chamber usually prepared especially for him, and always the best chamber in the household. His head and feet were washed for him by the wife of the patriarch, and at meal time all the delicacies of the household were spread before him. All guests were welcome, but no guest more welcome than the minstrel. They must have listened to his tales in a kind of petrified awe, and heard him sing his songs in speechless enjoyment.It was a practice among the minstrels of the time to compete with each other in public, and it is related how two minstrels entertained by a Persian prince were led out upon an open grass plot and seated, one facing the other. Five thousand people made a circle around the competitors while the rivals contended in song and verse, riddle and repartee. Each began where the other left off, until finally one failed to perceive the drift of his adversary, and answering at random, the spectators proclaimed him beaten. The triumphant bard was led to the vanquished, whose lyre was taken from him and broken. Robed in a prince’s mantle, the victor was taken to the highest seat in the banquet hall.That the people were the judges of the contest, indicates how well they must have been acquainted with the current folk-songs, legends, and tradition. How generally and frequently the custom of minstrel competition was practiced throughout Armenia is not known, but it certainly is proof, besides Moses’ own statements to the same effect, that the national legends and folk-songs were the possession of the common people. And what is more important, this same body of legends, folk-songs, and tradition did more than any other one thing to weld the sentiments of the people into a single national sentiment, which crystallized into a real patriotism, a real loyalty and devotion to any cause that was a national cause, because it was the natural, spontaneous expression of the life and thought of the people, and no mean, artificial thing superimposed from outside.31There are other reasons for giving this period the social importance that I have ascribed to it. The conversion of the people to Christianity about the third century after Christ was achieved in no sentimental fashion, but, as I believe, in a manner in which it alone could have been done, namely, at the point of the sword of their own king, Tiridates, who was converted from paganism to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator. The traditions in connection with this important event will be told later. Suffice it to say at this point that the whole process of conversion was carried out so thoroughly and completely, that it may be described as a national volte-face, and therefore did not result in the disintegration,civil strife, and social chaos that would unquestionably have been the result had the process been carried out by means of peaceful penetration and propaganda.The third and last argument in support of the social and national importance of the period of the Arsacid kings is in respect to the alphabet which was compiled by St. Mesrob Maschtotz. St. Mesrob was a former secretary of the king, and desired to extirpate the last remnants of paganism in the province of Akoulis, but in the absence of an alphabet he was unable to carry out any scheme of propaganda. He therefore besought the king, Vramschapouh, to put an end to this state of things and the latter, in response to the request, placed all available material at the disposal of the saint. The task was accomplished in 404, somewhat at the expense of the future devotees of the language, for the alphabet contains thirty-eight letters.32Nevertheless, most of the sounds of foreign languages were represented, making it particularly useful as a foundation language for other languages. St. Mesrob, with a body of translators trained by himself and St. Sahak, then proceeded to the translation of the Bible, which was not completed until 433. Liturgies and song-books quickly followed. To be sure the effect of the invention of the alphabet and the distribution of the various religious publications that followed were not felt during the period of the Arsacidae, for the Bible was not published until after the break-up of the kingdom in 428, when it was divided between Persia and Rome. But the important point is that the time had come when the need for an alphabet was making itself very strongly felt, and this could not have been true of a diversified, heterogeneous population.For the three reasons above mentioned, i.e., first, the work of minstrels, second, the Christianizing of the nation, and third, the invention of the alphabet, all occurring during the successive reigns of the Arsacid kings, I should ascribe to this period (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) the integration of the Armenian people into a national unit.33Christianity must have come as a disrupting force, as a terrible shock, necessitating a complete social readjustment, but the fact that the readjustment was made shows that the people were ready for it. For better or for worse the yoke of Christianity was fastened to the neck of the people, and with it they had toreplow the social soil. The job was a good one, for the Armenian church has been the chief power during the last ten or fifteen centuries in keeping alive the streams of national life, and in holding the people together in the face of invasion and repeated attempts at proselytization by the Persians and by the Greek and Roman Catholic churches.Section 7. Legends of Artasches and ArtavasdThe legends of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd, the son of Artasches, belong to the Arsacid period, for Artavasd and Artasches are Armenian kings of the Arsacid dynasty, according to Moses.34The Alans who, according to the legend, were a neighboring people residing in the mountain region in the vicinity of Georgia, spread themselves over Armenia while Artasches, the Armenian king, collected a great army and forced the Alans to retreat across the river Kur where they pitched camp. The son of the Alan king was taken captive and brought to Artasches, which forced the former to seek peace on whatever terms the Armenian king might wish, provided only his son was returned in safety. But Artasches refused, whereupon the sister of the captured boy came to the river bank, and standing upon a great rock spoke to the camp of Artasches by means of interpreters saying: “Oh brave Artasches, who hast vanquished the great nation of Alans, unto thee I speak. Come, hearken unto the bright-eyed daughter of the Alan king and give back the youth. For it is not the way of heroes to destroy life at the root, nor for the sake of humbling and enslaving a hostage to establish everlasting enmity between two great nations.”35Artasches, having heard of these sayings went to the river bank and having seen that the girl was beautiful, and listened to her words of wisdom, wished to marry her. His chamberlain considered it a wise stroke of policy, and therefore went to the Alan king, soliciting the hand of the princess for his master, whose oaths and assurances of peace he vouched for, together with the promise to return the boy. The king of the Alans answered, “From whence shall brave Artasches give thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands upon tens of thousands in return for the maiden?”Writes Moses:Concerning this, the poets of that land sing in their songs:“Brave King ArtaschesMounted his fine black charger,And took the red leathern cordWith the golden ring.Like a swift winged eagleHe passed over the riverAnd cast the golden ringRound the waist of the Alan Princess;Causing much pain to the tender maidenAs he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”Which being interpreted meaneth that he was commanded to give much gold, leather, and crimson dye in exchange for the maiden. So also they sing of the wedding:“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”For it was the custom of our kings to scatter coins amongst the people when they arrived at the doors of the temple for their wedding, as also for the queens to scatter pearls in their bride-chamber.36The couplet quoted is still sung by the Armenians, and it is still customary for the bridegroom to scatter money on his way to the church, and though it may be for queens to scatter pearls, the Armenian bride is not to be outdone. She is given a partly opened pomegranate which she throws at the door of the bridegroom upon the arrival at the bridegroom’s home after the ceremony at the church, the bits of pomegranate scattering themselves about as pearls.After fifty-one years of a very prosperous reign, Artasches, who was very much beloved by his people, died. The funeral procession was a most magnificent one, and many of the people killed themselves, out of love for their dead king, according to the custom of the time. And when the body was laid in the grave they threw precious jewels, gold, and silver after it. Nor did the lamenting and suicide stop after his burial, for upon the grave of their dead king the nobles and the people continued to kill themselves. So great was the slaughter that Artavasd, son of Artasches, and king after his father’s death, addressed the spirit of his dead father, saying, “Behold, thou art taking all with thee; dost thou leave me to rule over ruins and the dead?” The words given by Moses of Khorene are: “Now that thou art gone, and hast taken with thee the whole land, how shall I reign over the ruins?”37Whereupon the spirit of Artasches cursed him and said,“When thou ridest forth to huntOver the free heights of Ararat,The strong ones shall have thee,And shall take thee upOn to the free heights of Ararat.There shalt thou abide,And never more see the light.”38These words together with those of Artavasd spoken to his father’s spirit were sung by the singers of the time.39One day while out hunting Artavasd was seized by some visionary terror and lost his reason. Urging his horse down a steep bank he fell into a chasm where he sank and disappeared. Old women told how he was confined in a cavern and bound with iron chains which his two dogs gnawed at daily in order to set him free. But somehow at the sound of the hammers striking on the anvils, the chains were continually strengthened, and it was customary among the blacksmiths of the time to strike the anvil three or four times to strengthen, as they said, the chains of Artavasd. And so the tradition was kept up by singers and blacksmiths; the blacksmiths and old women having consigned the jealous king to the world’s nethermost regions, while the singers left him to the solitude of Ararat in accordance with the curse of Artasches.Section 8. ConclusionsSuch are the ancient legends of Armenia, in their respective historical settings: the legends of Haic, of Semiramis and Ara, of Vahakn, of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd. All of them antedate the Christian era, and some of them by many centuries. Each one of them is told by Moses of Khorene. But as to origin and probable historic roots Moses was silent, for he was writing a history. He constantly laments the absolute dearth of material and sources and begins his accounts of these legends with the words “This is as it is told,” or “the singers say,” indicating that his only sources for them were the songs and reports current among the people during his own time. The legends of Haic and of Semiramis and Ara are told by Moses as though he believed them historic fact, but of course Moses had no materials to serve as a basis of criticism. He is careful to quote Mar Apas Catina as his only source for this material. The other three legends are regarded as such. Artavasd is spoken of as an historical king who lost his reason while riding horseback and fell into a deep chasm. The practice of suicide at the death of Artasches, his father, was a pagan custom. The curse of the spirit of the dead father, the chains, the dogs, and the anvils were of course recognized as the work of ingenious fancy. In view therefore, of the questionable character of Moses’ sources these legends have very little historic value. They do, however, have a high social value inasmuch as the common knowledge of them among the people was the only ultimate source at the disposal of the historian.The second conclusion is that these legends formed a very important part of the larger mass of tradition and songs that served to cementthe people into a nation. Just how important, it would be difficult to say, but the fact that they were current at the time Moses wrote indicates that they were current and passed on from generation to generation during the whole period of the Arsacidae kings. And as the people had no alphabet during this whole period, they must have been passed on by song and word of mouth. This was a time of special activity on the part of the minstrels and singers, and therefore the development of the national consciousness characteristic of the period must have been brought about in a large measure through the medium of these legendary beliefs.Furthermore these legends are known by the Armenian people to-day and are taught in the schools that are not too severely under the rules of Turkish and Russian censorship. Naturally enough, they are a source of great pride since they breathe national independence and loyalty. But of course, the Turks and Russians have suppressed all public singing of songs, and public teaching of history and legend that may possibly be construed as partaking of the national spirit.It may be argued that these legends slumbered between the covers of Moses’ history during the centuries known as the dark ages, and that they had no social value until the contagion of the European spirit of the Renaissance awoke the legends and the people at the same time. But the mere dearth of record is no proof of this Rip Van Winkle theory. There is at least one reliable authority sufficient to disprove it, viz., Grigor Magistros, a scholar of the eleventh century who wrote that he heard the Artasches epic sung by minstrels.40Besides the unreasonableness of the supposition, there is the added fact of an independent Armenian kingdom known as the Bagradouni dynasty, whose capital seat was at the famous city of Ani. This kingdom included greater Armenia and continued from A.D. 887 to 1079.41But 1079 does not mark the end of Armenian independence though it marks the destruction of Ani, for Reuben, a member of the royal family, made his way into Cilicia in the year 1080, and rallying a handful of Armenians about him, overpowered the Greeks and founded what is known as the Rupenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which continued during a period of 300 years. So that here again is a period of very nearly five hundred years (889–1380), during which time the Armenian people enjoyed national political independence.42And this during the very period of the dark ages, about which we know so little! We could not, therefore, for a moment suppose the traditions and legends to have had no social importance during these centuries, for such an assumption would be in flat contradiction to the witness of Grigor Magistros, and to the facts of Armenian history.1Mar Apas Catina. Langlois’Collection des Histoires de l’Arménie1:16.2St. Martin,Mémoire sur l’Arménie1:281.3Mar Apas Catina. Langlois 1:15–18.Moses of Khorene. Langlois 3:63–64.4St. Martin 1:306.5Ibid.1:282–3. Moses of Khorene 2:67–69.Mar Apas Catina 1:26–27.The first Arsacidae king of Armenia, Valarsace, whose reign began in 149 B.C. found the kingdom in general disorder and was the first to organize the country along national lines. As a Parthian he was unacquainted with the history and institutions of the people, and desiring to build upon the established foundation, such as it was, he sent a Syrian scholar, Mar Apas Catina by name, with a letter to his brother, Arsace, king of Persia, requesting the latter to allow the Syrian access to the royal archives with the view of finding a history of Armenia. Mar Apas Catina found an old MS containing a history of ancient Armenia which bore the name of no author, and which was translated from Chaldean to Greek by order of Alexander the Great. It was translated into Syriac by the Syrian scholar for the benefit of Valarsace, but the MS has been lost, and there is not the slightest trace of it anywhere. It must have been in existence however, during the fifth century after Christ for Moses of Khorene used it as his only source for Armenia’s ancient history, in writing his general history of Armenia. The old MS being lost, the translation by Mar Apas Catina and the first part of the history of Moses are given as identical to each other in Langlois’ collection of Armenian historians. The ancient history contains the legends of Haic, of Ara and Semiramis, and of Vahakn, some of the songs of heroes, still sung, and other matter which is strictly speaking not historical. As a history, therefore, it is unreliable and unauthentic, but from the standpoint of the social historian it is invaluable, for a belief is as important a fact to sociology as the dethronement of a king is to history.6Boyadjian,Armenian Legends and Poetryp. 33.7St. Martin 1:409.8Lynch 2:65.9Lynch,Armenia, chapter entitled “Van.”10Raffi, article in Boyadjian’sArmenian Legends and Poetry,p. 125.11Lynch, chapter on Van.12Moses of Khorene 2:69.13Ibid.14Lynch 2:65.15Moses of Khorene 2:68, 69.16St. Martin 1:285.17Raffi p. 129. Abeghian pp. 49, 50.18Moses of Khorene 2:76. Translation from Moses, Boyadjian p. 10.Mar Apas Catina 1:40.19Mar Apas Catina 1:41. Moses of Khorene p. 76.Moses of Khorene, called the Herodotus of Armenia, has written the best known history of the Armenian people. The work has been translated into Latin, Italian, French, German, and Russian. Moses lived in the fifth century, two centuries after the conversion of the nation to Christianity. He belonged to the second order of translators in the school of St. Sahag and St. Mesrob, and was sent to Syria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome in order to complete his studies. Upon returning to his country he found everything in disorder. St. Sahag and St. Mesrob were dead, the king had been overthrown, and he chose the life of solitude. Sometime later he was chosen bishop and requested by an Armenian prince, Sahag Bagratide, to write a history of his country, which task he took up with great enthusiasm. The translation of Mar Apas Catina was his only source for Armenian ancient history. He carefully differentiates hearsay from fact, never fails to stamp a fable or legend as such, and generally quotes his authorities where he has them. Considering the limitation of his materials, and the time in which he wrote, Moses wrote a really remarkable book, although the verdicts of a few critics have been unfavorable.20Raffi p. 129.21Lidgett,An Ancient People. St. Martin 1:409. Mar Apas Catina p. 41.22The influence of Greek culture is chiefly indicated by the fact that the pagan divinities were Greek and that many temples were erected to these gods and goddesses all over the country. (Agathange,Histoire du Règne de Tiridate. Langlois 1:164–70.) Secondly, there were formed by St. Sahag and St. Mesrob in the fifth century after the conversion of the nation to Christianity, schools of translators, who studied in Greece, Egypt, and Rome and whose chief works were translations from the Greek. With the conversion (301) came the necessity for a written language, the characters of which were invented by St. Mesrob in 404. Thereupon were organized the schools of translators whose chief study of necessity was Greek, and whose translations and original works have given to the fifth century the title of “Golden Age of Armenian Literature.” (Langlois 1:xxi–xxvi, 2:vii.)23St. Martin 1:288, 289. Mar Apas Catina 1:41.Moses of Khorene 2:81.24Ibid.25Gibbon,Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire3:393.Moses of Khorene 2:155.26Ibid.pp. 88, 89.27St. Martin 1:291. Moses of Khorene p. 88.28Raffi p. 126.29Langlois 1:ix, x. These songs of which Moses of Khorene very frequently speaks are classified by Langlois into songs of the first order, the second order, and the third order. The first are relative to the prowess of Armenian kings and gods; the second concern a long series of military exploits accomplished against the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians; the third refer especially to traditions in connection with the Assyrians. The birth-song of Vahakn is an illustration of the songs of the first order (p. x, xi). Flint in hisHistory of the Philosophy of History, p. 42, speaks of this period of minstrelsy as necessarily preceding the use of letters everywhere. “The myth and legend interest primitive man more than real fact. His vision is more largely of the imagination than of the sense of judgment. It is an error to regard the rude minstrelsy which generally preceded the use of letters as essentially historical.”30Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco,Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs, chapter on Armenia.31The battle of Avarair under the leadership of the celebrated Vartan, where Armenia defended her national ideals against the intrusion of Persia, is proof of this.32Ormanian p. 22. Moses of Khorene p. 158.33There are further proofs that may be cited. The history of English and French literature shows that the golden age of their literature followed a period of social integration along national lines. And it is true that the golden age of Armenian literature dawned with the closing decades of the Arsacidae dynasty, and continued several decades beyond. And finally, when Valarsace, the first Arsacidae, ascended the throne of Armenia, finding everything in a state of disorder, he organized the country along national lines. Dividing the kingdom into provinces he placed his governors at the heads of them; he organized a standing army, appointed guardians of the granaries, established courts of justice, a royal guard, and minutely regulated court life. What is most interesting is that he appointed two reporters, one to remind him in his anger, “le bien à faire,” the other to remind him of the necessity for doing justice.Ibid.pp. 82–85.34St. Martin 1:300. Moses of Khorene pp. 105–6.35Ibid.p. 106.36Boyadjian p. 49. Moses of Khorene p. 106. Moses as translated by Langlois, relates the story as legend, for after telling the tale, and quoting the songs he writes, “Voici maintenant le fait dans toute sa verité comme le cuir rouge est trés-estimé chez les Alains, Artaschés donne beaucoup de peaux de cette couleur, et beaucoup d’or en dot, et il obtient la jeune princesse Satenig. C’est là la lanière de cuir rouge garnie d’anneaux d’or. Ainsi dans les noces, ils chantent des légendes, en disant,‘Une pluie d’or tombaitAu marriage d’Artaschés;Les perles pleuvaitAux noces de Satenig.’”Moses likewise relegates the legend and songs of Artavasd to their proper places.37Moses of Khorene p. 111.38Translation from Moses by Boyadjian p. 65.39Moses of Khorene p. 111.40Raffi p. 42.41St. Martin 1:appendix.42Ibid.

Chapter IIAncient Historical LegendsSection 1. The Legend of HaicArmenians do not call themselves Armenians nor their country Armenia. They are descendants of Haic, as the legend goes, who was the son of Togarmah, the son of Japhet, who was the son of Noah, and they call their country Haiasdan after the patriarchal progenitor of their people.1Haic dwelt in the plain of Shinar and was a prefect or director in the building of the tower of Babel. He was beautiful as a god and strong as a giant, mighty in battle and especially adept in spear throwing. In the days of his youth, Bel or Nimrod, who was the patron god of Babylon, established himself over all and wished to be worshipped. But Haic refused to obey, and taking his sons, who numbered about three hundred, his daughters, his sheep and cattle, he journeyed north until he came to the land of Ararat. Bel tried in vain to persuade his rival to come back.“Thou hast departed and hast settled in a chill and frosty region,” urged the Assyrian god. “Soften thy hard pride, change thy coldness to geniality; be my subject and come and live a life of ease in my domain.”2But Haic refused the cordial invitation, which so much angered Bel that the latter brought his army to force the Armenian hero into submission. Haic, however, was victorious, for he slew Bel with an arrow from his own bow. The place where Bel was buried is called “Kerezman,” meaning grave, and is pointed out to this day. Armenians sing songs and tell stories of the great beauty and valor of Haic. He died at the age of four hundred in about 2028 B.C.3This oldest of Armenian legends, quaint and simple as it is in accounting for the beginnings of a people, savours of the Old Testament and is suggestive of the Assyrian invasion which took place about the ninth century before Christ. It is significant that the Armenians refused the protection of Bel, and that in the very beginning of their legendary history, they insisted on standing firm and maintaining their independence, for no single quality is more characteristic of this people than a proud, haughty, even at times disdainful independence. It is also suggestive that their patriarchal hero was no saint, but a mighty giant, beautiful as he was strong, whose greatest pride was in the throwing of a spear, for his descendants have not been a peaceful people. To be sure, they were the first nation to be converted to Christianity, which would say little fortheir firmness and independence, were it not that the priest with the cross was followed by a powerful king with a sword at the head of an army that had learned to fight as the Romans fought.4The songs that were sung in memory and honor of Haic are seldom sung to-day unless it be in some remote village where the civilization of the Turk has not yet pressed, and there are few such villages if any. For many of them breathe of a national spirit not beseeming a subject nation, and have been suppressed for many years.Section 2. The Legend of Ara and SemiramisDating back to the Assyrian invasion which took place during the seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, one of the oldest of Armenian legends, that of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and Ara, king of Armenia, is told.5Ara was very beautiful, and Semiramis having heard speech of his beauty for many years, wished to possess him. But she dared do nothing for fear of Ninus, protector over Armenia. After the death of Ninus, however, the queen sent messengers to Ara, with gifts and offerings, with prayers and promises of riches, begging him to come to her at Nineveh and either wed her and reign over all that Ninus had possessed, orfulfillher desire and return in peace to Armenia with many gifts. But when the messengers had been turned away repeatedly, Semiramis became angry, and taking her army she hastened to Armenia. The battle was fought on the plain of Ara, called after him Ararat; and although the queen had given careful orders to her generals to devise some means of saving the life of Ara, the Armenian king was slain. She found the dead body among the others that had fallen, and ordered her servants to place it in an upper chamber in her castle. And when the Armenian army again arose to drive away the foe and avenge the death of Ara, thequeen said, “I have commanded the gods to lick his wounds and he shall live again.” She tried to bring Ara back to life by witchcraft and charms, but the body began to decay and she commanded her servants to cast the corpse into a deep pit and to cover it. And having dressed up one of her men in secret, she caused the following proclamation to be spread among the people: “The gods have licked Ara and have brought him back to life again, thus fulfilling our prayers and our pleasures. Therefore from this time forth shall they be the more glorified and worshipped by us, for they are the givers of joy and the fulfillers of desire.” And she erected a statue to the gods, making it seem as though they had brought Ara back to life again. This news was spread over all the country of Armenia, and having satisfied the people, she put an end to the fighting. The twelve-year-old son of the king was taken by the Assyrian queen and appointed ruler over Armenia. She called him Ara, in memory of her love for Ara the Beautiful.To Semiramis is attributed the building of the ancient city of Van on the shores of the beautiful lake of Van, where she made her summer residence until the time of her departure.6She might well have lingered there, for the Armenians have a proverb, “Van in this world, paradise in the next.” Nevertheless, Semiramis and Ara are mythical characters, although the latter is spoken of in the history of St. Martin as having lived along about 1769 B.C.7As regards the popular belief in the legend, however, there is not the slightest doubt. This is proved by the fact that even to-day the city is called “Sham-iram-agerd” by the Armenians, meaning the city of Semiramis. Lynch says that Ara and Semiramis are Tannuz and Istar, the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth, and that the quest of the Assyrian queen may be connected with the introduction into Armenia of the worship of Istar whose name is mentioned in one of the cuneiform inscriptions at Van.8However, the results of modern scholarship are by no means conclusive on this point, as we shall see.Section 3. Historical Background of the Legend of Ara and SemiramisMoses’ history was read by St. Martin who became exceedingly interested in Van, and in the cuneiform inscriptions spoken of. It was due to him that the French government dispatched a mission to Armenia in 1827, under the direction of a young German Professor, Friedrich Edward Schulz. Schulz was murdered by the Kurds, a thing which rarely happens in Armenia, and his work was left incomplete. He had succeeded, however, in making copies of forty-two inscriptions, which were publishedin 1840, and proved to be remarkably accurate. Shortly afterward, orientalists made great discoveries in the Mesopotamian valley, but the inscriptions at Van did not tally with any syllabaries discovered up to that time, nor could they be translated in any known language. A number of them were found to be Assyrian, but the great majority were peculiar to Van, and entirely baffled the students. Not until 1880 were they finally unravelled. M. S. Guyard discovered at that time that the concluding phrase of many Vannic texts represented an imprecatory formula found in exactly the same place in Assyrian counterparts. This discovery enabled Professor Sayce, of Oxford, to decipher the inscriptions at a rapid rate.Among the important facts discovered were that the nation was a rival nation of Assyria, and that its people were called Khaldeans, or children of Khaldis, much in the same way as the Assyrians reflected the name of their god, Assur. The country was a theocracy and Khaldis was supreme. In the tablets, his wrath was invoked against whomever should destroy them. The capital city was Dhuspus, modern Van, which is the Disp, or Tsp of Armenian writers, and the Turuspa of Assyrian annals. The Assyrians styled the kingdom Urardhu, or Urarthu, which is the name appearing in the Bible in the familiar form Ararat.The earliest inscriptions date back to the ninth century before Christ, and as the language is neither Semitic nor Indo-European, the people could neither have been Assyrians whose language was Semitic, nor Armenians, whose language is Indo-European. The first mention made of Urardhu was in the reign of Ashur-Nazir-Pal (885–860 B.C.) whose successor, Shalmanasar II (860–825 B.C.) was the first Assyrian king to invade Armenia.9Raffi, however, (the son of the famous Armenian poet) speaks of an account given by Assur-Nazir-Haban (1882–1857 B.C.) of one of his victories. “They” (i.e., the people of Ararat or Urarthu), he said, “fled to the impregnable mountains so that I might not be able to get at them, for the mighty summits were like drawn swords pointing to the skies. Only the birds of heaven soaring on their wings could reach them. In three days I was there spreading terror in places where they had taken refuge. Their corpses like autumn leaves filled the clefts. The rest escaped to distant inaccessible heights.”10This, clearly, is a much older record than any that Lynch found trace of, and although Raffi cites no authority for the quotation, I presume that it has been taken from a recent discovery. If this be true the Khaldeans were a very ancient people. One of the tablets shows that King Memas was the principal author of the magnificent canal which conducts the water of the riverKhoshab to the suburbs of Van, and which is to-day called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis.11The line of Vannic kings is traceable as far down as 644 B.C.Most of these inscriptions are to be found on a huge isolated rock, situated in the curve of the bay, and known as the “rock of Van.”12Among them are inscriptions left by Xerxes (485 B.C.), the Persian conqueror whose father’s empire (Darius, 521–486 B.C.) succeeded the loose Scythian rule.But the ancient Khaldean kingdom had already vanished when Xerxes’ victorious army overran the country, for shortly after the great influx of Scythians and the break-up of Assyria, came another horde from the west, perhaps to fill up the void left by the Scythian ravages. It is at this time that the Armenian people are first heard from, and it is this horde, therefore, that is regarded as the foundation stock of the Armenian people. They seem to have been an Indo-European people residing in the territory north of the Black Sea, for, coming from the west they must have entered Asia from Europe by crossing the straits. The ancient Khaldeans were assimilated to some extent, but for the most part, they were driven to the north and south, where they have left traces that have been recognized and recorded by Xenophon and Herodotus.13That the civilization and culture of the ancient Khaldeans were utilized is beyond doubt. Their most ancient cities, Van, Armavir, were foundations of Vannic kings, while recently it has been disclosed that the city of Hajk, southeast of Van, shows some of the familiar features of a Khaldean settlement. But their supreme god during the pre-Christian era was not Khaldis, but the Persian Ormuzd, which indicates that the Persians exercised an even greater influence.How then could Semiramis ever have come to Van in quest of an Armenian king, since it seems that the Scythians had already conquered Assyria before the great influx of Armenian hordes? Nor does it seem that the city of Van was built by the Assyrian queen, for the inscriptions make no mention of her name. King Memas who, in the view of Lynch, constructed the famous canal, was in all probability the author of the garden city. The belief, according to Lynch, as already stated, is that this legend is the Armenian version of the old Hellenic myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, taken over during the domination of the Seleucid dynasty which followed the conquest of Alexander about 325 B.C.14But this is unreasonable. That a myth should be taken over by a subject people and the characters rechristened is not difficult to understand,but that the name of one of them should be applied to the ancient city is very improbable to say the least. Furthermore, the legend is flavored rather strongly with Persian voluptuousness, and is not at all suggestive of Greek delicacy and refinement. Nor is the fact that the horde overran the country after the destruction of Assyria in any way conclusive, for if there were any assimilation at all, as there must unquestionably have been, the Khaldean culture and history was to that extent the actual possession of the Armenians. Even intermarriage would perhaps be unnecessary, for what Irishman who has been in the United States two months does not speak of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as his forefathers? It is to be noted also that to this day the canal spoken of is called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis, by all Armenians.15On the whole it seems to me conclusive, therefore, that the legend of Semiramis and Ara has its roots in Armenian history, and is not at all a version of the Hellenic myth.Section 4. The Legend of VahaknThe legend of Vahakn, king and god of Armenians, is very clearly attributable to the Greek period, which followed the Persian conquest under Xerxes. Vahakn was deified because of his great valor and made the fire-god of the Armenian people.16He was called “Vishapakagh,” uprooter of dragons, since he cleared Armenia of monsters and saved it from evil influences. His exploits were known in the abode of the gods as well as in Armenia. The most famous of them was the theft of corn from the barns of King Barsham of Assyria, from whom he ran away and tried to hide in heaven. Because of the ears he dropped in his rapid flight, there arose the Milky Way which is called in Armenian the “track of the corn stealer.”17Moses of Khorene writes as follows:Concerning the birth of this king the legends say,“Heaven and earth were in travail,And the crimson waters were in travail,And in the water, the crimson reedWas also in travail.From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,From the mouth of the reed issued flame,And out of the flame sprang the young child,His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,And his eyes were suns.”18With our own ears did we hear these words sung to the accompaniment of the harp. They sing moreover that he did fight with the dragons, and overcame them; and some say that his valiant deeds were like unto Hercules. Others declare that he was a god, and that a great image of him stood in the land of Georgia, where it was worshipped, with sacrifices.19The wife of Vahakn was Astghik, the goddess of beauty, a personification of the moon, corresponding to the Phoenician and Sidonian Astarte. This is suggestive of Greek influence, for Venus, the Greek goddess of beauty, was also the wife of a fire-god, Vulcan.20The flight of Vahakn before the Assyrian king is certainly more suggestive of the fear in which the Assyrians must have been regarded than of the valor of their god. The originators of the legend were good psychologists, however, in regarding the instincts of fear and of pugnacity as compatible. For even the slayer of demons must some day face his superiors in strength, and when he does, will he not be afraid? In fact he would be more afraid than another, for he could not well impute more mercy to his superior than he himself had shown to his inferiors.The vein of humor is too rich to be left unnoted. If the Greeks could laugh at their gods, and even mock them, the Armenians could also make sport of them. For what could be more delightfully humorous than the picture of a bearded god, a slayer of dragons, whose hair was of flame and whose eyes like suns, stealing corn from the Assyrian king and dropping the ears from his shoulders in his hasty flight across heaven? The character thus brought out, together with the richness of imaginative quality, especially in the song of his birth, the wholesome and unveiled anthropomorphism (wholesome because it is unveiled), and the correspondence between the Greek fire-god Vulcan whose wife was Venus, the goddess of beauty, with the fire-god Vahakn whose wife Astghik was also goddess of beauty, stamp the legend with its unmistakable origin in Greek mythology.Section 5. The Historic Background of the Legend of VahaknThe Greek period from which this legend dates began with the defeat of the Armenian king Vahy, who was overcome by Alexander theGreat somewhere about 328 B.C.21The Greeks chose their own representative to rule over the province, who at the time of Alexander’s death was Seleucus. Historians have taken the name of this governor to indicate the dynasty of Greek supremacy which followed; i.e., the Seleucid dynasty. This method of the Greeks of selecting their own man to govern a subject people, which was of course in pursuance of their policy of superimposing their own culture upon all subject nations, was contrary to the policy of the Parthians, Romans, and Persians, who allowed the Armenians to maintain their national independence provided they permitted the use of their armies and duly paid their taxes. And it is this policy of the Greeks that accounts for the fact that large portions of Greek mythology and religion were taken over by the Armenians.Although the period of political supremacy was short-lived, the influence of Greek culture continued to permeate the social life of the people through the reign of the Arsacid kings.22In 246 B.C. Arsaces, a Parthian, made himself master of the Parthians, Persians, Medes, Babylonians, and lastly Armenians.23His grandson, Arsaces the Great, conquered as far as India, and after seating himself securely upon the throne of Persia, placed his brother Valarsace upon the Armenian throne, so founding the Persian and Armenian Arsacid dynasties (150 B.C.).24The Persian Arsacidae became extinct in A.D. 226 when they were overthrown by the Persian Sasanidae, whereas the Armenian Arsacidae line continued up until A.D. 428, when the Armenian kingdom was divided between Persia and Rome by Shapuh, the Persian monarch, and Theodosius II.25This makes a period of 578 years (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) during which Armenia was governed by her own line of kings, and enjoyed the liberties of national independence. To be sure after the conquest of Lucullus and Pompey (66 B.C.) Armenia became tributary to Rome, but the right of succession remained with the Armenian royal family, even during Roman supremacy, so that the national life was in no manner interfered with.26The greatest Armenian king of the Arsacidae line was Tigranes the Great, who extended his domains by conquest and established himself in his capital, Tigranacerta, with a court of matchless splendor.27He is spoken of by historians as a king of kings, and as having ruled with a pomp, splendor, and pride never before known. Defeated by Pompey within the walls of his own capital city, his kingdom became tributary to Rome.Section 6. The Period of National IntegrationThe continuity of the period of the Armenian Arsacidae makes it the time when the process of national solidification and unification was carried out to the point that made Armenia a nation, and beyond this point. Raffi asserts that the introduction of Greek culture during the Arsacid dynasty not only changed the religion of Armenians, but also so affected their language and customs that they became different from the Persians, which is proof that a process of social readjustment was going on.28It was during this period that the wandering minstrels spoken of by Langlois journeyed from one end of the nation to the other, singing their songs, repeating the national legends, relating the news of the world and the court gossip which probably made up the largest portion of it.Les chants de l’antique Arménie rappellent principalement des événements la plupart héroiques et légendaires, accomplis à des époques très différentes, ce qui donne à penser qu’ils ont dû être composés à diverses reprises, par des rhapsodes dont les noms ne nous sont point parvenus. Les sujets traités dans ces chants demontrent clairement qu’ils n’ont été inspirés ni à des prêtres païens, ni à des poètes qui auraient vécu sous leur influence, en vue d’être recités dans des fêtes religieuses ou en face des autels. Au contraire, on reconnait de prime abord que ces chants sont l’oeuvre de bardes nationaux, ayant un libre acces dans les palais des souverains et à la cour des satrapes. C’est ce qui fait supposer que ces poèmes sont peutêtre dûs à des ménestrels, à la solde des rois et des nobles et ayant pour emploi de célébrer leurs vertus et leurs prouesses.29This is putting the case conservatively, for Moses speaks often of “les chantres” and “les chants.” They traveled as far as Persia and returned, for it is related by the Italian Countess Evelyn Martinengo how a wandering minstrel, who had just returned from that country, was entertained by an Armenian patriarchal family living in the kind of undergroundhabitation described in the beginning of this thesis.30No one was ever more welcome than the minstrel. He was assigned to the guest chamber usually prepared especially for him, and always the best chamber in the household. His head and feet were washed for him by the wife of the patriarch, and at meal time all the delicacies of the household were spread before him. All guests were welcome, but no guest more welcome than the minstrel. They must have listened to his tales in a kind of petrified awe, and heard him sing his songs in speechless enjoyment.It was a practice among the minstrels of the time to compete with each other in public, and it is related how two minstrels entertained by a Persian prince were led out upon an open grass plot and seated, one facing the other. Five thousand people made a circle around the competitors while the rivals contended in song and verse, riddle and repartee. Each began where the other left off, until finally one failed to perceive the drift of his adversary, and answering at random, the spectators proclaimed him beaten. The triumphant bard was led to the vanquished, whose lyre was taken from him and broken. Robed in a prince’s mantle, the victor was taken to the highest seat in the banquet hall.That the people were the judges of the contest, indicates how well they must have been acquainted with the current folk-songs, legends, and tradition. How generally and frequently the custom of minstrel competition was practiced throughout Armenia is not known, but it certainly is proof, besides Moses’ own statements to the same effect, that the national legends and folk-songs were the possession of the common people. And what is more important, this same body of legends, folk-songs, and tradition did more than any other one thing to weld the sentiments of the people into a single national sentiment, which crystallized into a real patriotism, a real loyalty and devotion to any cause that was a national cause, because it was the natural, spontaneous expression of the life and thought of the people, and no mean, artificial thing superimposed from outside.31There are other reasons for giving this period the social importance that I have ascribed to it. The conversion of the people to Christianity about the third century after Christ was achieved in no sentimental fashion, but, as I believe, in a manner in which it alone could have been done, namely, at the point of the sword of their own king, Tiridates, who was converted from paganism to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator. The traditions in connection with this important event will be told later. Suffice it to say at this point that the whole process of conversion was carried out so thoroughly and completely, that it may be described as a national volte-face, and therefore did not result in the disintegration,civil strife, and social chaos that would unquestionably have been the result had the process been carried out by means of peaceful penetration and propaganda.The third and last argument in support of the social and national importance of the period of the Arsacid kings is in respect to the alphabet which was compiled by St. Mesrob Maschtotz. St. Mesrob was a former secretary of the king, and desired to extirpate the last remnants of paganism in the province of Akoulis, but in the absence of an alphabet he was unable to carry out any scheme of propaganda. He therefore besought the king, Vramschapouh, to put an end to this state of things and the latter, in response to the request, placed all available material at the disposal of the saint. The task was accomplished in 404, somewhat at the expense of the future devotees of the language, for the alphabet contains thirty-eight letters.32Nevertheless, most of the sounds of foreign languages were represented, making it particularly useful as a foundation language for other languages. St. Mesrob, with a body of translators trained by himself and St. Sahak, then proceeded to the translation of the Bible, which was not completed until 433. Liturgies and song-books quickly followed. To be sure the effect of the invention of the alphabet and the distribution of the various religious publications that followed were not felt during the period of the Arsacidae, for the Bible was not published until after the break-up of the kingdom in 428, when it was divided between Persia and Rome. But the important point is that the time had come when the need for an alphabet was making itself very strongly felt, and this could not have been true of a diversified, heterogeneous population.For the three reasons above mentioned, i.e., first, the work of minstrels, second, the Christianizing of the nation, and third, the invention of the alphabet, all occurring during the successive reigns of the Arsacid kings, I should ascribe to this period (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) the integration of the Armenian people into a national unit.33Christianity must have come as a disrupting force, as a terrible shock, necessitating a complete social readjustment, but the fact that the readjustment was made shows that the people were ready for it. For better or for worse the yoke of Christianity was fastened to the neck of the people, and with it they had toreplow the social soil. The job was a good one, for the Armenian church has been the chief power during the last ten or fifteen centuries in keeping alive the streams of national life, and in holding the people together in the face of invasion and repeated attempts at proselytization by the Persians and by the Greek and Roman Catholic churches.Section 7. Legends of Artasches and ArtavasdThe legends of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd, the son of Artasches, belong to the Arsacid period, for Artavasd and Artasches are Armenian kings of the Arsacid dynasty, according to Moses.34The Alans who, according to the legend, were a neighboring people residing in the mountain region in the vicinity of Georgia, spread themselves over Armenia while Artasches, the Armenian king, collected a great army and forced the Alans to retreat across the river Kur where they pitched camp. The son of the Alan king was taken captive and brought to Artasches, which forced the former to seek peace on whatever terms the Armenian king might wish, provided only his son was returned in safety. But Artasches refused, whereupon the sister of the captured boy came to the river bank, and standing upon a great rock spoke to the camp of Artasches by means of interpreters saying: “Oh brave Artasches, who hast vanquished the great nation of Alans, unto thee I speak. Come, hearken unto the bright-eyed daughter of the Alan king and give back the youth. For it is not the way of heroes to destroy life at the root, nor for the sake of humbling and enslaving a hostage to establish everlasting enmity between two great nations.”35Artasches, having heard of these sayings went to the river bank and having seen that the girl was beautiful, and listened to her words of wisdom, wished to marry her. His chamberlain considered it a wise stroke of policy, and therefore went to the Alan king, soliciting the hand of the princess for his master, whose oaths and assurances of peace he vouched for, together with the promise to return the boy. The king of the Alans answered, “From whence shall brave Artasches give thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands upon tens of thousands in return for the maiden?”Writes Moses:Concerning this, the poets of that land sing in their songs:“Brave King ArtaschesMounted his fine black charger,And took the red leathern cordWith the golden ring.Like a swift winged eagleHe passed over the riverAnd cast the golden ringRound the waist of the Alan Princess;Causing much pain to the tender maidenAs he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”Which being interpreted meaneth that he was commanded to give much gold, leather, and crimson dye in exchange for the maiden. So also they sing of the wedding:“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”For it was the custom of our kings to scatter coins amongst the people when they arrived at the doors of the temple for their wedding, as also for the queens to scatter pearls in their bride-chamber.36The couplet quoted is still sung by the Armenians, and it is still customary for the bridegroom to scatter money on his way to the church, and though it may be for queens to scatter pearls, the Armenian bride is not to be outdone. She is given a partly opened pomegranate which she throws at the door of the bridegroom upon the arrival at the bridegroom’s home after the ceremony at the church, the bits of pomegranate scattering themselves about as pearls.After fifty-one years of a very prosperous reign, Artasches, who was very much beloved by his people, died. The funeral procession was a most magnificent one, and many of the people killed themselves, out of love for their dead king, according to the custom of the time. And when the body was laid in the grave they threw precious jewels, gold, and silver after it. Nor did the lamenting and suicide stop after his burial, for upon the grave of their dead king the nobles and the people continued to kill themselves. So great was the slaughter that Artavasd, son of Artasches, and king after his father’s death, addressed the spirit of his dead father, saying, “Behold, thou art taking all with thee; dost thou leave me to rule over ruins and the dead?” The words given by Moses of Khorene are: “Now that thou art gone, and hast taken with thee the whole land, how shall I reign over the ruins?”37Whereupon the spirit of Artasches cursed him and said,“When thou ridest forth to huntOver the free heights of Ararat,The strong ones shall have thee,And shall take thee upOn to the free heights of Ararat.There shalt thou abide,And never more see the light.”38These words together with those of Artavasd spoken to his father’s spirit were sung by the singers of the time.39One day while out hunting Artavasd was seized by some visionary terror and lost his reason. Urging his horse down a steep bank he fell into a chasm where he sank and disappeared. Old women told how he was confined in a cavern and bound with iron chains which his two dogs gnawed at daily in order to set him free. But somehow at the sound of the hammers striking on the anvils, the chains were continually strengthened, and it was customary among the blacksmiths of the time to strike the anvil three or four times to strengthen, as they said, the chains of Artavasd. And so the tradition was kept up by singers and blacksmiths; the blacksmiths and old women having consigned the jealous king to the world’s nethermost regions, while the singers left him to the solitude of Ararat in accordance with the curse of Artasches.Section 8. ConclusionsSuch are the ancient legends of Armenia, in their respective historical settings: the legends of Haic, of Semiramis and Ara, of Vahakn, of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd. All of them antedate the Christian era, and some of them by many centuries. Each one of them is told by Moses of Khorene. But as to origin and probable historic roots Moses was silent, for he was writing a history. He constantly laments the absolute dearth of material and sources and begins his accounts of these legends with the words “This is as it is told,” or “the singers say,” indicating that his only sources for them were the songs and reports current among the people during his own time. The legends of Haic and of Semiramis and Ara are told by Moses as though he believed them historic fact, but of course Moses had no materials to serve as a basis of criticism. He is careful to quote Mar Apas Catina as his only source for this material. The other three legends are regarded as such. Artavasd is spoken of as an historical king who lost his reason while riding horseback and fell into a deep chasm. The practice of suicide at the death of Artasches, his father, was a pagan custom. The curse of the spirit of the dead father, the chains, the dogs, and the anvils were of course recognized as the work of ingenious fancy. In view therefore, of the questionable character of Moses’ sources these legends have very little historic value. They do, however, have a high social value inasmuch as the common knowledge of them among the people was the only ultimate source at the disposal of the historian.The second conclusion is that these legends formed a very important part of the larger mass of tradition and songs that served to cementthe people into a nation. Just how important, it would be difficult to say, but the fact that they were current at the time Moses wrote indicates that they were current and passed on from generation to generation during the whole period of the Arsacidae kings. And as the people had no alphabet during this whole period, they must have been passed on by song and word of mouth. This was a time of special activity on the part of the minstrels and singers, and therefore the development of the national consciousness characteristic of the period must have been brought about in a large measure through the medium of these legendary beliefs.Furthermore these legends are known by the Armenian people to-day and are taught in the schools that are not too severely under the rules of Turkish and Russian censorship. Naturally enough, they are a source of great pride since they breathe national independence and loyalty. But of course, the Turks and Russians have suppressed all public singing of songs, and public teaching of history and legend that may possibly be construed as partaking of the national spirit.It may be argued that these legends slumbered between the covers of Moses’ history during the centuries known as the dark ages, and that they had no social value until the contagion of the European spirit of the Renaissance awoke the legends and the people at the same time. But the mere dearth of record is no proof of this Rip Van Winkle theory. There is at least one reliable authority sufficient to disprove it, viz., Grigor Magistros, a scholar of the eleventh century who wrote that he heard the Artasches epic sung by minstrels.40Besides the unreasonableness of the supposition, there is the added fact of an independent Armenian kingdom known as the Bagradouni dynasty, whose capital seat was at the famous city of Ani. This kingdom included greater Armenia and continued from A.D. 887 to 1079.41But 1079 does not mark the end of Armenian independence though it marks the destruction of Ani, for Reuben, a member of the royal family, made his way into Cilicia in the year 1080, and rallying a handful of Armenians about him, overpowered the Greeks and founded what is known as the Rupenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which continued during a period of 300 years. So that here again is a period of very nearly five hundred years (889–1380), during which time the Armenian people enjoyed national political independence.42And this during the very period of the dark ages, about which we know so little! We could not, therefore, for a moment suppose the traditions and legends to have had no social importance during these centuries, for such an assumption would be in flat contradiction to the witness of Grigor Magistros, and to the facts of Armenian history.1Mar Apas Catina. Langlois’Collection des Histoires de l’Arménie1:16.2St. Martin,Mémoire sur l’Arménie1:281.3Mar Apas Catina. Langlois 1:15–18.Moses of Khorene. Langlois 3:63–64.4St. Martin 1:306.5Ibid.1:282–3. Moses of Khorene 2:67–69.Mar Apas Catina 1:26–27.The first Arsacidae king of Armenia, Valarsace, whose reign began in 149 B.C. found the kingdom in general disorder and was the first to organize the country along national lines. As a Parthian he was unacquainted with the history and institutions of the people, and desiring to build upon the established foundation, such as it was, he sent a Syrian scholar, Mar Apas Catina by name, with a letter to his brother, Arsace, king of Persia, requesting the latter to allow the Syrian access to the royal archives with the view of finding a history of Armenia. Mar Apas Catina found an old MS containing a history of ancient Armenia which bore the name of no author, and which was translated from Chaldean to Greek by order of Alexander the Great. It was translated into Syriac by the Syrian scholar for the benefit of Valarsace, but the MS has been lost, and there is not the slightest trace of it anywhere. It must have been in existence however, during the fifth century after Christ for Moses of Khorene used it as his only source for Armenia’s ancient history, in writing his general history of Armenia. The old MS being lost, the translation by Mar Apas Catina and the first part of the history of Moses are given as identical to each other in Langlois’ collection of Armenian historians. The ancient history contains the legends of Haic, of Ara and Semiramis, and of Vahakn, some of the songs of heroes, still sung, and other matter which is strictly speaking not historical. As a history, therefore, it is unreliable and unauthentic, but from the standpoint of the social historian it is invaluable, for a belief is as important a fact to sociology as the dethronement of a king is to history.6Boyadjian,Armenian Legends and Poetryp. 33.7St. Martin 1:409.8Lynch 2:65.9Lynch,Armenia, chapter entitled “Van.”10Raffi, article in Boyadjian’sArmenian Legends and Poetry,p. 125.11Lynch, chapter on Van.12Moses of Khorene 2:69.13Ibid.14Lynch 2:65.15Moses of Khorene 2:68, 69.16St. Martin 1:285.17Raffi p. 129. Abeghian pp. 49, 50.18Moses of Khorene 2:76. Translation from Moses, Boyadjian p. 10.Mar Apas Catina 1:40.19Mar Apas Catina 1:41. Moses of Khorene p. 76.Moses of Khorene, called the Herodotus of Armenia, has written the best known history of the Armenian people. The work has been translated into Latin, Italian, French, German, and Russian. Moses lived in the fifth century, two centuries after the conversion of the nation to Christianity. He belonged to the second order of translators in the school of St. Sahag and St. Mesrob, and was sent to Syria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome in order to complete his studies. Upon returning to his country he found everything in disorder. St. Sahag and St. Mesrob were dead, the king had been overthrown, and he chose the life of solitude. Sometime later he was chosen bishop and requested by an Armenian prince, Sahag Bagratide, to write a history of his country, which task he took up with great enthusiasm. The translation of Mar Apas Catina was his only source for Armenian ancient history. He carefully differentiates hearsay from fact, never fails to stamp a fable or legend as such, and generally quotes his authorities where he has them. Considering the limitation of his materials, and the time in which he wrote, Moses wrote a really remarkable book, although the verdicts of a few critics have been unfavorable.20Raffi p. 129.21Lidgett,An Ancient People. St. Martin 1:409. Mar Apas Catina p. 41.22The influence of Greek culture is chiefly indicated by the fact that the pagan divinities were Greek and that many temples were erected to these gods and goddesses all over the country. (Agathange,Histoire du Règne de Tiridate. Langlois 1:164–70.) Secondly, there were formed by St. Sahag and St. Mesrob in the fifth century after the conversion of the nation to Christianity, schools of translators, who studied in Greece, Egypt, and Rome and whose chief works were translations from the Greek. With the conversion (301) came the necessity for a written language, the characters of which were invented by St. Mesrob in 404. Thereupon were organized the schools of translators whose chief study of necessity was Greek, and whose translations and original works have given to the fifth century the title of “Golden Age of Armenian Literature.” (Langlois 1:xxi–xxvi, 2:vii.)23St. Martin 1:288, 289. Mar Apas Catina 1:41.Moses of Khorene 2:81.24Ibid.25Gibbon,Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire3:393.Moses of Khorene 2:155.26Ibid.pp. 88, 89.27St. Martin 1:291. Moses of Khorene p. 88.28Raffi p. 126.29Langlois 1:ix, x. These songs of which Moses of Khorene very frequently speaks are classified by Langlois into songs of the first order, the second order, and the third order. The first are relative to the prowess of Armenian kings and gods; the second concern a long series of military exploits accomplished against the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians; the third refer especially to traditions in connection with the Assyrians. The birth-song of Vahakn is an illustration of the songs of the first order (p. x, xi). Flint in hisHistory of the Philosophy of History, p. 42, speaks of this period of minstrelsy as necessarily preceding the use of letters everywhere. “The myth and legend interest primitive man more than real fact. His vision is more largely of the imagination than of the sense of judgment. It is an error to regard the rude minstrelsy which generally preceded the use of letters as essentially historical.”30Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco,Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs, chapter on Armenia.31The battle of Avarair under the leadership of the celebrated Vartan, where Armenia defended her national ideals against the intrusion of Persia, is proof of this.32Ormanian p. 22. Moses of Khorene p. 158.33There are further proofs that may be cited. The history of English and French literature shows that the golden age of their literature followed a period of social integration along national lines. And it is true that the golden age of Armenian literature dawned with the closing decades of the Arsacidae dynasty, and continued several decades beyond. And finally, when Valarsace, the first Arsacidae, ascended the throne of Armenia, finding everything in a state of disorder, he organized the country along national lines. Dividing the kingdom into provinces he placed his governors at the heads of them; he organized a standing army, appointed guardians of the granaries, established courts of justice, a royal guard, and minutely regulated court life. What is most interesting is that he appointed two reporters, one to remind him in his anger, “le bien à faire,” the other to remind him of the necessity for doing justice.Ibid.pp. 82–85.34St. Martin 1:300. Moses of Khorene pp. 105–6.35Ibid.p. 106.36Boyadjian p. 49. Moses of Khorene p. 106. Moses as translated by Langlois, relates the story as legend, for after telling the tale, and quoting the songs he writes, “Voici maintenant le fait dans toute sa verité comme le cuir rouge est trés-estimé chez les Alains, Artaschés donne beaucoup de peaux de cette couleur, et beaucoup d’or en dot, et il obtient la jeune princesse Satenig. C’est là la lanière de cuir rouge garnie d’anneaux d’or. Ainsi dans les noces, ils chantent des légendes, en disant,‘Une pluie d’or tombaitAu marriage d’Artaschés;Les perles pleuvaitAux noces de Satenig.’”Moses likewise relegates the legend and songs of Artavasd to their proper places.37Moses of Khorene p. 111.38Translation from Moses by Boyadjian p. 65.39Moses of Khorene p. 111.40Raffi p. 42.41St. Martin 1:appendix.42Ibid.

Chapter IIAncient Historical LegendsSection 1. The Legend of HaicArmenians do not call themselves Armenians nor their country Armenia. They are descendants of Haic, as the legend goes, who was the son of Togarmah, the son of Japhet, who was the son of Noah, and they call their country Haiasdan after the patriarchal progenitor of their people.1Haic dwelt in the plain of Shinar and was a prefect or director in the building of the tower of Babel. He was beautiful as a god and strong as a giant, mighty in battle and especially adept in spear throwing. In the days of his youth, Bel or Nimrod, who was the patron god of Babylon, established himself over all and wished to be worshipped. But Haic refused to obey, and taking his sons, who numbered about three hundred, his daughters, his sheep and cattle, he journeyed north until he came to the land of Ararat. Bel tried in vain to persuade his rival to come back.“Thou hast departed and hast settled in a chill and frosty region,” urged the Assyrian god. “Soften thy hard pride, change thy coldness to geniality; be my subject and come and live a life of ease in my domain.”2But Haic refused the cordial invitation, which so much angered Bel that the latter brought his army to force the Armenian hero into submission. Haic, however, was victorious, for he slew Bel with an arrow from his own bow. The place where Bel was buried is called “Kerezman,” meaning grave, and is pointed out to this day. Armenians sing songs and tell stories of the great beauty and valor of Haic. He died at the age of four hundred in about 2028 B.C.3This oldest of Armenian legends, quaint and simple as it is in accounting for the beginnings of a people, savours of the Old Testament and is suggestive of the Assyrian invasion which took place about the ninth century before Christ. It is significant that the Armenians refused the protection of Bel, and that in the very beginning of their legendary history, they insisted on standing firm and maintaining their independence, for no single quality is more characteristic of this people than a proud, haughty, even at times disdainful independence. It is also suggestive that their patriarchal hero was no saint, but a mighty giant, beautiful as he was strong, whose greatest pride was in the throwing of a spear, for his descendants have not been a peaceful people. To be sure, they were the first nation to be converted to Christianity, which would say little fortheir firmness and independence, were it not that the priest with the cross was followed by a powerful king with a sword at the head of an army that had learned to fight as the Romans fought.4The songs that were sung in memory and honor of Haic are seldom sung to-day unless it be in some remote village where the civilization of the Turk has not yet pressed, and there are few such villages if any. For many of them breathe of a national spirit not beseeming a subject nation, and have been suppressed for many years.Section 2. The Legend of Ara and SemiramisDating back to the Assyrian invasion which took place during the seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, one of the oldest of Armenian legends, that of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and Ara, king of Armenia, is told.5Ara was very beautiful, and Semiramis having heard speech of his beauty for many years, wished to possess him. But she dared do nothing for fear of Ninus, protector over Armenia. After the death of Ninus, however, the queen sent messengers to Ara, with gifts and offerings, with prayers and promises of riches, begging him to come to her at Nineveh and either wed her and reign over all that Ninus had possessed, orfulfillher desire and return in peace to Armenia with many gifts. But when the messengers had been turned away repeatedly, Semiramis became angry, and taking her army she hastened to Armenia. The battle was fought on the plain of Ara, called after him Ararat; and although the queen had given careful orders to her generals to devise some means of saving the life of Ara, the Armenian king was slain. She found the dead body among the others that had fallen, and ordered her servants to place it in an upper chamber in her castle. And when the Armenian army again arose to drive away the foe and avenge the death of Ara, thequeen said, “I have commanded the gods to lick his wounds and he shall live again.” She tried to bring Ara back to life by witchcraft and charms, but the body began to decay and she commanded her servants to cast the corpse into a deep pit and to cover it. And having dressed up one of her men in secret, she caused the following proclamation to be spread among the people: “The gods have licked Ara and have brought him back to life again, thus fulfilling our prayers and our pleasures. Therefore from this time forth shall they be the more glorified and worshipped by us, for they are the givers of joy and the fulfillers of desire.” And she erected a statue to the gods, making it seem as though they had brought Ara back to life again. This news was spread over all the country of Armenia, and having satisfied the people, she put an end to the fighting. The twelve-year-old son of the king was taken by the Assyrian queen and appointed ruler over Armenia. She called him Ara, in memory of her love for Ara the Beautiful.To Semiramis is attributed the building of the ancient city of Van on the shores of the beautiful lake of Van, where she made her summer residence until the time of her departure.6She might well have lingered there, for the Armenians have a proverb, “Van in this world, paradise in the next.” Nevertheless, Semiramis and Ara are mythical characters, although the latter is spoken of in the history of St. Martin as having lived along about 1769 B.C.7As regards the popular belief in the legend, however, there is not the slightest doubt. This is proved by the fact that even to-day the city is called “Sham-iram-agerd” by the Armenians, meaning the city of Semiramis. Lynch says that Ara and Semiramis are Tannuz and Istar, the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth, and that the quest of the Assyrian queen may be connected with the introduction into Armenia of the worship of Istar whose name is mentioned in one of the cuneiform inscriptions at Van.8However, the results of modern scholarship are by no means conclusive on this point, as we shall see.Section 3. Historical Background of the Legend of Ara and SemiramisMoses’ history was read by St. Martin who became exceedingly interested in Van, and in the cuneiform inscriptions spoken of. It was due to him that the French government dispatched a mission to Armenia in 1827, under the direction of a young German Professor, Friedrich Edward Schulz. Schulz was murdered by the Kurds, a thing which rarely happens in Armenia, and his work was left incomplete. He had succeeded, however, in making copies of forty-two inscriptions, which were publishedin 1840, and proved to be remarkably accurate. Shortly afterward, orientalists made great discoveries in the Mesopotamian valley, but the inscriptions at Van did not tally with any syllabaries discovered up to that time, nor could they be translated in any known language. A number of them were found to be Assyrian, but the great majority were peculiar to Van, and entirely baffled the students. Not until 1880 were they finally unravelled. M. S. Guyard discovered at that time that the concluding phrase of many Vannic texts represented an imprecatory formula found in exactly the same place in Assyrian counterparts. This discovery enabled Professor Sayce, of Oxford, to decipher the inscriptions at a rapid rate.Among the important facts discovered were that the nation was a rival nation of Assyria, and that its people were called Khaldeans, or children of Khaldis, much in the same way as the Assyrians reflected the name of their god, Assur. The country was a theocracy and Khaldis was supreme. In the tablets, his wrath was invoked against whomever should destroy them. The capital city was Dhuspus, modern Van, which is the Disp, or Tsp of Armenian writers, and the Turuspa of Assyrian annals. The Assyrians styled the kingdom Urardhu, or Urarthu, which is the name appearing in the Bible in the familiar form Ararat.The earliest inscriptions date back to the ninth century before Christ, and as the language is neither Semitic nor Indo-European, the people could neither have been Assyrians whose language was Semitic, nor Armenians, whose language is Indo-European. The first mention made of Urardhu was in the reign of Ashur-Nazir-Pal (885–860 B.C.) whose successor, Shalmanasar II (860–825 B.C.) was the first Assyrian king to invade Armenia.9Raffi, however, (the son of the famous Armenian poet) speaks of an account given by Assur-Nazir-Haban (1882–1857 B.C.) of one of his victories. “They” (i.e., the people of Ararat or Urarthu), he said, “fled to the impregnable mountains so that I might not be able to get at them, for the mighty summits were like drawn swords pointing to the skies. Only the birds of heaven soaring on their wings could reach them. In three days I was there spreading terror in places where they had taken refuge. Their corpses like autumn leaves filled the clefts. The rest escaped to distant inaccessible heights.”10This, clearly, is a much older record than any that Lynch found trace of, and although Raffi cites no authority for the quotation, I presume that it has been taken from a recent discovery. If this be true the Khaldeans were a very ancient people. One of the tablets shows that King Memas was the principal author of the magnificent canal which conducts the water of the riverKhoshab to the suburbs of Van, and which is to-day called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis.11The line of Vannic kings is traceable as far down as 644 B.C.Most of these inscriptions are to be found on a huge isolated rock, situated in the curve of the bay, and known as the “rock of Van.”12Among them are inscriptions left by Xerxes (485 B.C.), the Persian conqueror whose father’s empire (Darius, 521–486 B.C.) succeeded the loose Scythian rule.But the ancient Khaldean kingdom had already vanished when Xerxes’ victorious army overran the country, for shortly after the great influx of Scythians and the break-up of Assyria, came another horde from the west, perhaps to fill up the void left by the Scythian ravages. It is at this time that the Armenian people are first heard from, and it is this horde, therefore, that is regarded as the foundation stock of the Armenian people. They seem to have been an Indo-European people residing in the territory north of the Black Sea, for, coming from the west they must have entered Asia from Europe by crossing the straits. The ancient Khaldeans were assimilated to some extent, but for the most part, they were driven to the north and south, where they have left traces that have been recognized and recorded by Xenophon and Herodotus.13That the civilization and culture of the ancient Khaldeans were utilized is beyond doubt. Their most ancient cities, Van, Armavir, were foundations of Vannic kings, while recently it has been disclosed that the city of Hajk, southeast of Van, shows some of the familiar features of a Khaldean settlement. But their supreme god during the pre-Christian era was not Khaldis, but the Persian Ormuzd, which indicates that the Persians exercised an even greater influence.How then could Semiramis ever have come to Van in quest of an Armenian king, since it seems that the Scythians had already conquered Assyria before the great influx of Armenian hordes? Nor does it seem that the city of Van was built by the Assyrian queen, for the inscriptions make no mention of her name. King Memas who, in the view of Lynch, constructed the famous canal, was in all probability the author of the garden city. The belief, according to Lynch, as already stated, is that this legend is the Armenian version of the old Hellenic myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, taken over during the domination of the Seleucid dynasty which followed the conquest of Alexander about 325 B.C.14But this is unreasonable. That a myth should be taken over by a subject people and the characters rechristened is not difficult to understand,but that the name of one of them should be applied to the ancient city is very improbable to say the least. Furthermore, the legend is flavored rather strongly with Persian voluptuousness, and is not at all suggestive of Greek delicacy and refinement. Nor is the fact that the horde overran the country after the destruction of Assyria in any way conclusive, for if there were any assimilation at all, as there must unquestionably have been, the Khaldean culture and history was to that extent the actual possession of the Armenians. Even intermarriage would perhaps be unnecessary, for what Irishman who has been in the United States two months does not speak of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as his forefathers? It is to be noted also that to this day the canal spoken of is called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis, by all Armenians.15On the whole it seems to me conclusive, therefore, that the legend of Semiramis and Ara has its roots in Armenian history, and is not at all a version of the Hellenic myth.Section 4. The Legend of VahaknThe legend of Vahakn, king and god of Armenians, is very clearly attributable to the Greek period, which followed the Persian conquest under Xerxes. Vahakn was deified because of his great valor and made the fire-god of the Armenian people.16He was called “Vishapakagh,” uprooter of dragons, since he cleared Armenia of monsters and saved it from evil influences. His exploits were known in the abode of the gods as well as in Armenia. The most famous of them was the theft of corn from the barns of King Barsham of Assyria, from whom he ran away and tried to hide in heaven. Because of the ears he dropped in his rapid flight, there arose the Milky Way which is called in Armenian the “track of the corn stealer.”17Moses of Khorene writes as follows:Concerning the birth of this king the legends say,“Heaven and earth were in travail,And the crimson waters were in travail,And in the water, the crimson reedWas also in travail.From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,From the mouth of the reed issued flame,And out of the flame sprang the young child,His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,And his eyes were suns.”18With our own ears did we hear these words sung to the accompaniment of the harp. They sing moreover that he did fight with the dragons, and overcame them; and some say that his valiant deeds were like unto Hercules. Others declare that he was a god, and that a great image of him stood in the land of Georgia, where it was worshipped, with sacrifices.19The wife of Vahakn was Astghik, the goddess of beauty, a personification of the moon, corresponding to the Phoenician and Sidonian Astarte. This is suggestive of Greek influence, for Venus, the Greek goddess of beauty, was also the wife of a fire-god, Vulcan.20The flight of Vahakn before the Assyrian king is certainly more suggestive of the fear in which the Assyrians must have been regarded than of the valor of their god. The originators of the legend were good psychologists, however, in regarding the instincts of fear and of pugnacity as compatible. For even the slayer of demons must some day face his superiors in strength, and when he does, will he not be afraid? In fact he would be more afraid than another, for he could not well impute more mercy to his superior than he himself had shown to his inferiors.The vein of humor is too rich to be left unnoted. If the Greeks could laugh at their gods, and even mock them, the Armenians could also make sport of them. For what could be more delightfully humorous than the picture of a bearded god, a slayer of dragons, whose hair was of flame and whose eyes like suns, stealing corn from the Assyrian king and dropping the ears from his shoulders in his hasty flight across heaven? The character thus brought out, together with the richness of imaginative quality, especially in the song of his birth, the wholesome and unveiled anthropomorphism (wholesome because it is unveiled), and the correspondence between the Greek fire-god Vulcan whose wife was Venus, the goddess of beauty, with the fire-god Vahakn whose wife Astghik was also goddess of beauty, stamp the legend with its unmistakable origin in Greek mythology.Section 5. The Historic Background of the Legend of VahaknThe Greek period from which this legend dates began with the defeat of the Armenian king Vahy, who was overcome by Alexander theGreat somewhere about 328 B.C.21The Greeks chose their own representative to rule over the province, who at the time of Alexander’s death was Seleucus. Historians have taken the name of this governor to indicate the dynasty of Greek supremacy which followed; i.e., the Seleucid dynasty. This method of the Greeks of selecting their own man to govern a subject people, which was of course in pursuance of their policy of superimposing their own culture upon all subject nations, was contrary to the policy of the Parthians, Romans, and Persians, who allowed the Armenians to maintain their national independence provided they permitted the use of their armies and duly paid their taxes. And it is this policy of the Greeks that accounts for the fact that large portions of Greek mythology and religion were taken over by the Armenians.Although the period of political supremacy was short-lived, the influence of Greek culture continued to permeate the social life of the people through the reign of the Arsacid kings.22In 246 B.C. Arsaces, a Parthian, made himself master of the Parthians, Persians, Medes, Babylonians, and lastly Armenians.23His grandson, Arsaces the Great, conquered as far as India, and after seating himself securely upon the throne of Persia, placed his brother Valarsace upon the Armenian throne, so founding the Persian and Armenian Arsacid dynasties (150 B.C.).24The Persian Arsacidae became extinct in A.D. 226 when they were overthrown by the Persian Sasanidae, whereas the Armenian Arsacidae line continued up until A.D. 428, when the Armenian kingdom was divided between Persia and Rome by Shapuh, the Persian monarch, and Theodosius II.25This makes a period of 578 years (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) during which Armenia was governed by her own line of kings, and enjoyed the liberties of national independence. To be sure after the conquest of Lucullus and Pompey (66 B.C.) Armenia became tributary to Rome, but the right of succession remained with the Armenian royal family, even during Roman supremacy, so that the national life was in no manner interfered with.26The greatest Armenian king of the Arsacidae line was Tigranes the Great, who extended his domains by conquest and established himself in his capital, Tigranacerta, with a court of matchless splendor.27He is spoken of by historians as a king of kings, and as having ruled with a pomp, splendor, and pride never before known. Defeated by Pompey within the walls of his own capital city, his kingdom became tributary to Rome.Section 6. The Period of National IntegrationThe continuity of the period of the Armenian Arsacidae makes it the time when the process of national solidification and unification was carried out to the point that made Armenia a nation, and beyond this point. Raffi asserts that the introduction of Greek culture during the Arsacid dynasty not only changed the religion of Armenians, but also so affected their language and customs that they became different from the Persians, which is proof that a process of social readjustment was going on.28It was during this period that the wandering minstrels spoken of by Langlois journeyed from one end of the nation to the other, singing their songs, repeating the national legends, relating the news of the world and the court gossip which probably made up the largest portion of it.Les chants de l’antique Arménie rappellent principalement des événements la plupart héroiques et légendaires, accomplis à des époques très différentes, ce qui donne à penser qu’ils ont dû être composés à diverses reprises, par des rhapsodes dont les noms ne nous sont point parvenus. Les sujets traités dans ces chants demontrent clairement qu’ils n’ont été inspirés ni à des prêtres païens, ni à des poètes qui auraient vécu sous leur influence, en vue d’être recités dans des fêtes religieuses ou en face des autels. Au contraire, on reconnait de prime abord que ces chants sont l’oeuvre de bardes nationaux, ayant un libre acces dans les palais des souverains et à la cour des satrapes. C’est ce qui fait supposer que ces poèmes sont peutêtre dûs à des ménestrels, à la solde des rois et des nobles et ayant pour emploi de célébrer leurs vertus et leurs prouesses.29This is putting the case conservatively, for Moses speaks often of “les chantres” and “les chants.” They traveled as far as Persia and returned, for it is related by the Italian Countess Evelyn Martinengo how a wandering minstrel, who had just returned from that country, was entertained by an Armenian patriarchal family living in the kind of undergroundhabitation described in the beginning of this thesis.30No one was ever more welcome than the minstrel. He was assigned to the guest chamber usually prepared especially for him, and always the best chamber in the household. His head and feet were washed for him by the wife of the patriarch, and at meal time all the delicacies of the household were spread before him. All guests were welcome, but no guest more welcome than the minstrel. They must have listened to his tales in a kind of petrified awe, and heard him sing his songs in speechless enjoyment.It was a practice among the minstrels of the time to compete with each other in public, and it is related how two minstrels entertained by a Persian prince were led out upon an open grass plot and seated, one facing the other. Five thousand people made a circle around the competitors while the rivals contended in song and verse, riddle and repartee. Each began where the other left off, until finally one failed to perceive the drift of his adversary, and answering at random, the spectators proclaimed him beaten. The triumphant bard was led to the vanquished, whose lyre was taken from him and broken. Robed in a prince’s mantle, the victor was taken to the highest seat in the banquet hall.That the people were the judges of the contest, indicates how well they must have been acquainted with the current folk-songs, legends, and tradition. How generally and frequently the custom of minstrel competition was practiced throughout Armenia is not known, but it certainly is proof, besides Moses’ own statements to the same effect, that the national legends and folk-songs were the possession of the common people. And what is more important, this same body of legends, folk-songs, and tradition did more than any other one thing to weld the sentiments of the people into a single national sentiment, which crystallized into a real patriotism, a real loyalty and devotion to any cause that was a national cause, because it was the natural, spontaneous expression of the life and thought of the people, and no mean, artificial thing superimposed from outside.31There are other reasons for giving this period the social importance that I have ascribed to it. The conversion of the people to Christianity about the third century after Christ was achieved in no sentimental fashion, but, as I believe, in a manner in which it alone could have been done, namely, at the point of the sword of their own king, Tiridates, who was converted from paganism to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator. The traditions in connection with this important event will be told later. Suffice it to say at this point that the whole process of conversion was carried out so thoroughly and completely, that it may be described as a national volte-face, and therefore did not result in the disintegration,civil strife, and social chaos that would unquestionably have been the result had the process been carried out by means of peaceful penetration and propaganda.The third and last argument in support of the social and national importance of the period of the Arsacid kings is in respect to the alphabet which was compiled by St. Mesrob Maschtotz. St. Mesrob was a former secretary of the king, and desired to extirpate the last remnants of paganism in the province of Akoulis, but in the absence of an alphabet he was unable to carry out any scheme of propaganda. He therefore besought the king, Vramschapouh, to put an end to this state of things and the latter, in response to the request, placed all available material at the disposal of the saint. The task was accomplished in 404, somewhat at the expense of the future devotees of the language, for the alphabet contains thirty-eight letters.32Nevertheless, most of the sounds of foreign languages were represented, making it particularly useful as a foundation language for other languages. St. Mesrob, with a body of translators trained by himself and St. Sahak, then proceeded to the translation of the Bible, which was not completed until 433. Liturgies and song-books quickly followed. To be sure the effect of the invention of the alphabet and the distribution of the various religious publications that followed were not felt during the period of the Arsacidae, for the Bible was not published until after the break-up of the kingdom in 428, when it was divided between Persia and Rome. But the important point is that the time had come when the need for an alphabet was making itself very strongly felt, and this could not have been true of a diversified, heterogeneous population.For the three reasons above mentioned, i.e., first, the work of minstrels, second, the Christianizing of the nation, and third, the invention of the alphabet, all occurring during the successive reigns of the Arsacid kings, I should ascribe to this period (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) the integration of the Armenian people into a national unit.33Christianity must have come as a disrupting force, as a terrible shock, necessitating a complete social readjustment, but the fact that the readjustment was made shows that the people were ready for it. For better or for worse the yoke of Christianity was fastened to the neck of the people, and with it they had toreplow the social soil. The job was a good one, for the Armenian church has been the chief power during the last ten or fifteen centuries in keeping alive the streams of national life, and in holding the people together in the face of invasion and repeated attempts at proselytization by the Persians and by the Greek and Roman Catholic churches.Section 7. Legends of Artasches and ArtavasdThe legends of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd, the son of Artasches, belong to the Arsacid period, for Artavasd and Artasches are Armenian kings of the Arsacid dynasty, according to Moses.34The Alans who, according to the legend, were a neighboring people residing in the mountain region in the vicinity of Georgia, spread themselves over Armenia while Artasches, the Armenian king, collected a great army and forced the Alans to retreat across the river Kur where they pitched camp. The son of the Alan king was taken captive and brought to Artasches, which forced the former to seek peace on whatever terms the Armenian king might wish, provided only his son was returned in safety. But Artasches refused, whereupon the sister of the captured boy came to the river bank, and standing upon a great rock spoke to the camp of Artasches by means of interpreters saying: “Oh brave Artasches, who hast vanquished the great nation of Alans, unto thee I speak. Come, hearken unto the bright-eyed daughter of the Alan king and give back the youth. For it is not the way of heroes to destroy life at the root, nor for the sake of humbling and enslaving a hostage to establish everlasting enmity between two great nations.”35Artasches, having heard of these sayings went to the river bank and having seen that the girl was beautiful, and listened to her words of wisdom, wished to marry her. His chamberlain considered it a wise stroke of policy, and therefore went to the Alan king, soliciting the hand of the princess for his master, whose oaths and assurances of peace he vouched for, together with the promise to return the boy. The king of the Alans answered, “From whence shall brave Artasches give thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands upon tens of thousands in return for the maiden?”Writes Moses:Concerning this, the poets of that land sing in their songs:“Brave King ArtaschesMounted his fine black charger,And took the red leathern cordWith the golden ring.Like a swift winged eagleHe passed over the riverAnd cast the golden ringRound the waist of the Alan Princess;Causing much pain to the tender maidenAs he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”Which being interpreted meaneth that he was commanded to give much gold, leather, and crimson dye in exchange for the maiden. So also they sing of the wedding:“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”For it was the custom of our kings to scatter coins amongst the people when they arrived at the doors of the temple for their wedding, as also for the queens to scatter pearls in their bride-chamber.36The couplet quoted is still sung by the Armenians, and it is still customary for the bridegroom to scatter money on his way to the church, and though it may be for queens to scatter pearls, the Armenian bride is not to be outdone. She is given a partly opened pomegranate which she throws at the door of the bridegroom upon the arrival at the bridegroom’s home after the ceremony at the church, the bits of pomegranate scattering themselves about as pearls.After fifty-one years of a very prosperous reign, Artasches, who was very much beloved by his people, died. The funeral procession was a most magnificent one, and many of the people killed themselves, out of love for their dead king, according to the custom of the time. And when the body was laid in the grave they threw precious jewels, gold, and silver after it. Nor did the lamenting and suicide stop after his burial, for upon the grave of their dead king the nobles and the people continued to kill themselves. So great was the slaughter that Artavasd, son of Artasches, and king after his father’s death, addressed the spirit of his dead father, saying, “Behold, thou art taking all with thee; dost thou leave me to rule over ruins and the dead?” The words given by Moses of Khorene are: “Now that thou art gone, and hast taken with thee the whole land, how shall I reign over the ruins?”37Whereupon the spirit of Artasches cursed him and said,“When thou ridest forth to huntOver the free heights of Ararat,The strong ones shall have thee,And shall take thee upOn to the free heights of Ararat.There shalt thou abide,And never more see the light.”38These words together with those of Artavasd spoken to his father’s spirit were sung by the singers of the time.39One day while out hunting Artavasd was seized by some visionary terror and lost his reason. Urging his horse down a steep bank he fell into a chasm where he sank and disappeared. Old women told how he was confined in a cavern and bound with iron chains which his two dogs gnawed at daily in order to set him free. But somehow at the sound of the hammers striking on the anvils, the chains were continually strengthened, and it was customary among the blacksmiths of the time to strike the anvil three or four times to strengthen, as they said, the chains of Artavasd. And so the tradition was kept up by singers and blacksmiths; the blacksmiths and old women having consigned the jealous king to the world’s nethermost regions, while the singers left him to the solitude of Ararat in accordance with the curse of Artasches.Section 8. ConclusionsSuch are the ancient legends of Armenia, in their respective historical settings: the legends of Haic, of Semiramis and Ara, of Vahakn, of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd. All of them antedate the Christian era, and some of them by many centuries. Each one of them is told by Moses of Khorene. But as to origin and probable historic roots Moses was silent, for he was writing a history. He constantly laments the absolute dearth of material and sources and begins his accounts of these legends with the words “This is as it is told,” or “the singers say,” indicating that his only sources for them were the songs and reports current among the people during his own time. The legends of Haic and of Semiramis and Ara are told by Moses as though he believed them historic fact, but of course Moses had no materials to serve as a basis of criticism. He is careful to quote Mar Apas Catina as his only source for this material. The other three legends are regarded as such. Artavasd is spoken of as an historical king who lost his reason while riding horseback and fell into a deep chasm. The practice of suicide at the death of Artasches, his father, was a pagan custom. The curse of the spirit of the dead father, the chains, the dogs, and the anvils were of course recognized as the work of ingenious fancy. In view therefore, of the questionable character of Moses’ sources these legends have very little historic value. They do, however, have a high social value inasmuch as the common knowledge of them among the people was the only ultimate source at the disposal of the historian.The second conclusion is that these legends formed a very important part of the larger mass of tradition and songs that served to cementthe people into a nation. Just how important, it would be difficult to say, but the fact that they were current at the time Moses wrote indicates that they were current and passed on from generation to generation during the whole period of the Arsacidae kings. And as the people had no alphabet during this whole period, they must have been passed on by song and word of mouth. This was a time of special activity on the part of the minstrels and singers, and therefore the development of the national consciousness characteristic of the period must have been brought about in a large measure through the medium of these legendary beliefs.Furthermore these legends are known by the Armenian people to-day and are taught in the schools that are not too severely under the rules of Turkish and Russian censorship. Naturally enough, they are a source of great pride since they breathe national independence and loyalty. But of course, the Turks and Russians have suppressed all public singing of songs, and public teaching of history and legend that may possibly be construed as partaking of the national spirit.It may be argued that these legends slumbered between the covers of Moses’ history during the centuries known as the dark ages, and that they had no social value until the contagion of the European spirit of the Renaissance awoke the legends and the people at the same time. But the mere dearth of record is no proof of this Rip Van Winkle theory. There is at least one reliable authority sufficient to disprove it, viz., Grigor Magistros, a scholar of the eleventh century who wrote that he heard the Artasches epic sung by minstrels.40Besides the unreasonableness of the supposition, there is the added fact of an independent Armenian kingdom known as the Bagradouni dynasty, whose capital seat was at the famous city of Ani. This kingdom included greater Armenia and continued from A.D. 887 to 1079.41But 1079 does not mark the end of Armenian independence though it marks the destruction of Ani, for Reuben, a member of the royal family, made his way into Cilicia in the year 1080, and rallying a handful of Armenians about him, overpowered the Greeks and founded what is known as the Rupenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which continued during a period of 300 years. So that here again is a period of very nearly five hundred years (889–1380), during which time the Armenian people enjoyed national political independence.42And this during the very period of the dark ages, about which we know so little! We could not, therefore, for a moment suppose the traditions and legends to have had no social importance during these centuries, for such an assumption would be in flat contradiction to the witness of Grigor Magistros, and to the facts of Armenian history.1Mar Apas Catina. Langlois’Collection des Histoires de l’Arménie1:16.2St. Martin,Mémoire sur l’Arménie1:281.3Mar Apas Catina. Langlois 1:15–18.Moses of Khorene. Langlois 3:63–64.4St. Martin 1:306.5Ibid.1:282–3. Moses of Khorene 2:67–69.Mar Apas Catina 1:26–27.The first Arsacidae king of Armenia, Valarsace, whose reign began in 149 B.C. found the kingdom in general disorder and was the first to organize the country along national lines. As a Parthian he was unacquainted with the history and institutions of the people, and desiring to build upon the established foundation, such as it was, he sent a Syrian scholar, Mar Apas Catina by name, with a letter to his brother, Arsace, king of Persia, requesting the latter to allow the Syrian access to the royal archives with the view of finding a history of Armenia. Mar Apas Catina found an old MS containing a history of ancient Armenia which bore the name of no author, and which was translated from Chaldean to Greek by order of Alexander the Great. It was translated into Syriac by the Syrian scholar for the benefit of Valarsace, but the MS has been lost, and there is not the slightest trace of it anywhere. It must have been in existence however, during the fifth century after Christ for Moses of Khorene used it as his only source for Armenia’s ancient history, in writing his general history of Armenia. The old MS being lost, the translation by Mar Apas Catina and the first part of the history of Moses are given as identical to each other in Langlois’ collection of Armenian historians. The ancient history contains the legends of Haic, of Ara and Semiramis, and of Vahakn, some of the songs of heroes, still sung, and other matter which is strictly speaking not historical. As a history, therefore, it is unreliable and unauthentic, but from the standpoint of the social historian it is invaluable, for a belief is as important a fact to sociology as the dethronement of a king is to history.6Boyadjian,Armenian Legends and Poetryp. 33.7St. Martin 1:409.8Lynch 2:65.9Lynch,Armenia, chapter entitled “Van.”10Raffi, article in Boyadjian’sArmenian Legends and Poetry,p. 125.11Lynch, chapter on Van.12Moses of Khorene 2:69.13Ibid.14Lynch 2:65.15Moses of Khorene 2:68, 69.16St. Martin 1:285.17Raffi p. 129. Abeghian pp. 49, 50.18Moses of Khorene 2:76. Translation from Moses, Boyadjian p. 10.Mar Apas Catina 1:40.19Mar Apas Catina 1:41. Moses of Khorene p. 76.Moses of Khorene, called the Herodotus of Armenia, has written the best known history of the Armenian people. The work has been translated into Latin, Italian, French, German, and Russian. Moses lived in the fifth century, two centuries after the conversion of the nation to Christianity. He belonged to the second order of translators in the school of St. Sahag and St. Mesrob, and was sent to Syria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome in order to complete his studies. Upon returning to his country he found everything in disorder. St. Sahag and St. Mesrob were dead, the king had been overthrown, and he chose the life of solitude. Sometime later he was chosen bishop and requested by an Armenian prince, Sahag Bagratide, to write a history of his country, which task he took up with great enthusiasm. The translation of Mar Apas Catina was his only source for Armenian ancient history. He carefully differentiates hearsay from fact, never fails to stamp a fable or legend as such, and generally quotes his authorities where he has them. Considering the limitation of his materials, and the time in which he wrote, Moses wrote a really remarkable book, although the verdicts of a few critics have been unfavorable.20Raffi p. 129.21Lidgett,An Ancient People. St. Martin 1:409. Mar Apas Catina p. 41.22The influence of Greek culture is chiefly indicated by the fact that the pagan divinities were Greek and that many temples were erected to these gods and goddesses all over the country. (Agathange,Histoire du Règne de Tiridate. Langlois 1:164–70.) Secondly, there were formed by St. Sahag and St. Mesrob in the fifth century after the conversion of the nation to Christianity, schools of translators, who studied in Greece, Egypt, and Rome and whose chief works were translations from the Greek. With the conversion (301) came the necessity for a written language, the characters of which were invented by St. Mesrob in 404. Thereupon were organized the schools of translators whose chief study of necessity was Greek, and whose translations and original works have given to the fifth century the title of “Golden Age of Armenian Literature.” (Langlois 1:xxi–xxvi, 2:vii.)23St. Martin 1:288, 289. Mar Apas Catina 1:41.Moses of Khorene 2:81.24Ibid.25Gibbon,Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire3:393.Moses of Khorene 2:155.26Ibid.pp. 88, 89.27St. Martin 1:291. Moses of Khorene p. 88.28Raffi p. 126.29Langlois 1:ix, x. These songs of which Moses of Khorene very frequently speaks are classified by Langlois into songs of the first order, the second order, and the third order. The first are relative to the prowess of Armenian kings and gods; the second concern a long series of military exploits accomplished against the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians; the third refer especially to traditions in connection with the Assyrians. The birth-song of Vahakn is an illustration of the songs of the first order (p. x, xi). Flint in hisHistory of the Philosophy of History, p. 42, speaks of this period of minstrelsy as necessarily preceding the use of letters everywhere. “The myth and legend interest primitive man more than real fact. His vision is more largely of the imagination than of the sense of judgment. It is an error to regard the rude minstrelsy which generally preceded the use of letters as essentially historical.”30Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco,Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs, chapter on Armenia.31The battle of Avarair under the leadership of the celebrated Vartan, where Armenia defended her national ideals against the intrusion of Persia, is proof of this.32Ormanian p. 22. Moses of Khorene p. 158.33There are further proofs that may be cited. The history of English and French literature shows that the golden age of their literature followed a period of social integration along national lines. And it is true that the golden age of Armenian literature dawned with the closing decades of the Arsacidae dynasty, and continued several decades beyond. And finally, when Valarsace, the first Arsacidae, ascended the throne of Armenia, finding everything in a state of disorder, he organized the country along national lines. Dividing the kingdom into provinces he placed his governors at the heads of them; he organized a standing army, appointed guardians of the granaries, established courts of justice, a royal guard, and minutely regulated court life. What is most interesting is that he appointed two reporters, one to remind him in his anger, “le bien à faire,” the other to remind him of the necessity for doing justice.Ibid.pp. 82–85.34St. Martin 1:300. Moses of Khorene pp. 105–6.35Ibid.p. 106.36Boyadjian p. 49. Moses of Khorene p. 106. Moses as translated by Langlois, relates the story as legend, for after telling the tale, and quoting the songs he writes, “Voici maintenant le fait dans toute sa verité comme le cuir rouge est trés-estimé chez les Alains, Artaschés donne beaucoup de peaux de cette couleur, et beaucoup d’or en dot, et il obtient la jeune princesse Satenig. C’est là la lanière de cuir rouge garnie d’anneaux d’or. Ainsi dans les noces, ils chantent des légendes, en disant,‘Une pluie d’or tombaitAu marriage d’Artaschés;Les perles pleuvaitAux noces de Satenig.’”Moses likewise relegates the legend and songs of Artavasd to their proper places.37Moses of Khorene p. 111.38Translation from Moses by Boyadjian p. 65.39Moses of Khorene p. 111.40Raffi p. 42.41St. Martin 1:appendix.42Ibid.

Chapter IIAncient Historical LegendsSection 1. The Legend of HaicArmenians do not call themselves Armenians nor their country Armenia. They are descendants of Haic, as the legend goes, who was the son of Togarmah, the son of Japhet, who was the son of Noah, and they call their country Haiasdan after the patriarchal progenitor of their people.1Haic dwelt in the plain of Shinar and was a prefect or director in the building of the tower of Babel. He was beautiful as a god and strong as a giant, mighty in battle and especially adept in spear throwing. In the days of his youth, Bel or Nimrod, who was the patron god of Babylon, established himself over all and wished to be worshipped. But Haic refused to obey, and taking his sons, who numbered about three hundred, his daughters, his sheep and cattle, he journeyed north until he came to the land of Ararat. Bel tried in vain to persuade his rival to come back.“Thou hast departed and hast settled in a chill and frosty region,” urged the Assyrian god. “Soften thy hard pride, change thy coldness to geniality; be my subject and come and live a life of ease in my domain.”2But Haic refused the cordial invitation, which so much angered Bel that the latter brought his army to force the Armenian hero into submission. Haic, however, was victorious, for he slew Bel with an arrow from his own bow. The place where Bel was buried is called “Kerezman,” meaning grave, and is pointed out to this day. Armenians sing songs and tell stories of the great beauty and valor of Haic. He died at the age of four hundred in about 2028 B.C.3This oldest of Armenian legends, quaint and simple as it is in accounting for the beginnings of a people, savours of the Old Testament and is suggestive of the Assyrian invasion which took place about the ninth century before Christ. It is significant that the Armenians refused the protection of Bel, and that in the very beginning of their legendary history, they insisted on standing firm and maintaining their independence, for no single quality is more characteristic of this people than a proud, haughty, even at times disdainful independence. It is also suggestive that their patriarchal hero was no saint, but a mighty giant, beautiful as he was strong, whose greatest pride was in the throwing of a spear, for his descendants have not been a peaceful people. To be sure, they were the first nation to be converted to Christianity, which would say little fortheir firmness and independence, were it not that the priest with the cross was followed by a powerful king with a sword at the head of an army that had learned to fight as the Romans fought.4The songs that were sung in memory and honor of Haic are seldom sung to-day unless it be in some remote village where the civilization of the Turk has not yet pressed, and there are few such villages if any. For many of them breathe of a national spirit not beseeming a subject nation, and have been suppressed for many years.Section 2. The Legend of Ara and SemiramisDating back to the Assyrian invasion which took place during the seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, one of the oldest of Armenian legends, that of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and Ara, king of Armenia, is told.5Ara was very beautiful, and Semiramis having heard speech of his beauty for many years, wished to possess him. But she dared do nothing for fear of Ninus, protector over Armenia. After the death of Ninus, however, the queen sent messengers to Ara, with gifts and offerings, with prayers and promises of riches, begging him to come to her at Nineveh and either wed her and reign over all that Ninus had possessed, orfulfillher desire and return in peace to Armenia with many gifts. But when the messengers had been turned away repeatedly, Semiramis became angry, and taking her army she hastened to Armenia. The battle was fought on the plain of Ara, called after him Ararat; and although the queen had given careful orders to her generals to devise some means of saving the life of Ara, the Armenian king was slain. She found the dead body among the others that had fallen, and ordered her servants to place it in an upper chamber in her castle. And when the Armenian army again arose to drive away the foe and avenge the death of Ara, thequeen said, “I have commanded the gods to lick his wounds and he shall live again.” She tried to bring Ara back to life by witchcraft and charms, but the body began to decay and she commanded her servants to cast the corpse into a deep pit and to cover it. And having dressed up one of her men in secret, she caused the following proclamation to be spread among the people: “The gods have licked Ara and have brought him back to life again, thus fulfilling our prayers and our pleasures. Therefore from this time forth shall they be the more glorified and worshipped by us, for they are the givers of joy and the fulfillers of desire.” And she erected a statue to the gods, making it seem as though they had brought Ara back to life again. This news was spread over all the country of Armenia, and having satisfied the people, she put an end to the fighting. The twelve-year-old son of the king was taken by the Assyrian queen and appointed ruler over Armenia. She called him Ara, in memory of her love for Ara the Beautiful.To Semiramis is attributed the building of the ancient city of Van on the shores of the beautiful lake of Van, where she made her summer residence until the time of her departure.6She might well have lingered there, for the Armenians have a proverb, “Van in this world, paradise in the next.” Nevertheless, Semiramis and Ara are mythical characters, although the latter is spoken of in the history of St. Martin as having lived along about 1769 B.C.7As regards the popular belief in the legend, however, there is not the slightest doubt. This is proved by the fact that even to-day the city is called “Sham-iram-agerd” by the Armenians, meaning the city of Semiramis. Lynch says that Ara and Semiramis are Tannuz and Istar, the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth, and that the quest of the Assyrian queen may be connected with the introduction into Armenia of the worship of Istar whose name is mentioned in one of the cuneiform inscriptions at Van.8However, the results of modern scholarship are by no means conclusive on this point, as we shall see.Section 3. Historical Background of the Legend of Ara and SemiramisMoses’ history was read by St. Martin who became exceedingly interested in Van, and in the cuneiform inscriptions spoken of. It was due to him that the French government dispatched a mission to Armenia in 1827, under the direction of a young German Professor, Friedrich Edward Schulz. Schulz was murdered by the Kurds, a thing which rarely happens in Armenia, and his work was left incomplete. He had succeeded, however, in making copies of forty-two inscriptions, which were publishedin 1840, and proved to be remarkably accurate. Shortly afterward, orientalists made great discoveries in the Mesopotamian valley, but the inscriptions at Van did not tally with any syllabaries discovered up to that time, nor could they be translated in any known language. A number of them were found to be Assyrian, but the great majority were peculiar to Van, and entirely baffled the students. Not until 1880 were they finally unravelled. M. S. Guyard discovered at that time that the concluding phrase of many Vannic texts represented an imprecatory formula found in exactly the same place in Assyrian counterparts. This discovery enabled Professor Sayce, of Oxford, to decipher the inscriptions at a rapid rate.Among the important facts discovered were that the nation was a rival nation of Assyria, and that its people were called Khaldeans, or children of Khaldis, much in the same way as the Assyrians reflected the name of their god, Assur. The country was a theocracy and Khaldis was supreme. In the tablets, his wrath was invoked against whomever should destroy them. The capital city was Dhuspus, modern Van, which is the Disp, or Tsp of Armenian writers, and the Turuspa of Assyrian annals. The Assyrians styled the kingdom Urardhu, or Urarthu, which is the name appearing in the Bible in the familiar form Ararat.The earliest inscriptions date back to the ninth century before Christ, and as the language is neither Semitic nor Indo-European, the people could neither have been Assyrians whose language was Semitic, nor Armenians, whose language is Indo-European. The first mention made of Urardhu was in the reign of Ashur-Nazir-Pal (885–860 B.C.) whose successor, Shalmanasar II (860–825 B.C.) was the first Assyrian king to invade Armenia.9Raffi, however, (the son of the famous Armenian poet) speaks of an account given by Assur-Nazir-Haban (1882–1857 B.C.) of one of his victories. “They” (i.e., the people of Ararat or Urarthu), he said, “fled to the impregnable mountains so that I might not be able to get at them, for the mighty summits were like drawn swords pointing to the skies. Only the birds of heaven soaring on their wings could reach them. In three days I was there spreading terror in places where they had taken refuge. Their corpses like autumn leaves filled the clefts. The rest escaped to distant inaccessible heights.”10This, clearly, is a much older record than any that Lynch found trace of, and although Raffi cites no authority for the quotation, I presume that it has been taken from a recent discovery. If this be true the Khaldeans were a very ancient people. One of the tablets shows that King Memas was the principal author of the magnificent canal which conducts the water of the riverKhoshab to the suburbs of Van, and which is to-day called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis.11The line of Vannic kings is traceable as far down as 644 B.C.Most of these inscriptions are to be found on a huge isolated rock, situated in the curve of the bay, and known as the “rock of Van.”12Among them are inscriptions left by Xerxes (485 B.C.), the Persian conqueror whose father’s empire (Darius, 521–486 B.C.) succeeded the loose Scythian rule.But the ancient Khaldean kingdom had already vanished when Xerxes’ victorious army overran the country, for shortly after the great influx of Scythians and the break-up of Assyria, came another horde from the west, perhaps to fill up the void left by the Scythian ravages. It is at this time that the Armenian people are first heard from, and it is this horde, therefore, that is regarded as the foundation stock of the Armenian people. They seem to have been an Indo-European people residing in the territory north of the Black Sea, for, coming from the west they must have entered Asia from Europe by crossing the straits. The ancient Khaldeans were assimilated to some extent, but for the most part, they were driven to the north and south, where they have left traces that have been recognized and recorded by Xenophon and Herodotus.13That the civilization and culture of the ancient Khaldeans were utilized is beyond doubt. Their most ancient cities, Van, Armavir, were foundations of Vannic kings, while recently it has been disclosed that the city of Hajk, southeast of Van, shows some of the familiar features of a Khaldean settlement. But their supreme god during the pre-Christian era was not Khaldis, but the Persian Ormuzd, which indicates that the Persians exercised an even greater influence.How then could Semiramis ever have come to Van in quest of an Armenian king, since it seems that the Scythians had already conquered Assyria before the great influx of Armenian hordes? Nor does it seem that the city of Van was built by the Assyrian queen, for the inscriptions make no mention of her name. King Memas who, in the view of Lynch, constructed the famous canal, was in all probability the author of the garden city. The belief, according to Lynch, as already stated, is that this legend is the Armenian version of the old Hellenic myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, taken over during the domination of the Seleucid dynasty which followed the conquest of Alexander about 325 B.C.14But this is unreasonable. That a myth should be taken over by a subject people and the characters rechristened is not difficult to understand,but that the name of one of them should be applied to the ancient city is very improbable to say the least. Furthermore, the legend is flavored rather strongly with Persian voluptuousness, and is not at all suggestive of Greek delicacy and refinement. Nor is the fact that the horde overran the country after the destruction of Assyria in any way conclusive, for if there were any assimilation at all, as there must unquestionably have been, the Khaldean culture and history was to that extent the actual possession of the Armenians. Even intermarriage would perhaps be unnecessary, for what Irishman who has been in the United States two months does not speak of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as his forefathers? It is to be noted also that to this day the canal spoken of is called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis, by all Armenians.15On the whole it seems to me conclusive, therefore, that the legend of Semiramis and Ara has its roots in Armenian history, and is not at all a version of the Hellenic myth.Section 4. The Legend of VahaknThe legend of Vahakn, king and god of Armenians, is very clearly attributable to the Greek period, which followed the Persian conquest under Xerxes. Vahakn was deified because of his great valor and made the fire-god of the Armenian people.16He was called “Vishapakagh,” uprooter of dragons, since he cleared Armenia of monsters and saved it from evil influences. His exploits were known in the abode of the gods as well as in Armenia. The most famous of them was the theft of corn from the barns of King Barsham of Assyria, from whom he ran away and tried to hide in heaven. Because of the ears he dropped in his rapid flight, there arose the Milky Way which is called in Armenian the “track of the corn stealer.”17Moses of Khorene writes as follows:Concerning the birth of this king the legends say,“Heaven and earth were in travail,And the crimson waters were in travail,And in the water, the crimson reedWas also in travail.From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,From the mouth of the reed issued flame,And out of the flame sprang the young child,His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,And his eyes were suns.”18With our own ears did we hear these words sung to the accompaniment of the harp. They sing moreover that he did fight with the dragons, and overcame them; and some say that his valiant deeds were like unto Hercules. Others declare that he was a god, and that a great image of him stood in the land of Georgia, where it was worshipped, with sacrifices.19The wife of Vahakn was Astghik, the goddess of beauty, a personification of the moon, corresponding to the Phoenician and Sidonian Astarte. This is suggestive of Greek influence, for Venus, the Greek goddess of beauty, was also the wife of a fire-god, Vulcan.20The flight of Vahakn before the Assyrian king is certainly more suggestive of the fear in which the Assyrians must have been regarded than of the valor of their god. The originators of the legend were good psychologists, however, in regarding the instincts of fear and of pugnacity as compatible. For even the slayer of demons must some day face his superiors in strength, and when he does, will he not be afraid? In fact he would be more afraid than another, for he could not well impute more mercy to his superior than he himself had shown to his inferiors.The vein of humor is too rich to be left unnoted. If the Greeks could laugh at their gods, and even mock them, the Armenians could also make sport of them. For what could be more delightfully humorous than the picture of a bearded god, a slayer of dragons, whose hair was of flame and whose eyes like suns, stealing corn from the Assyrian king and dropping the ears from his shoulders in his hasty flight across heaven? The character thus brought out, together with the richness of imaginative quality, especially in the song of his birth, the wholesome and unveiled anthropomorphism (wholesome because it is unveiled), and the correspondence between the Greek fire-god Vulcan whose wife was Venus, the goddess of beauty, with the fire-god Vahakn whose wife Astghik was also goddess of beauty, stamp the legend with its unmistakable origin in Greek mythology.Section 5. The Historic Background of the Legend of VahaknThe Greek period from which this legend dates began with the defeat of the Armenian king Vahy, who was overcome by Alexander theGreat somewhere about 328 B.C.21The Greeks chose their own representative to rule over the province, who at the time of Alexander’s death was Seleucus. Historians have taken the name of this governor to indicate the dynasty of Greek supremacy which followed; i.e., the Seleucid dynasty. This method of the Greeks of selecting their own man to govern a subject people, which was of course in pursuance of their policy of superimposing their own culture upon all subject nations, was contrary to the policy of the Parthians, Romans, and Persians, who allowed the Armenians to maintain their national independence provided they permitted the use of their armies and duly paid their taxes. And it is this policy of the Greeks that accounts for the fact that large portions of Greek mythology and religion were taken over by the Armenians.Although the period of political supremacy was short-lived, the influence of Greek culture continued to permeate the social life of the people through the reign of the Arsacid kings.22In 246 B.C. Arsaces, a Parthian, made himself master of the Parthians, Persians, Medes, Babylonians, and lastly Armenians.23His grandson, Arsaces the Great, conquered as far as India, and after seating himself securely upon the throne of Persia, placed his brother Valarsace upon the Armenian throne, so founding the Persian and Armenian Arsacid dynasties (150 B.C.).24The Persian Arsacidae became extinct in A.D. 226 when they were overthrown by the Persian Sasanidae, whereas the Armenian Arsacidae line continued up until A.D. 428, when the Armenian kingdom was divided between Persia and Rome by Shapuh, the Persian monarch, and Theodosius II.25This makes a period of 578 years (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) during which Armenia was governed by her own line of kings, and enjoyed the liberties of national independence. To be sure after the conquest of Lucullus and Pompey (66 B.C.) Armenia became tributary to Rome, but the right of succession remained with the Armenian royal family, even during Roman supremacy, so that the national life was in no manner interfered with.26The greatest Armenian king of the Arsacidae line was Tigranes the Great, who extended his domains by conquest and established himself in his capital, Tigranacerta, with a court of matchless splendor.27He is spoken of by historians as a king of kings, and as having ruled with a pomp, splendor, and pride never before known. Defeated by Pompey within the walls of his own capital city, his kingdom became tributary to Rome.Section 6. The Period of National IntegrationThe continuity of the period of the Armenian Arsacidae makes it the time when the process of national solidification and unification was carried out to the point that made Armenia a nation, and beyond this point. Raffi asserts that the introduction of Greek culture during the Arsacid dynasty not only changed the religion of Armenians, but also so affected their language and customs that they became different from the Persians, which is proof that a process of social readjustment was going on.28It was during this period that the wandering minstrels spoken of by Langlois journeyed from one end of the nation to the other, singing their songs, repeating the national legends, relating the news of the world and the court gossip which probably made up the largest portion of it.Les chants de l’antique Arménie rappellent principalement des événements la plupart héroiques et légendaires, accomplis à des époques très différentes, ce qui donne à penser qu’ils ont dû être composés à diverses reprises, par des rhapsodes dont les noms ne nous sont point parvenus. Les sujets traités dans ces chants demontrent clairement qu’ils n’ont été inspirés ni à des prêtres païens, ni à des poètes qui auraient vécu sous leur influence, en vue d’être recités dans des fêtes religieuses ou en face des autels. Au contraire, on reconnait de prime abord que ces chants sont l’oeuvre de bardes nationaux, ayant un libre acces dans les palais des souverains et à la cour des satrapes. C’est ce qui fait supposer que ces poèmes sont peutêtre dûs à des ménestrels, à la solde des rois et des nobles et ayant pour emploi de célébrer leurs vertus et leurs prouesses.29This is putting the case conservatively, for Moses speaks often of “les chantres” and “les chants.” They traveled as far as Persia and returned, for it is related by the Italian Countess Evelyn Martinengo how a wandering minstrel, who had just returned from that country, was entertained by an Armenian patriarchal family living in the kind of undergroundhabitation described in the beginning of this thesis.30No one was ever more welcome than the minstrel. He was assigned to the guest chamber usually prepared especially for him, and always the best chamber in the household. His head and feet were washed for him by the wife of the patriarch, and at meal time all the delicacies of the household were spread before him. All guests were welcome, but no guest more welcome than the minstrel. They must have listened to his tales in a kind of petrified awe, and heard him sing his songs in speechless enjoyment.It was a practice among the minstrels of the time to compete with each other in public, and it is related how two minstrels entertained by a Persian prince were led out upon an open grass plot and seated, one facing the other. Five thousand people made a circle around the competitors while the rivals contended in song and verse, riddle and repartee. Each began where the other left off, until finally one failed to perceive the drift of his adversary, and answering at random, the spectators proclaimed him beaten. The triumphant bard was led to the vanquished, whose lyre was taken from him and broken. Robed in a prince’s mantle, the victor was taken to the highest seat in the banquet hall.That the people were the judges of the contest, indicates how well they must have been acquainted with the current folk-songs, legends, and tradition. How generally and frequently the custom of minstrel competition was practiced throughout Armenia is not known, but it certainly is proof, besides Moses’ own statements to the same effect, that the national legends and folk-songs were the possession of the common people. And what is more important, this same body of legends, folk-songs, and tradition did more than any other one thing to weld the sentiments of the people into a single national sentiment, which crystallized into a real patriotism, a real loyalty and devotion to any cause that was a national cause, because it was the natural, spontaneous expression of the life and thought of the people, and no mean, artificial thing superimposed from outside.31There are other reasons for giving this period the social importance that I have ascribed to it. The conversion of the people to Christianity about the third century after Christ was achieved in no sentimental fashion, but, as I believe, in a manner in which it alone could have been done, namely, at the point of the sword of their own king, Tiridates, who was converted from paganism to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator. The traditions in connection with this important event will be told later. Suffice it to say at this point that the whole process of conversion was carried out so thoroughly and completely, that it may be described as a national volte-face, and therefore did not result in the disintegration,civil strife, and social chaos that would unquestionably have been the result had the process been carried out by means of peaceful penetration and propaganda.The third and last argument in support of the social and national importance of the period of the Arsacid kings is in respect to the alphabet which was compiled by St. Mesrob Maschtotz. St. Mesrob was a former secretary of the king, and desired to extirpate the last remnants of paganism in the province of Akoulis, but in the absence of an alphabet he was unable to carry out any scheme of propaganda. He therefore besought the king, Vramschapouh, to put an end to this state of things and the latter, in response to the request, placed all available material at the disposal of the saint. The task was accomplished in 404, somewhat at the expense of the future devotees of the language, for the alphabet contains thirty-eight letters.32Nevertheless, most of the sounds of foreign languages were represented, making it particularly useful as a foundation language for other languages. St. Mesrob, with a body of translators trained by himself and St. Sahak, then proceeded to the translation of the Bible, which was not completed until 433. Liturgies and song-books quickly followed. To be sure the effect of the invention of the alphabet and the distribution of the various religious publications that followed were not felt during the period of the Arsacidae, for the Bible was not published until after the break-up of the kingdom in 428, when it was divided between Persia and Rome. But the important point is that the time had come when the need for an alphabet was making itself very strongly felt, and this could not have been true of a diversified, heterogeneous population.For the three reasons above mentioned, i.e., first, the work of minstrels, second, the Christianizing of the nation, and third, the invention of the alphabet, all occurring during the successive reigns of the Arsacid kings, I should ascribe to this period (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) the integration of the Armenian people into a national unit.33Christianity must have come as a disrupting force, as a terrible shock, necessitating a complete social readjustment, but the fact that the readjustment was made shows that the people were ready for it. For better or for worse the yoke of Christianity was fastened to the neck of the people, and with it they had toreplow the social soil. The job was a good one, for the Armenian church has been the chief power during the last ten or fifteen centuries in keeping alive the streams of national life, and in holding the people together in the face of invasion and repeated attempts at proselytization by the Persians and by the Greek and Roman Catholic churches.Section 7. Legends of Artasches and ArtavasdThe legends of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd, the son of Artasches, belong to the Arsacid period, for Artavasd and Artasches are Armenian kings of the Arsacid dynasty, according to Moses.34The Alans who, according to the legend, were a neighboring people residing in the mountain region in the vicinity of Georgia, spread themselves over Armenia while Artasches, the Armenian king, collected a great army and forced the Alans to retreat across the river Kur where they pitched camp. The son of the Alan king was taken captive and brought to Artasches, which forced the former to seek peace on whatever terms the Armenian king might wish, provided only his son was returned in safety. But Artasches refused, whereupon the sister of the captured boy came to the river bank, and standing upon a great rock spoke to the camp of Artasches by means of interpreters saying: “Oh brave Artasches, who hast vanquished the great nation of Alans, unto thee I speak. Come, hearken unto the bright-eyed daughter of the Alan king and give back the youth. For it is not the way of heroes to destroy life at the root, nor for the sake of humbling and enslaving a hostage to establish everlasting enmity between two great nations.”35Artasches, having heard of these sayings went to the river bank and having seen that the girl was beautiful, and listened to her words of wisdom, wished to marry her. His chamberlain considered it a wise stroke of policy, and therefore went to the Alan king, soliciting the hand of the princess for his master, whose oaths and assurances of peace he vouched for, together with the promise to return the boy. The king of the Alans answered, “From whence shall brave Artasches give thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands upon tens of thousands in return for the maiden?”Writes Moses:Concerning this, the poets of that land sing in their songs:“Brave King ArtaschesMounted his fine black charger,And took the red leathern cordWith the golden ring.Like a swift winged eagleHe passed over the riverAnd cast the golden ringRound the waist of the Alan Princess;Causing much pain to the tender maidenAs he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”Which being interpreted meaneth that he was commanded to give much gold, leather, and crimson dye in exchange for the maiden. So also they sing of the wedding:“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”For it was the custom of our kings to scatter coins amongst the people when they arrived at the doors of the temple for their wedding, as also for the queens to scatter pearls in their bride-chamber.36The couplet quoted is still sung by the Armenians, and it is still customary for the bridegroom to scatter money on his way to the church, and though it may be for queens to scatter pearls, the Armenian bride is not to be outdone. She is given a partly opened pomegranate which she throws at the door of the bridegroom upon the arrival at the bridegroom’s home after the ceremony at the church, the bits of pomegranate scattering themselves about as pearls.After fifty-one years of a very prosperous reign, Artasches, who was very much beloved by his people, died. The funeral procession was a most magnificent one, and many of the people killed themselves, out of love for their dead king, according to the custom of the time. And when the body was laid in the grave they threw precious jewels, gold, and silver after it. Nor did the lamenting and suicide stop after his burial, for upon the grave of their dead king the nobles and the people continued to kill themselves. So great was the slaughter that Artavasd, son of Artasches, and king after his father’s death, addressed the spirit of his dead father, saying, “Behold, thou art taking all with thee; dost thou leave me to rule over ruins and the dead?” The words given by Moses of Khorene are: “Now that thou art gone, and hast taken with thee the whole land, how shall I reign over the ruins?”37Whereupon the spirit of Artasches cursed him and said,“When thou ridest forth to huntOver the free heights of Ararat,The strong ones shall have thee,And shall take thee upOn to the free heights of Ararat.There shalt thou abide,And never more see the light.”38These words together with those of Artavasd spoken to his father’s spirit were sung by the singers of the time.39One day while out hunting Artavasd was seized by some visionary terror and lost his reason. Urging his horse down a steep bank he fell into a chasm where he sank and disappeared. Old women told how he was confined in a cavern and bound with iron chains which his two dogs gnawed at daily in order to set him free. But somehow at the sound of the hammers striking on the anvils, the chains were continually strengthened, and it was customary among the blacksmiths of the time to strike the anvil three or four times to strengthen, as they said, the chains of Artavasd. And so the tradition was kept up by singers and blacksmiths; the blacksmiths and old women having consigned the jealous king to the world’s nethermost regions, while the singers left him to the solitude of Ararat in accordance with the curse of Artasches.Section 8. ConclusionsSuch are the ancient legends of Armenia, in their respective historical settings: the legends of Haic, of Semiramis and Ara, of Vahakn, of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd. All of them antedate the Christian era, and some of them by many centuries. Each one of them is told by Moses of Khorene. But as to origin and probable historic roots Moses was silent, for he was writing a history. He constantly laments the absolute dearth of material and sources and begins his accounts of these legends with the words “This is as it is told,” or “the singers say,” indicating that his only sources for them were the songs and reports current among the people during his own time. The legends of Haic and of Semiramis and Ara are told by Moses as though he believed them historic fact, but of course Moses had no materials to serve as a basis of criticism. He is careful to quote Mar Apas Catina as his only source for this material. The other three legends are regarded as such. Artavasd is spoken of as an historical king who lost his reason while riding horseback and fell into a deep chasm. The practice of suicide at the death of Artasches, his father, was a pagan custom. The curse of the spirit of the dead father, the chains, the dogs, and the anvils were of course recognized as the work of ingenious fancy. In view therefore, of the questionable character of Moses’ sources these legends have very little historic value. They do, however, have a high social value inasmuch as the common knowledge of them among the people was the only ultimate source at the disposal of the historian.The second conclusion is that these legends formed a very important part of the larger mass of tradition and songs that served to cementthe people into a nation. Just how important, it would be difficult to say, but the fact that they were current at the time Moses wrote indicates that they were current and passed on from generation to generation during the whole period of the Arsacidae kings. And as the people had no alphabet during this whole period, they must have been passed on by song and word of mouth. This was a time of special activity on the part of the minstrels and singers, and therefore the development of the national consciousness characteristic of the period must have been brought about in a large measure through the medium of these legendary beliefs.Furthermore these legends are known by the Armenian people to-day and are taught in the schools that are not too severely under the rules of Turkish and Russian censorship. Naturally enough, they are a source of great pride since they breathe national independence and loyalty. But of course, the Turks and Russians have suppressed all public singing of songs, and public teaching of history and legend that may possibly be construed as partaking of the national spirit.It may be argued that these legends slumbered between the covers of Moses’ history during the centuries known as the dark ages, and that they had no social value until the contagion of the European spirit of the Renaissance awoke the legends and the people at the same time. But the mere dearth of record is no proof of this Rip Van Winkle theory. There is at least one reliable authority sufficient to disprove it, viz., Grigor Magistros, a scholar of the eleventh century who wrote that he heard the Artasches epic sung by minstrels.40Besides the unreasonableness of the supposition, there is the added fact of an independent Armenian kingdom known as the Bagradouni dynasty, whose capital seat was at the famous city of Ani. This kingdom included greater Armenia and continued from A.D. 887 to 1079.41But 1079 does not mark the end of Armenian independence though it marks the destruction of Ani, for Reuben, a member of the royal family, made his way into Cilicia in the year 1080, and rallying a handful of Armenians about him, overpowered the Greeks and founded what is known as the Rupenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which continued during a period of 300 years. So that here again is a period of very nearly five hundred years (889–1380), during which time the Armenian people enjoyed national political independence.42And this during the very period of the dark ages, about which we know so little! We could not, therefore, for a moment suppose the traditions and legends to have had no social importance during these centuries, for such an assumption would be in flat contradiction to the witness of Grigor Magistros, and to the facts of Armenian history.

Section 1. The Legend of HaicArmenians do not call themselves Armenians nor their country Armenia. They are descendants of Haic, as the legend goes, who was the son of Togarmah, the son of Japhet, who was the son of Noah, and they call their country Haiasdan after the patriarchal progenitor of their people.1Haic dwelt in the plain of Shinar and was a prefect or director in the building of the tower of Babel. He was beautiful as a god and strong as a giant, mighty in battle and especially adept in spear throwing. In the days of his youth, Bel or Nimrod, who was the patron god of Babylon, established himself over all and wished to be worshipped. But Haic refused to obey, and taking his sons, who numbered about three hundred, his daughters, his sheep and cattle, he journeyed north until he came to the land of Ararat. Bel tried in vain to persuade his rival to come back.“Thou hast departed and hast settled in a chill and frosty region,” urged the Assyrian god. “Soften thy hard pride, change thy coldness to geniality; be my subject and come and live a life of ease in my domain.”2But Haic refused the cordial invitation, which so much angered Bel that the latter brought his army to force the Armenian hero into submission. Haic, however, was victorious, for he slew Bel with an arrow from his own bow. The place where Bel was buried is called “Kerezman,” meaning grave, and is pointed out to this day. Armenians sing songs and tell stories of the great beauty and valor of Haic. He died at the age of four hundred in about 2028 B.C.3This oldest of Armenian legends, quaint and simple as it is in accounting for the beginnings of a people, savours of the Old Testament and is suggestive of the Assyrian invasion which took place about the ninth century before Christ. It is significant that the Armenians refused the protection of Bel, and that in the very beginning of their legendary history, they insisted on standing firm and maintaining their independence, for no single quality is more characteristic of this people than a proud, haughty, even at times disdainful independence. It is also suggestive that their patriarchal hero was no saint, but a mighty giant, beautiful as he was strong, whose greatest pride was in the throwing of a spear, for his descendants have not been a peaceful people. To be sure, they were the first nation to be converted to Christianity, which would say little fortheir firmness and independence, were it not that the priest with the cross was followed by a powerful king with a sword at the head of an army that had learned to fight as the Romans fought.4The songs that were sung in memory and honor of Haic are seldom sung to-day unless it be in some remote village where the civilization of the Turk has not yet pressed, and there are few such villages if any. For many of them breathe of a national spirit not beseeming a subject nation, and have been suppressed for many years.

Section 1. The Legend of Haic

Armenians do not call themselves Armenians nor their country Armenia. They are descendants of Haic, as the legend goes, who was the son of Togarmah, the son of Japhet, who was the son of Noah, and they call their country Haiasdan after the patriarchal progenitor of their people.1Haic dwelt in the plain of Shinar and was a prefect or director in the building of the tower of Babel. He was beautiful as a god and strong as a giant, mighty in battle and especially adept in spear throwing. In the days of his youth, Bel or Nimrod, who was the patron god of Babylon, established himself over all and wished to be worshipped. But Haic refused to obey, and taking his sons, who numbered about three hundred, his daughters, his sheep and cattle, he journeyed north until he came to the land of Ararat. Bel tried in vain to persuade his rival to come back.“Thou hast departed and hast settled in a chill and frosty region,” urged the Assyrian god. “Soften thy hard pride, change thy coldness to geniality; be my subject and come and live a life of ease in my domain.”2But Haic refused the cordial invitation, which so much angered Bel that the latter brought his army to force the Armenian hero into submission. Haic, however, was victorious, for he slew Bel with an arrow from his own bow. The place where Bel was buried is called “Kerezman,” meaning grave, and is pointed out to this day. Armenians sing songs and tell stories of the great beauty and valor of Haic. He died at the age of four hundred in about 2028 B.C.3This oldest of Armenian legends, quaint and simple as it is in accounting for the beginnings of a people, savours of the Old Testament and is suggestive of the Assyrian invasion which took place about the ninth century before Christ. It is significant that the Armenians refused the protection of Bel, and that in the very beginning of their legendary history, they insisted on standing firm and maintaining their independence, for no single quality is more characteristic of this people than a proud, haughty, even at times disdainful independence. It is also suggestive that their patriarchal hero was no saint, but a mighty giant, beautiful as he was strong, whose greatest pride was in the throwing of a spear, for his descendants have not been a peaceful people. To be sure, they were the first nation to be converted to Christianity, which would say little fortheir firmness and independence, were it not that the priest with the cross was followed by a powerful king with a sword at the head of an army that had learned to fight as the Romans fought.4The songs that were sung in memory and honor of Haic are seldom sung to-day unless it be in some remote village where the civilization of the Turk has not yet pressed, and there are few such villages if any. For many of them breathe of a national spirit not beseeming a subject nation, and have been suppressed for many years.

Armenians do not call themselves Armenians nor their country Armenia. They are descendants of Haic, as the legend goes, who was the son of Togarmah, the son of Japhet, who was the son of Noah, and they call their country Haiasdan after the patriarchal progenitor of their people.1Haic dwelt in the plain of Shinar and was a prefect or director in the building of the tower of Babel. He was beautiful as a god and strong as a giant, mighty in battle and especially adept in spear throwing. In the days of his youth, Bel or Nimrod, who was the patron god of Babylon, established himself over all and wished to be worshipped. But Haic refused to obey, and taking his sons, who numbered about three hundred, his daughters, his sheep and cattle, he journeyed north until he came to the land of Ararat. Bel tried in vain to persuade his rival to come back.

“Thou hast departed and hast settled in a chill and frosty region,” urged the Assyrian god. “Soften thy hard pride, change thy coldness to geniality; be my subject and come and live a life of ease in my domain.”2

But Haic refused the cordial invitation, which so much angered Bel that the latter brought his army to force the Armenian hero into submission. Haic, however, was victorious, for he slew Bel with an arrow from his own bow. The place where Bel was buried is called “Kerezman,” meaning grave, and is pointed out to this day. Armenians sing songs and tell stories of the great beauty and valor of Haic. He died at the age of four hundred in about 2028 B.C.3

This oldest of Armenian legends, quaint and simple as it is in accounting for the beginnings of a people, savours of the Old Testament and is suggestive of the Assyrian invasion which took place about the ninth century before Christ. It is significant that the Armenians refused the protection of Bel, and that in the very beginning of their legendary history, they insisted on standing firm and maintaining their independence, for no single quality is more characteristic of this people than a proud, haughty, even at times disdainful independence. It is also suggestive that their patriarchal hero was no saint, but a mighty giant, beautiful as he was strong, whose greatest pride was in the throwing of a spear, for his descendants have not been a peaceful people. To be sure, they were the first nation to be converted to Christianity, which would say little fortheir firmness and independence, were it not that the priest with the cross was followed by a powerful king with a sword at the head of an army that had learned to fight as the Romans fought.4The songs that were sung in memory and honor of Haic are seldom sung to-day unless it be in some remote village where the civilization of the Turk has not yet pressed, and there are few such villages if any. For many of them breathe of a national spirit not beseeming a subject nation, and have been suppressed for many years.

Section 2. The Legend of Ara and SemiramisDating back to the Assyrian invasion which took place during the seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, one of the oldest of Armenian legends, that of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and Ara, king of Armenia, is told.5Ara was very beautiful, and Semiramis having heard speech of his beauty for many years, wished to possess him. But she dared do nothing for fear of Ninus, protector over Armenia. After the death of Ninus, however, the queen sent messengers to Ara, with gifts and offerings, with prayers and promises of riches, begging him to come to her at Nineveh and either wed her and reign over all that Ninus had possessed, orfulfillher desire and return in peace to Armenia with many gifts. But when the messengers had been turned away repeatedly, Semiramis became angry, and taking her army she hastened to Armenia. The battle was fought on the plain of Ara, called after him Ararat; and although the queen had given careful orders to her generals to devise some means of saving the life of Ara, the Armenian king was slain. She found the dead body among the others that had fallen, and ordered her servants to place it in an upper chamber in her castle. And when the Armenian army again arose to drive away the foe and avenge the death of Ara, thequeen said, “I have commanded the gods to lick his wounds and he shall live again.” She tried to bring Ara back to life by witchcraft and charms, but the body began to decay and she commanded her servants to cast the corpse into a deep pit and to cover it. And having dressed up one of her men in secret, she caused the following proclamation to be spread among the people: “The gods have licked Ara and have brought him back to life again, thus fulfilling our prayers and our pleasures. Therefore from this time forth shall they be the more glorified and worshipped by us, for they are the givers of joy and the fulfillers of desire.” And she erected a statue to the gods, making it seem as though they had brought Ara back to life again. This news was spread over all the country of Armenia, and having satisfied the people, she put an end to the fighting. The twelve-year-old son of the king was taken by the Assyrian queen and appointed ruler over Armenia. She called him Ara, in memory of her love for Ara the Beautiful.To Semiramis is attributed the building of the ancient city of Van on the shores of the beautiful lake of Van, where she made her summer residence until the time of her departure.6She might well have lingered there, for the Armenians have a proverb, “Van in this world, paradise in the next.” Nevertheless, Semiramis and Ara are mythical characters, although the latter is spoken of in the history of St. Martin as having lived along about 1769 B.C.7As regards the popular belief in the legend, however, there is not the slightest doubt. This is proved by the fact that even to-day the city is called “Sham-iram-agerd” by the Armenians, meaning the city of Semiramis. Lynch says that Ara and Semiramis are Tannuz and Istar, the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth, and that the quest of the Assyrian queen may be connected with the introduction into Armenia of the worship of Istar whose name is mentioned in one of the cuneiform inscriptions at Van.8However, the results of modern scholarship are by no means conclusive on this point, as we shall see.

Section 2. The Legend of Ara and Semiramis

Dating back to the Assyrian invasion which took place during the seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, one of the oldest of Armenian legends, that of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and Ara, king of Armenia, is told.5Ara was very beautiful, and Semiramis having heard speech of his beauty for many years, wished to possess him. But she dared do nothing for fear of Ninus, protector over Armenia. After the death of Ninus, however, the queen sent messengers to Ara, with gifts and offerings, with prayers and promises of riches, begging him to come to her at Nineveh and either wed her and reign over all that Ninus had possessed, orfulfillher desire and return in peace to Armenia with many gifts. But when the messengers had been turned away repeatedly, Semiramis became angry, and taking her army she hastened to Armenia. The battle was fought on the plain of Ara, called after him Ararat; and although the queen had given careful orders to her generals to devise some means of saving the life of Ara, the Armenian king was slain. She found the dead body among the others that had fallen, and ordered her servants to place it in an upper chamber in her castle. And when the Armenian army again arose to drive away the foe and avenge the death of Ara, thequeen said, “I have commanded the gods to lick his wounds and he shall live again.” She tried to bring Ara back to life by witchcraft and charms, but the body began to decay and she commanded her servants to cast the corpse into a deep pit and to cover it. And having dressed up one of her men in secret, she caused the following proclamation to be spread among the people: “The gods have licked Ara and have brought him back to life again, thus fulfilling our prayers and our pleasures. Therefore from this time forth shall they be the more glorified and worshipped by us, for they are the givers of joy and the fulfillers of desire.” And she erected a statue to the gods, making it seem as though they had brought Ara back to life again. This news was spread over all the country of Armenia, and having satisfied the people, she put an end to the fighting. The twelve-year-old son of the king was taken by the Assyrian queen and appointed ruler over Armenia. She called him Ara, in memory of her love for Ara the Beautiful.To Semiramis is attributed the building of the ancient city of Van on the shores of the beautiful lake of Van, where she made her summer residence until the time of her departure.6She might well have lingered there, for the Armenians have a proverb, “Van in this world, paradise in the next.” Nevertheless, Semiramis and Ara are mythical characters, although the latter is spoken of in the history of St. Martin as having lived along about 1769 B.C.7As regards the popular belief in the legend, however, there is not the slightest doubt. This is proved by the fact that even to-day the city is called “Sham-iram-agerd” by the Armenians, meaning the city of Semiramis. Lynch says that Ara and Semiramis are Tannuz and Istar, the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth, and that the quest of the Assyrian queen may be connected with the introduction into Armenia of the worship of Istar whose name is mentioned in one of the cuneiform inscriptions at Van.8However, the results of modern scholarship are by no means conclusive on this point, as we shall see.

Dating back to the Assyrian invasion which took place during the seventh and eighth centuries before Christ, one of the oldest of Armenian legends, that of Semiramis, queen of Assyria, and Ara, king of Armenia, is told.5Ara was very beautiful, and Semiramis having heard speech of his beauty for many years, wished to possess him. But she dared do nothing for fear of Ninus, protector over Armenia. After the death of Ninus, however, the queen sent messengers to Ara, with gifts and offerings, with prayers and promises of riches, begging him to come to her at Nineveh and either wed her and reign over all that Ninus had possessed, orfulfillher desire and return in peace to Armenia with many gifts. But when the messengers had been turned away repeatedly, Semiramis became angry, and taking her army she hastened to Armenia. The battle was fought on the plain of Ara, called after him Ararat; and although the queen had given careful orders to her generals to devise some means of saving the life of Ara, the Armenian king was slain. She found the dead body among the others that had fallen, and ordered her servants to place it in an upper chamber in her castle. And when the Armenian army again arose to drive away the foe and avenge the death of Ara, thequeen said, “I have commanded the gods to lick his wounds and he shall live again.” She tried to bring Ara back to life by witchcraft and charms, but the body began to decay and she commanded her servants to cast the corpse into a deep pit and to cover it. And having dressed up one of her men in secret, she caused the following proclamation to be spread among the people: “The gods have licked Ara and have brought him back to life again, thus fulfilling our prayers and our pleasures. Therefore from this time forth shall they be the more glorified and worshipped by us, for they are the givers of joy and the fulfillers of desire.” And she erected a statue to the gods, making it seem as though they had brought Ara back to life again. This news was spread over all the country of Armenia, and having satisfied the people, she put an end to the fighting. The twelve-year-old son of the king was taken by the Assyrian queen and appointed ruler over Armenia. She called him Ara, in memory of her love for Ara the Beautiful.

To Semiramis is attributed the building of the ancient city of Van on the shores of the beautiful lake of Van, where she made her summer residence until the time of her departure.6She might well have lingered there, for the Armenians have a proverb, “Van in this world, paradise in the next.” Nevertheless, Semiramis and Ara are mythical characters, although the latter is spoken of in the history of St. Martin as having lived along about 1769 B.C.7As regards the popular belief in the legend, however, there is not the slightest doubt. This is proved by the fact that even to-day the city is called “Sham-iram-agerd” by the Armenians, meaning the city of Semiramis. Lynch says that Ara and Semiramis are Tannuz and Istar, the Adonis and the Aphrodite of the Hellenic myth, and that the quest of the Assyrian queen may be connected with the introduction into Armenia of the worship of Istar whose name is mentioned in one of the cuneiform inscriptions at Van.8However, the results of modern scholarship are by no means conclusive on this point, as we shall see.

Section 3. Historical Background of the Legend of Ara and SemiramisMoses’ history was read by St. Martin who became exceedingly interested in Van, and in the cuneiform inscriptions spoken of. It was due to him that the French government dispatched a mission to Armenia in 1827, under the direction of a young German Professor, Friedrich Edward Schulz. Schulz was murdered by the Kurds, a thing which rarely happens in Armenia, and his work was left incomplete. He had succeeded, however, in making copies of forty-two inscriptions, which were publishedin 1840, and proved to be remarkably accurate. Shortly afterward, orientalists made great discoveries in the Mesopotamian valley, but the inscriptions at Van did not tally with any syllabaries discovered up to that time, nor could they be translated in any known language. A number of them were found to be Assyrian, but the great majority were peculiar to Van, and entirely baffled the students. Not until 1880 were they finally unravelled. M. S. Guyard discovered at that time that the concluding phrase of many Vannic texts represented an imprecatory formula found in exactly the same place in Assyrian counterparts. This discovery enabled Professor Sayce, of Oxford, to decipher the inscriptions at a rapid rate.Among the important facts discovered were that the nation was a rival nation of Assyria, and that its people were called Khaldeans, or children of Khaldis, much in the same way as the Assyrians reflected the name of their god, Assur. The country was a theocracy and Khaldis was supreme. In the tablets, his wrath was invoked against whomever should destroy them. The capital city was Dhuspus, modern Van, which is the Disp, or Tsp of Armenian writers, and the Turuspa of Assyrian annals. The Assyrians styled the kingdom Urardhu, or Urarthu, which is the name appearing in the Bible in the familiar form Ararat.The earliest inscriptions date back to the ninth century before Christ, and as the language is neither Semitic nor Indo-European, the people could neither have been Assyrians whose language was Semitic, nor Armenians, whose language is Indo-European. The first mention made of Urardhu was in the reign of Ashur-Nazir-Pal (885–860 B.C.) whose successor, Shalmanasar II (860–825 B.C.) was the first Assyrian king to invade Armenia.9Raffi, however, (the son of the famous Armenian poet) speaks of an account given by Assur-Nazir-Haban (1882–1857 B.C.) of one of his victories. “They” (i.e., the people of Ararat or Urarthu), he said, “fled to the impregnable mountains so that I might not be able to get at them, for the mighty summits were like drawn swords pointing to the skies. Only the birds of heaven soaring on their wings could reach them. In three days I was there spreading terror in places where they had taken refuge. Their corpses like autumn leaves filled the clefts. The rest escaped to distant inaccessible heights.”10This, clearly, is a much older record than any that Lynch found trace of, and although Raffi cites no authority for the quotation, I presume that it has been taken from a recent discovery. If this be true the Khaldeans were a very ancient people. One of the tablets shows that King Memas was the principal author of the magnificent canal which conducts the water of the riverKhoshab to the suburbs of Van, and which is to-day called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis.11The line of Vannic kings is traceable as far down as 644 B.C.Most of these inscriptions are to be found on a huge isolated rock, situated in the curve of the bay, and known as the “rock of Van.”12Among them are inscriptions left by Xerxes (485 B.C.), the Persian conqueror whose father’s empire (Darius, 521–486 B.C.) succeeded the loose Scythian rule.But the ancient Khaldean kingdom had already vanished when Xerxes’ victorious army overran the country, for shortly after the great influx of Scythians and the break-up of Assyria, came another horde from the west, perhaps to fill up the void left by the Scythian ravages. It is at this time that the Armenian people are first heard from, and it is this horde, therefore, that is regarded as the foundation stock of the Armenian people. They seem to have been an Indo-European people residing in the territory north of the Black Sea, for, coming from the west they must have entered Asia from Europe by crossing the straits. The ancient Khaldeans were assimilated to some extent, but for the most part, they were driven to the north and south, where they have left traces that have been recognized and recorded by Xenophon and Herodotus.13That the civilization and culture of the ancient Khaldeans were utilized is beyond doubt. Their most ancient cities, Van, Armavir, were foundations of Vannic kings, while recently it has been disclosed that the city of Hajk, southeast of Van, shows some of the familiar features of a Khaldean settlement. But their supreme god during the pre-Christian era was not Khaldis, but the Persian Ormuzd, which indicates that the Persians exercised an even greater influence.How then could Semiramis ever have come to Van in quest of an Armenian king, since it seems that the Scythians had already conquered Assyria before the great influx of Armenian hordes? Nor does it seem that the city of Van was built by the Assyrian queen, for the inscriptions make no mention of her name. King Memas who, in the view of Lynch, constructed the famous canal, was in all probability the author of the garden city. The belief, according to Lynch, as already stated, is that this legend is the Armenian version of the old Hellenic myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, taken over during the domination of the Seleucid dynasty which followed the conquest of Alexander about 325 B.C.14But this is unreasonable. That a myth should be taken over by a subject people and the characters rechristened is not difficult to understand,but that the name of one of them should be applied to the ancient city is very improbable to say the least. Furthermore, the legend is flavored rather strongly with Persian voluptuousness, and is not at all suggestive of Greek delicacy and refinement. Nor is the fact that the horde overran the country after the destruction of Assyria in any way conclusive, for if there were any assimilation at all, as there must unquestionably have been, the Khaldean culture and history was to that extent the actual possession of the Armenians. Even intermarriage would perhaps be unnecessary, for what Irishman who has been in the United States two months does not speak of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as his forefathers? It is to be noted also that to this day the canal spoken of is called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis, by all Armenians.15On the whole it seems to me conclusive, therefore, that the legend of Semiramis and Ara has its roots in Armenian history, and is not at all a version of the Hellenic myth.

Section 3. Historical Background of the Legend of Ara and Semiramis

Moses’ history was read by St. Martin who became exceedingly interested in Van, and in the cuneiform inscriptions spoken of. It was due to him that the French government dispatched a mission to Armenia in 1827, under the direction of a young German Professor, Friedrich Edward Schulz. Schulz was murdered by the Kurds, a thing which rarely happens in Armenia, and his work was left incomplete. He had succeeded, however, in making copies of forty-two inscriptions, which were publishedin 1840, and proved to be remarkably accurate. Shortly afterward, orientalists made great discoveries in the Mesopotamian valley, but the inscriptions at Van did not tally with any syllabaries discovered up to that time, nor could they be translated in any known language. A number of them were found to be Assyrian, but the great majority were peculiar to Van, and entirely baffled the students. Not until 1880 were they finally unravelled. M. S. Guyard discovered at that time that the concluding phrase of many Vannic texts represented an imprecatory formula found in exactly the same place in Assyrian counterparts. This discovery enabled Professor Sayce, of Oxford, to decipher the inscriptions at a rapid rate.Among the important facts discovered were that the nation was a rival nation of Assyria, and that its people were called Khaldeans, or children of Khaldis, much in the same way as the Assyrians reflected the name of their god, Assur. The country was a theocracy and Khaldis was supreme. In the tablets, his wrath was invoked against whomever should destroy them. The capital city was Dhuspus, modern Van, which is the Disp, or Tsp of Armenian writers, and the Turuspa of Assyrian annals. The Assyrians styled the kingdom Urardhu, or Urarthu, which is the name appearing in the Bible in the familiar form Ararat.The earliest inscriptions date back to the ninth century before Christ, and as the language is neither Semitic nor Indo-European, the people could neither have been Assyrians whose language was Semitic, nor Armenians, whose language is Indo-European. The first mention made of Urardhu was in the reign of Ashur-Nazir-Pal (885–860 B.C.) whose successor, Shalmanasar II (860–825 B.C.) was the first Assyrian king to invade Armenia.9Raffi, however, (the son of the famous Armenian poet) speaks of an account given by Assur-Nazir-Haban (1882–1857 B.C.) of one of his victories. “They” (i.e., the people of Ararat or Urarthu), he said, “fled to the impregnable mountains so that I might not be able to get at them, for the mighty summits were like drawn swords pointing to the skies. Only the birds of heaven soaring on their wings could reach them. In three days I was there spreading terror in places where they had taken refuge. Their corpses like autumn leaves filled the clefts. The rest escaped to distant inaccessible heights.”10This, clearly, is a much older record than any that Lynch found trace of, and although Raffi cites no authority for the quotation, I presume that it has been taken from a recent discovery. If this be true the Khaldeans were a very ancient people. One of the tablets shows that King Memas was the principal author of the magnificent canal which conducts the water of the riverKhoshab to the suburbs of Van, and which is to-day called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis.11The line of Vannic kings is traceable as far down as 644 B.C.Most of these inscriptions are to be found on a huge isolated rock, situated in the curve of the bay, and known as the “rock of Van.”12Among them are inscriptions left by Xerxes (485 B.C.), the Persian conqueror whose father’s empire (Darius, 521–486 B.C.) succeeded the loose Scythian rule.But the ancient Khaldean kingdom had already vanished when Xerxes’ victorious army overran the country, for shortly after the great influx of Scythians and the break-up of Assyria, came another horde from the west, perhaps to fill up the void left by the Scythian ravages. It is at this time that the Armenian people are first heard from, and it is this horde, therefore, that is regarded as the foundation stock of the Armenian people. They seem to have been an Indo-European people residing in the territory north of the Black Sea, for, coming from the west they must have entered Asia from Europe by crossing the straits. The ancient Khaldeans were assimilated to some extent, but for the most part, they were driven to the north and south, where they have left traces that have been recognized and recorded by Xenophon and Herodotus.13That the civilization and culture of the ancient Khaldeans were utilized is beyond doubt. Their most ancient cities, Van, Armavir, were foundations of Vannic kings, while recently it has been disclosed that the city of Hajk, southeast of Van, shows some of the familiar features of a Khaldean settlement. But their supreme god during the pre-Christian era was not Khaldis, but the Persian Ormuzd, which indicates that the Persians exercised an even greater influence.How then could Semiramis ever have come to Van in quest of an Armenian king, since it seems that the Scythians had already conquered Assyria before the great influx of Armenian hordes? Nor does it seem that the city of Van was built by the Assyrian queen, for the inscriptions make no mention of her name. King Memas who, in the view of Lynch, constructed the famous canal, was in all probability the author of the garden city. The belief, according to Lynch, as already stated, is that this legend is the Armenian version of the old Hellenic myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, taken over during the domination of the Seleucid dynasty which followed the conquest of Alexander about 325 B.C.14But this is unreasonable. That a myth should be taken over by a subject people and the characters rechristened is not difficult to understand,but that the name of one of them should be applied to the ancient city is very improbable to say the least. Furthermore, the legend is flavored rather strongly with Persian voluptuousness, and is not at all suggestive of Greek delicacy and refinement. Nor is the fact that the horde overran the country after the destruction of Assyria in any way conclusive, for if there were any assimilation at all, as there must unquestionably have been, the Khaldean culture and history was to that extent the actual possession of the Armenians. Even intermarriage would perhaps be unnecessary, for what Irishman who has been in the United States two months does not speak of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as his forefathers? It is to be noted also that to this day the canal spoken of is called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis, by all Armenians.15On the whole it seems to me conclusive, therefore, that the legend of Semiramis and Ara has its roots in Armenian history, and is not at all a version of the Hellenic myth.

Moses’ history was read by St. Martin who became exceedingly interested in Van, and in the cuneiform inscriptions spoken of. It was due to him that the French government dispatched a mission to Armenia in 1827, under the direction of a young German Professor, Friedrich Edward Schulz. Schulz was murdered by the Kurds, a thing which rarely happens in Armenia, and his work was left incomplete. He had succeeded, however, in making copies of forty-two inscriptions, which were publishedin 1840, and proved to be remarkably accurate. Shortly afterward, orientalists made great discoveries in the Mesopotamian valley, but the inscriptions at Van did not tally with any syllabaries discovered up to that time, nor could they be translated in any known language. A number of them were found to be Assyrian, but the great majority were peculiar to Van, and entirely baffled the students. Not until 1880 were they finally unravelled. M. S. Guyard discovered at that time that the concluding phrase of many Vannic texts represented an imprecatory formula found in exactly the same place in Assyrian counterparts. This discovery enabled Professor Sayce, of Oxford, to decipher the inscriptions at a rapid rate.

Among the important facts discovered were that the nation was a rival nation of Assyria, and that its people were called Khaldeans, or children of Khaldis, much in the same way as the Assyrians reflected the name of their god, Assur. The country was a theocracy and Khaldis was supreme. In the tablets, his wrath was invoked against whomever should destroy them. The capital city was Dhuspus, modern Van, which is the Disp, or Tsp of Armenian writers, and the Turuspa of Assyrian annals. The Assyrians styled the kingdom Urardhu, or Urarthu, which is the name appearing in the Bible in the familiar form Ararat.

The earliest inscriptions date back to the ninth century before Christ, and as the language is neither Semitic nor Indo-European, the people could neither have been Assyrians whose language was Semitic, nor Armenians, whose language is Indo-European. The first mention made of Urardhu was in the reign of Ashur-Nazir-Pal (885–860 B.C.) whose successor, Shalmanasar II (860–825 B.C.) was the first Assyrian king to invade Armenia.9Raffi, however, (the son of the famous Armenian poet) speaks of an account given by Assur-Nazir-Haban (1882–1857 B.C.) of one of his victories. “They” (i.e., the people of Ararat or Urarthu), he said, “fled to the impregnable mountains so that I might not be able to get at them, for the mighty summits were like drawn swords pointing to the skies. Only the birds of heaven soaring on their wings could reach them. In three days I was there spreading terror in places where they had taken refuge. Their corpses like autumn leaves filled the clefts. The rest escaped to distant inaccessible heights.”10This, clearly, is a much older record than any that Lynch found trace of, and although Raffi cites no authority for the quotation, I presume that it has been taken from a recent discovery. If this be true the Khaldeans were a very ancient people. One of the tablets shows that King Memas was the principal author of the magnificent canal which conducts the water of the riverKhoshab to the suburbs of Van, and which is to-day called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis.11The line of Vannic kings is traceable as far down as 644 B.C.

Most of these inscriptions are to be found on a huge isolated rock, situated in the curve of the bay, and known as the “rock of Van.”12Among them are inscriptions left by Xerxes (485 B.C.), the Persian conqueror whose father’s empire (Darius, 521–486 B.C.) succeeded the loose Scythian rule.

But the ancient Khaldean kingdom had already vanished when Xerxes’ victorious army overran the country, for shortly after the great influx of Scythians and the break-up of Assyria, came another horde from the west, perhaps to fill up the void left by the Scythian ravages. It is at this time that the Armenian people are first heard from, and it is this horde, therefore, that is regarded as the foundation stock of the Armenian people. They seem to have been an Indo-European people residing in the territory north of the Black Sea, for, coming from the west they must have entered Asia from Europe by crossing the straits. The ancient Khaldeans were assimilated to some extent, but for the most part, they were driven to the north and south, where they have left traces that have been recognized and recorded by Xenophon and Herodotus.13

That the civilization and culture of the ancient Khaldeans were utilized is beyond doubt. Their most ancient cities, Van, Armavir, were foundations of Vannic kings, while recently it has been disclosed that the city of Hajk, southeast of Van, shows some of the familiar features of a Khaldean settlement. But their supreme god during the pre-Christian era was not Khaldis, but the Persian Ormuzd, which indicates that the Persians exercised an even greater influence.

How then could Semiramis ever have come to Van in quest of an Armenian king, since it seems that the Scythians had already conquered Assyria before the great influx of Armenian hordes? Nor does it seem that the city of Van was built by the Assyrian queen, for the inscriptions make no mention of her name. King Memas who, in the view of Lynch, constructed the famous canal, was in all probability the author of the garden city. The belief, according to Lynch, as already stated, is that this legend is the Armenian version of the old Hellenic myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, taken over during the domination of the Seleucid dynasty which followed the conquest of Alexander about 325 B.C.14

But this is unreasonable. That a myth should be taken over by a subject people and the characters rechristened is not difficult to understand,but that the name of one of them should be applied to the ancient city is very improbable to say the least. Furthermore, the legend is flavored rather strongly with Persian voluptuousness, and is not at all suggestive of Greek delicacy and refinement. Nor is the fact that the horde overran the country after the destruction of Assyria in any way conclusive, for if there were any assimilation at all, as there must unquestionably have been, the Khaldean culture and history was to that extent the actual possession of the Armenians. Even intermarriage would perhaps be unnecessary, for what Irishman who has been in the United States two months does not speak of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as his forefathers? It is to be noted also that to this day the canal spoken of is called “Shamiram-Su” or river of Semiramis, by all Armenians.15On the whole it seems to me conclusive, therefore, that the legend of Semiramis and Ara has its roots in Armenian history, and is not at all a version of the Hellenic myth.

Section 4. The Legend of VahaknThe legend of Vahakn, king and god of Armenians, is very clearly attributable to the Greek period, which followed the Persian conquest under Xerxes. Vahakn was deified because of his great valor and made the fire-god of the Armenian people.16He was called “Vishapakagh,” uprooter of dragons, since he cleared Armenia of monsters and saved it from evil influences. His exploits were known in the abode of the gods as well as in Armenia. The most famous of them was the theft of corn from the barns of King Barsham of Assyria, from whom he ran away and tried to hide in heaven. Because of the ears he dropped in his rapid flight, there arose the Milky Way which is called in Armenian the “track of the corn stealer.”17Moses of Khorene writes as follows:Concerning the birth of this king the legends say,“Heaven and earth were in travail,And the crimson waters were in travail,And in the water, the crimson reedWas also in travail.From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,From the mouth of the reed issued flame,And out of the flame sprang the young child,His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,And his eyes were suns.”18With our own ears did we hear these words sung to the accompaniment of the harp. They sing moreover that he did fight with the dragons, and overcame them; and some say that his valiant deeds were like unto Hercules. Others declare that he was a god, and that a great image of him stood in the land of Georgia, where it was worshipped, with sacrifices.19The wife of Vahakn was Astghik, the goddess of beauty, a personification of the moon, corresponding to the Phoenician and Sidonian Astarte. This is suggestive of Greek influence, for Venus, the Greek goddess of beauty, was also the wife of a fire-god, Vulcan.20The flight of Vahakn before the Assyrian king is certainly more suggestive of the fear in which the Assyrians must have been regarded than of the valor of their god. The originators of the legend were good psychologists, however, in regarding the instincts of fear and of pugnacity as compatible. For even the slayer of demons must some day face his superiors in strength, and when he does, will he not be afraid? In fact he would be more afraid than another, for he could not well impute more mercy to his superior than he himself had shown to his inferiors.The vein of humor is too rich to be left unnoted. If the Greeks could laugh at their gods, and even mock them, the Armenians could also make sport of them. For what could be more delightfully humorous than the picture of a bearded god, a slayer of dragons, whose hair was of flame and whose eyes like suns, stealing corn from the Assyrian king and dropping the ears from his shoulders in his hasty flight across heaven? The character thus brought out, together with the richness of imaginative quality, especially in the song of his birth, the wholesome and unveiled anthropomorphism (wholesome because it is unveiled), and the correspondence between the Greek fire-god Vulcan whose wife was Venus, the goddess of beauty, with the fire-god Vahakn whose wife Astghik was also goddess of beauty, stamp the legend with its unmistakable origin in Greek mythology.

Section 4. The Legend of Vahakn

The legend of Vahakn, king and god of Armenians, is very clearly attributable to the Greek period, which followed the Persian conquest under Xerxes. Vahakn was deified because of his great valor and made the fire-god of the Armenian people.16He was called “Vishapakagh,” uprooter of dragons, since he cleared Armenia of monsters and saved it from evil influences. His exploits were known in the abode of the gods as well as in Armenia. The most famous of them was the theft of corn from the barns of King Barsham of Assyria, from whom he ran away and tried to hide in heaven. Because of the ears he dropped in his rapid flight, there arose the Milky Way which is called in Armenian the “track of the corn stealer.”17Moses of Khorene writes as follows:Concerning the birth of this king the legends say,“Heaven and earth were in travail,And the crimson waters were in travail,And in the water, the crimson reedWas also in travail.From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,From the mouth of the reed issued flame,And out of the flame sprang the young child,His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,And his eyes were suns.”18With our own ears did we hear these words sung to the accompaniment of the harp. They sing moreover that he did fight with the dragons, and overcame them; and some say that his valiant deeds were like unto Hercules. Others declare that he was a god, and that a great image of him stood in the land of Georgia, where it was worshipped, with sacrifices.19The wife of Vahakn was Astghik, the goddess of beauty, a personification of the moon, corresponding to the Phoenician and Sidonian Astarte. This is suggestive of Greek influence, for Venus, the Greek goddess of beauty, was also the wife of a fire-god, Vulcan.20The flight of Vahakn before the Assyrian king is certainly more suggestive of the fear in which the Assyrians must have been regarded than of the valor of their god. The originators of the legend were good psychologists, however, in regarding the instincts of fear and of pugnacity as compatible. For even the slayer of demons must some day face his superiors in strength, and when he does, will he not be afraid? In fact he would be more afraid than another, for he could not well impute more mercy to his superior than he himself had shown to his inferiors.The vein of humor is too rich to be left unnoted. If the Greeks could laugh at their gods, and even mock them, the Armenians could also make sport of them. For what could be more delightfully humorous than the picture of a bearded god, a slayer of dragons, whose hair was of flame and whose eyes like suns, stealing corn from the Assyrian king and dropping the ears from his shoulders in his hasty flight across heaven? The character thus brought out, together with the richness of imaginative quality, especially in the song of his birth, the wholesome and unveiled anthropomorphism (wholesome because it is unveiled), and the correspondence between the Greek fire-god Vulcan whose wife was Venus, the goddess of beauty, with the fire-god Vahakn whose wife Astghik was also goddess of beauty, stamp the legend with its unmistakable origin in Greek mythology.

The legend of Vahakn, king and god of Armenians, is very clearly attributable to the Greek period, which followed the Persian conquest under Xerxes. Vahakn was deified because of his great valor and made the fire-god of the Armenian people.16He was called “Vishapakagh,” uprooter of dragons, since he cleared Armenia of monsters and saved it from evil influences. His exploits were known in the abode of the gods as well as in Armenia. The most famous of them was the theft of corn from the barns of King Barsham of Assyria, from whom he ran away and tried to hide in heaven. Because of the ears he dropped in his rapid flight, there arose the Milky Way which is called in Armenian the “track of the corn stealer.”17

Moses of Khorene writes as follows:

Concerning the birth of this king the legends say,“Heaven and earth were in travail,And the crimson waters were in travail,And in the water, the crimson reedWas also in travail.From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,From the mouth of the reed issued flame,And out of the flame sprang the young child,His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,And his eyes were suns.”18With our own ears did we hear these words sung to the accompaniment of the harp. They sing moreover that he did fight with the dragons, and overcame them; and some say that his valiant deeds were like unto Hercules. Others declare that he was a god, and that a great image of him stood in the land of Georgia, where it was worshipped, with sacrifices.19

Concerning the birth of this king the legends say,

“Heaven and earth were in travail,And the crimson waters were in travail,And in the water, the crimson reedWas also in travail.From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,From the mouth of the reed issued flame,And out of the flame sprang the young child,His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,And his eyes were suns.”18

“Heaven and earth were in travail,And the crimson waters were in travail,And in the water, the crimson reedWas also in travail.From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,From the mouth of the reed issued flame,And out of the flame sprang the young child,His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,And his eyes were suns.”18

“Heaven and earth were in travail,And the crimson waters were in travail,And in the water, the crimson reedWas also in travail.From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,From the mouth of the reed issued flame,And out of the flame sprang the young child,His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,And his eyes were suns.”18

“Heaven and earth were in travail,

And the crimson waters were in travail,

And in the water, the crimson reed

Was also in travail.

From the mouth of the reed issued smoke,

From the mouth of the reed issued flame,

And out of the flame sprang the young child,

His hair was of fire, a beard had he of flame,

And his eyes were suns.”18

With our own ears did we hear these words sung to the accompaniment of the harp. They sing moreover that he did fight with the dragons, and overcame them; and some say that his valiant deeds were like unto Hercules. Others declare that he was a god, and that a great image of him stood in the land of Georgia, where it was worshipped, with sacrifices.19

The wife of Vahakn was Astghik, the goddess of beauty, a personification of the moon, corresponding to the Phoenician and Sidonian Astarte. This is suggestive of Greek influence, for Venus, the Greek goddess of beauty, was also the wife of a fire-god, Vulcan.20

The flight of Vahakn before the Assyrian king is certainly more suggestive of the fear in which the Assyrians must have been regarded than of the valor of their god. The originators of the legend were good psychologists, however, in regarding the instincts of fear and of pugnacity as compatible. For even the slayer of demons must some day face his superiors in strength, and when he does, will he not be afraid? In fact he would be more afraid than another, for he could not well impute more mercy to his superior than he himself had shown to his inferiors.

The vein of humor is too rich to be left unnoted. If the Greeks could laugh at their gods, and even mock them, the Armenians could also make sport of them. For what could be more delightfully humorous than the picture of a bearded god, a slayer of dragons, whose hair was of flame and whose eyes like suns, stealing corn from the Assyrian king and dropping the ears from his shoulders in his hasty flight across heaven? The character thus brought out, together with the richness of imaginative quality, especially in the song of his birth, the wholesome and unveiled anthropomorphism (wholesome because it is unveiled), and the correspondence between the Greek fire-god Vulcan whose wife was Venus, the goddess of beauty, with the fire-god Vahakn whose wife Astghik was also goddess of beauty, stamp the legend with its unmistakable origin in Greek mythology.

Section 5. The Historic Background of the Legend of VahaknThe Greek period from which this legend dates began with the defeat of the Armenian king Vahy, who was overcome by Alexander theGreat somewhere about 328 B.C.21The Greeks chose their own representative to rule over the province, who at the time of Alexander’s death was Seleucus. Historians have taken the name of this governor to indicate the dynasty of Greek supremacy which followed; i.e., the Seleucid dynasty. This method of the Greeks of selecting their own man to govern a subject people, which was of course in pursuance of their policy of superimposing their own culture upon all subject nations, was contrary to the policy of the Parthians, Romans, and Persians, who allowed the Armenians to maintain their national independence provided they permitted the use of their armies and duly paid their taxes. And it is this policy of the Greeks that accounts for the fact that large portions of Greek mythology and religion were taken over by the Armenians.Although the period of political supremacy was short-lived, the influence of Greek culture continued to permeate the social life of the people through the reign of the Arsacid kings.22In 246 B.C. Arsaces, a Parthian, made himself master of the Parthians, Persians, Medes, Babylonians, and lastly Armenians.23His grandson, Arsaces the Great, conquered as far as India, and after seating himself securely upon the throne of Persia, placed his brother Valarsace upon the Armenian throne, so founding the Persian and Armenian Arsacid dynasties (150 B.C.).24The Persian Arsacidae became extinct in A.D. 226 when they were overthrown by the Persian Sasanidae, whereas the Armenian Arsacidae line continued up until A.D. 428, when the Armenian kingdom was divided between Persia and Rome by Shapuh, the Persian monarch, and Theodosius II.25This makes a period of 578 years (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) during which Armenia was governed by her own line of kings, and enjoyed the liberties of national independence. To be sure after the conquest of Lucullus and Pompey (66 B.C.) Armenia became tributary to Rome, but the right of succession remained with the Armenian royal family, even during Roman supremacy, so that the national life was in no manner interfered with.26The greatest Armenian king of the Arsacidae line was Tigranes the Great, who extended his domains by conquest and established himself in his capital, Tigranacerta, with a court of matchless splendor.27He is spoken of by historians as a king of kings, and as having ruled with a pomp, splendor, and pride never before known. Defeated by Pompey within the walls of his own capital city, his kingdom became tributary to Rome.

Section 5. The Historic Background of the Legend of Vahakn

The Greek period from which this legend dates began with the defeat of the Armenian king Vahy, who was overcome by Alexander theGreat somewhere about 328 B.C.21The Greeks chose their own representative to rule over the province, who at the time of Alexander’s death was Seleucus. Historians have taken the name of this governor to indicate the dynasty of Greek supremacy which followed; i.e., the Seleucid dynasty. This method of the Greeks of selecting their own man to govern a subject people, which was of course in pursuance of their policy of superimposing their own culture upon all subject nations, was contrary to the policy of the Parthians, Romans, and Persians, who allowed the Armenians to maintain their national independence provided they permitted the use of their armies and duly paid their taxes. And it is this policy of the Greeks that accounts for the fact that large portions of Greek mythology and religion were taken over by the Armenians.Although the period of political supremacy was short-lived, the influence of Greek culture continued to permeate the social life of the people through the reign of the Arsacid kings.22In 246 B.C. Arsaces, a Parthian, made himself master of the Parthians, Persians, Medes, Babylonians, and lastly Armenians.23His grandson, Arsaces the Great, conquered as far as India, and after seating himself securely upon the throne of Persia, placed his brother Valarsace upon the Armenian throne, so founding the Persian and Armenian Arsacid dynasties (150 B.C.).24The Persian Arsacidae became extinct in A.D. 226 when they were overthrown by the Persian Sasanidae, whereas the Armenian Arsacidae line continued up until A.D. 428, when the Armenian kingdom was divided between Persia and Rome by Shapuh, the Persian monarch, and Theodosius II.25This makes a period of 578 years (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) during which Armenia was governed by her own line of kings, and enjoyed the liberties of national independence. To be sure after the conquest of Lucullus and Pompey (66 B.C.) Armenia became tributary to Rome, but the right of succession remained with the Armenian royal family, even during Roman supremacy, so that the national life was in no manner interfered with.26The greatest Armenian king of the Arsacidae line was Tigranes the Great, who extended his domains by conquest and established himself in his capital, Tigranacerta, with a court of matchless splendor.27He is spoken of by historians as a king of kings, and as having ruled with a pomp, splendor, and pride never before known. Defeated by Pompey within the walls of his own capital city, his kingdom became tributary to Rome.

The Greek period from which this legend dates began with the defeat of the Armenian king Vahy, who was overcome by Alexander theGreat somewhere about 328 B.C.21The Greeks chose their own representative to rule over the province, who at the time of Alexander’s death was Seleucus. Historians have taken the name of this governor to indicate the dynasty of Greek supremacy which followed; i.e., the Seleucid dynasty. This method of the Greeks of selecting their own man to govern a subject people, which was of course in pursuance of their policy of superimposing their own culture upon all subject nations, was contrary to the policy of the Parthians, Romans, and Persians, who allowed the Armenians to maintain their national independence provided they permitted the use of their armies and duly paid their taxes. And it is this policy of the Greeks that accounts for the fact that large portions of Greek mythology and religion were taken over by the Armenians.

Although the period of political supremacy was short-lived, the influence of Greek culture continued to permeate the social life of the people through the reign of the Arsacid kings.22In 246 B.C. Arsaces, a Parthian, made himself master of the Parthians, Persians, Medes, Babylonians, and lastly Armenians.23His grandson, Arsaces the Great, conquered as far as India, and after seating himself securely upon the throne of Persia, placed his brother Valarsace upon the Armenian throne, so founding the Persian and Armenian Arsacid dynasties (150 B.C.).24The Persian Arsacidae became extinct in A.D. 226 when they were overthrown by the Persian Sasanidae, whereas the Armenian Arsacidae line continued up until A.D. 428, when the Armenian kingdom was divided between Persia and Rome by Shapuh, the Persian monarch, and Theodosius II.25This makes a period of 578 years (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) during which Armenia was governed by her own line of kings, and enjoyed the liberties of national independence. To be sure after the conquest of Lucullus and Pompey (66 B.C.) Armenia became tributary to Rome, but the right of succession remained with the Armenian royal family, even during Roman supremacy, so that the national life was in no manner interfered with.26The greatest Armenian king of the Arsacidae line was Tigranes the Great, who extended his domains by conquest and established himself in his capital, Tigranacerta, with a court of matchless splendor.27He is spoken of by historians as a king of kings, and as having ruled with a pomp, splendor, and pride never before known. Defeated by Pompey within the walls of his own capital city, his kingdom became tributary to Rome.

Section 6. The Period of National IntegrationThe continuity of the period of the Armenian Arsacidae makes it the time when the process of national solidification and unification was carried out to the point that made Armenia a nation, and beyond this point. Raffi asserts that the introduction of Greek culture during the Arsacid dynasty not only changed the religion of Armenians, but also so affected their language and customs that they became different from the Persians, which is proof that a process of social readjustment was going on.28It was during this period that the wandering minstrels spoken of by Langlois journeyed from one end of the nation to the other, singing their songs, repeating the national legends, relating the news of the world and the court gossip which probably made up the largest portion of it.Les chants de l’antique Arménie rappellent principalement des événements la plupart héroiques et légendaires, accomplis à des époques très différentes, ce qui donne à penser qu’ils ont dû être composés à diverses reprises, par des rhapsodes dont les noms ne nous sont point parvenus. Les sujets traités dans ces chants demontrent clairement qu’ils n’ont été inspirés ni à des prêtres païens, ni à des poètes qui auraient vécu sous leur influence, en vue d’être recités dans des fêtes religieuses ou en face des autels. Au contraire, on reconnait de prime abord que ces chants sont l’oeuvre de bardes nationaux, ayant un libre acces dans les palais des souverains et à la cour des satrapes. C’est ce qui fait supposer que ces poèmes sont peutêtre dûs à des ménestrels, à la solde des rois et des nobles et ayant pour emploi de célébrer leurs vertus et leurs prouesses.29This is putting the case conservatively, for Moses speaks often of “les chantres” and “les chants.” They traveled as far as Persia and returned, for it is related by the Italian Countess Evelyn Martinengo how a wandering minstrel, who had just returned from that country, was entertained by an Armenian patriarchal family living in the kind of undergroundhabitation described in the beginning of this thesis.30No one was ever more welcome than the minstrel. He was assigned to the guest chamber usually prepared especially for him, and always the best chamber in the household. His head and feet were washed for him by the wife of the patriarch, and at meal time all the delicacies of the household were spread before him. All guests were welcome, but no guest more welcome than the minstrel. They must have listened to his tales in a kind of petrified awe, and heard him sing his songs in speechless enjoyment.It was a practice among the minstrels of the time to compete with each other in public, and it is related how two minstrels entertained by a Persian prince were led out upon an open grass plot and seated, one facing the other. Five thousand people made a circle around the competitors while the rivals contended in song and verse, riddle and repartee. Each began where the other left off, until finally one failed to perceive the drift of his adversary, and answering at random, the spectators proclaimed him beaten. The triumphant bard was led to the vanquished, whose lyre was taken from him and broken. Robed in a prince’s mantle, the victor was taken to the highest seat in the banquet hall.That the people were the judges of the contest, indicates how well they must have been acquainted with the current folk-songs, legends, and tradition. How generally and frequently the custom of minstrel competition was practiced throughout Armenia is not known, but it certainly is proof, besides Moses’ own statements to the same effect, that the national legends and folk-songs were the possession of the common people. And what is more important, this same body of legends, folk-songs, and tradition did more than any other one thing to weld the sentiments of the people into a single national sentiment, which crystallized into a real patriotism, a real loyalty and devotion to any cause that was a national cause, because it was the natural, spontaneous expression of the life and thought of the people, and no mean, artificial thing superimposed from outside.31There are other reasons for giving this period the social importance that I have ascribed to it. The conversion of the people to Christianity about the third century after Christ was achieved in no sentimental fashion, but, as I believe, in a manner in which it alone could have been done, namely, at the point of the sword of their own king, Tiridates, who was converted from paganism to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator. The traditions in connection with this important event will be told later. Suffice it to say at this point that the whole process of conversion was carried out so thoroughly and completely, that it may be described as a national volte-face, and therefore did not result in the disintegration,civil strife, and social chaos that would unquestionably have been the result had the process been carried out by means of peaceful penetration and propaganda.The third and last argument in support of the social and national importance of the period of the Arsacid kings is in respect to the alphabet which was compiled by St. Mesrob Maschtotz. St. Mesrob was a former secretary of the king, and desired to extirpate the last remnants of paganism in the province of Akoulis, but in the absence of an alphabet he was unable to carry out any scheme of propaganda. He therefore besought the king, Vramschapouh, to put an end to this state of things and the latter, in response to the request, placed all available material at the disposal of the saint. The task was accomplished in 404, somewhat at the expense of the future devotees of the language, for the alphabet contains thirty-eight letters.32Nevertheless, most of the sounds of foreign languages were represented, making it particularly useful as a foundation language for other languages. St. Mesrob, with a body of translators trained by himself and St. Sahak, then proceeded to the translation of the Bible, which was not completed until 433. Liturgies and song-books quickly followed. To be sure the effect of the invention of the alphabet and the distribution of the various religious publications that followed were not felt during the period of the Arsacidae, for the Bible was not published until after the break-up of the kingdom in 428, when it was divided between Persia and Rome. But the important point is that the time had come when the need for an alphabet was making itself very strongly felt, and this could not have been true of a diversified, heterogeneous population.For the three reasons above mentioned, i.e., first, the work of minstrels, second, the Christianizing of the nation, and third, the invention of the alphabet, all occurring during the successive reigns of the Arsacid kings, I should ascribe to this period (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) the integration of the Armenian people into a national unit.33Christianity must have come as a disrupting force, as a terrible shock, necessitating a complete social readjustment, but the fact that the readjustment was made shows that the people were ready for it. For better or for worse the yoke of Christianity was fastened to the neck of the people, and with it they had toreplow the social soil. The job was a good one, for the Armenian church has been the chief power during the last ten or fifteen centuries in keeping alive the streams of national life, and in holding the people together in the face of invasion and repeated attempts at proselytization by the Persians and by the Greek and Roman Catholic churches.

Section 6. The Period of National Integration

The continuity of the period of the Armenian Arsacidae makes it the time when the process of national solidification and unification was carried out to the point that made Armenia a nation, and beyond this point. Raffi asserts that the introduction of Greek culture during the Arsacid dynasty not only changed the religion of Armenians, but also so affected their language and customs that they became different from the Persians, which is proof that a process of social readjustment was going on.28It was during this period that the wandering minstrels spoken of by Langlois journeyed from one end of the nation to the other, singing their songs, repeating the national legends, relating the news of the world and the court gossip which probably made up the largest portion of it.Les chants de l’antique Arménie rappellent principalement des événements la plupart héroiques et légendaires, accomplis à des époques très différentes, ce qui donne à penser qu’ils ont dû être composés à diverses reprises, par des rhapsodes dont les noms ne nous sont point parvenus. Les sujets traités dans ces chants demontrent clairement qu’ils n’ont été inspirés ni à des prêtres païens, ni à des poètes qui auraient vécu sous leur influence, en vue d’être recités dans des fêtes religieuses ou en face des autels. Au contraire, on reconnait de prime abord que ces chants sont l’oeuvre de bardes nationaux, ayant un libre acces dans les palais des souverains et à la cour des satrapes. C’est ce qui fait supposer que ces poèmes sont peutêtre dûs à des ménestrels, à la solde des rois et des nobles et ayant pour emploi de célébrer leurs vertus et leurs prouesses.29This is putting the case conservatively, for Moses speaks often of “les chantres” and “les chants.” They traveled as far as Persia and returned, for it is related by the Italian Countess Evelyn Martinengo how a wandering minstrel, who had just returned from that country, was entertained by an Armenian patriarchal family living in the kind of undergroundhabitation described in the beginning of this thesis.30No one was ever more welcome than the minstrel. He was assigned to the guest chamber usually prepared especially for him, and always the best chamber in the household. His head and feet were washed for him by the wife of the patriarch, and at meal time all the delicacies of the household were spread before him. All guests were welcome, but no guest more welcome than the minstrel. They must have listened to his tales in a kind of petrified awe, and heard him sing his songs in speechless enjoyment.It was a practice among the minstrels of the time to compete with each other in public, and it is related how two minstrels entertained by a Persian prince were led out upon an open grass plot and seated, one facing the other. Five thousand people made a circle around the competitors while the rivals contended in song and verse, riddle and repartee. Each began where the other left off, until finally one failed to perceive the drift of his adversary, and answering at random, the spectators proclaimed him beaten. The triumphant bard was led to the vanquished, whose lyre was taken from him and broken. Robed in a prince’s mantle, the victor was taken to the highest seat in the banquet hall.That the people were the judges of the contest, indicates how well they must have been acquainted with the current folk-songs, legends, and tradition. How generally and frequently the custom of minstrel competition was practiced throughout Armenia is not known, but it certainly is proof, besides Moses’ own statements to the same effect, that the national legends and folk-songs were the possession of the common people. And what is more important, this same body of legends, folk-songs, and tradition did more than any other one thing to weld the sentiments of the people into a single national sentiment, which crystallized into a real patriotism, a real loyalty and devotion to any cause that was a national cause, because it was the natural, spontaneous expression of the life and thought of the people, and no mean, artificial thing superimposed from outside.31There are other reasons for giving this period the social importance that I have ascribed to it. The conversion of the people to Christianity about the third century after Christ was achieved in no sentimental fashion, but, as I believe, in a manner in which it alone could have been done, namely, at the point of the sword of their own king, Tiridates, who was converted from paganism to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator. The traditions in connection with this important event will be told later. Suffice it to say at this point that the whole process of conversion was carried out so thoroughly and completely, that it may be described as a national volte-face, and therefore did not result in the disintegration,civil strife, and social chaos that would unquestionably have been the result had the process been carried out by means of peaceful penetration and propaganda.The third and last argument in support of the social and national importance of the period of the Arsacid kings is in respect to the alphabet which was compiled by St. Mesrob Maschtotz. St. Mesrob was a former secretary of the king, and desired to extirpate the last remnants of paganism in the province of Akoulis, but in the absence of an alphabet he was unable to carry out any scheme of propaganda. He therefore besought the king, Vramschapouh, to put an end to this state of things and the latter, in response to the request, placed all available material at the disposal of the saint. The task was accomplished in 404, somewhat at the expense of the future devotees of the language, for the alphabet contains thirty-eight letters.32Nevertheless, most of the sounds of foreign languages were represented, making it particularly useful as a foundation language for other languages. St. Mesrob, with a body of translators trained by himself and St. Sahak, then proceeded to the translation of the Bible, which was not completed until 433. Liturgies and song-books quickly followed. To be sure the effect of the invention of the alphabet and the distribution of the various religious publications that followed were not felt during the period of the Arsacidae, for the Bible was not published until after the break-up of the kingdom in 428, when it was divided between Persia and Rome. But the important point is that the time had come when the need for an alphabet was making itself very strongly felt, and this could not have been true of a diversified, heterogeneous population.For the three reasons above mentioned, i.e., first, the work of minstrels, second, the Christianizing of the nation, and third, the invention of the alphabet, all occurring during the successive reigns of the Arsacid kings, I should ascribe to this period (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) the integration of the Armenian people into a national unit.33Christianity must have come as a disrupting force, as a terrible shock, necessitating a complete social readjustment, but the fact that the readjustment was made shows that the people were ready for it. For better or for worse the yoke of Christianity was fastened to the neck of the people, and with it they had toreplow the social soil. The job was a good one, for the Armenian church has been the chief power during the last ten or fifteen centuries in keeping alive the streams of national life, and in holding the people together in the face of invasion and repeated attempts at proselytization by the Persians and by the Greek and Roman Catholic churches.

The continuity of the period of the Armenian Arsacidae makes it the time when the process of national solidification and unification was carried out to the point that made Armenia a nation, and beyond this point. Raffi asserts that the introduction of Greek culture during the Arsacid dynasty not only changed the religion of Armenians, but also so affected their language and customs that they became different from the Persians, which is proof that a process of social readjustment was going on.28It was during this period that the wandering minstrels spoken of by Langlois journeyed from one end of the nation to the other, singing their songs, repeating the national legends, relating the news of the world and the court gossip which probably made up the largest portion of it.

Les chants de l’antique Arménie rappellent principalement des événements la plupart héroiques et légendaires, accomplis à des époques très différentes, ce qui donne à penser qu’ils ont dû être composés à diverses reprises, par des rhapsodes dont les noms ne nous sont point parvenus. Les sujets traités dans ces chants demontrent clairement qu’ils n’ont été inspirés ni à des prêtres païens, ni à des poètes qui auraient vécu sous leur influence, en vue d’être recités dans des fêtes religieuses ou en face des autels. Au contraire, on reconnait de prime abord que ces chants sont l’oeuvre de bardes nationaux, ayant un libre acces dans les palais des souverains et à la cour des satrapes. C’est ce qui fait supposer que ces poèmes sont peutêtre dûs à des ménestrels, à la solde des rois et des nobles et ayant pour emploi de célébrer leurs vertus et leurs prouesses.29

Les chants de l’antique Arménie rappellent principalement des événements la plupart héroiques et légendaires, accomplis à des époques très différentes, ce qui donne à penser qu’ils ont dû être composés à diverses reprises, par des rhapsodes dont les noms ne nous sont point parvenus. Les sujets traités dans ces chants demontrent clairement qu’ils n’ont été inspirés ni à des prêtres païens, ni à des poètes qui auraient vécu sous leur influence, en vue d’être recités dans des fêtes religieuses ou en face des autels. Au contraire, on reconnait de prime abord que ces chants sont l’oeuvre de bardes nationaux, ayant un libre acces dans les palais des souverains et à la cour des satrapes. C’est ce qui fait supposer que ces poèmes sont peutêtre dûs à des ménestrels, à la solde des rois et des nobles et ayant pour emploi de célébrer leurs vertus et leurs prouesses.29

This is putting the case conservatively, for Moses speaks often of “les chantres” and “les chants.” They traveled as far as Persia and returned, for it is related by the Italian Countess Evelyn Martinengo how a wandering minstrel, who had just returned from that country, was entertained by an Armenian patriarchal family living in the kind of undergroundhabitation described in the beginning of this thesis.30No one was ever more welcome than the minstrel. He was assigned to the guest chamber usually prepared especially for him, and always the best chamber in the household. His head and feet were washed for him by the wife of the patriarch, and at meal time all the delicacies of the household were spread before him. All guests were welcome, but no guest more welcome than the minstrel. They must have listened to his tales in a kind of petrified awe, and heard him sing his songs in speechless enjoyment.

It was a practice among the minstrels of the time to compete with each other in public, and it is related how two minstrels entertained by a Persian prince were led out upon an open grass plot and seated, one facing the other. Five thousand people made a circle around the competitors while the rivals contended in song and verse, riddle and repartee. Each began where the other left off, until finally one failed to perceive the drift of his adversary, and answering at random, the spectators proclaimed him beaten. The triumphant bard was led to the vanquished, whose lyre was taken from him and broken. Robed in a prince’s mantle, the victor was taken to the highest seat in the banquet hall.

That the people were the judges of the contest, indicates how well they must have been acquainted with the current folk-songs, legends, and tradition. How generally and frequently the custom of minstrel competition was practiced throughout Armenia is not known, but it certainly is proof, besides Moses’ own statements to the same effect, that the national legends and folk-songs were the possession of the common people. And what is more important, this same body of legends, folk-songs, and tradition did more than any other one thing to weld the sentiments of the people into a single national sentiment, which crystallized into a real patriotism, a real loyalty and devotion to any cause that was a national cause, because it was the natural, spontaneous expression of the life and thought of the people, and no mean, artificial thing superimposed from outside.31

There are other reasons for giving this period the social importance that I have ascribed to it. The conversion of the people to Christianity about the third century after Christ was achieved in no sentimental fashion, but, as I believe, in a manner in which it alone could have been done, namely, at the point of the sword of their own king, Tiridates, who was converted from paganism to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator. The traditions in connection with this important event will be told later. Suffice it to say at this point that the whole process of conversion was carried out so thoroughly and completely, that it may be described as a national volte-face, and therefore did not result in the disintegration,civil strife, and social chaos that would unquestionably have been the result had the process been carried out by means of peaceful penetration and propaganda.

The third and last argument in support of the social and national importance of the period of the Arsacid kings is in respect to the alphabet which was compiled by St. Mesrob Maschtotz. St. Mesrob was a former secretary of the king, and desired to extirpate the last remnants of paganism in the province of Akoulis, but in the absence of an alphabet he was unable to carry out any scheme of propaganda. He therefore besought the king, Vramschapouh, to put an end to this state of things and the latter, in response to the request, placed all available material at the disposal of the saint. The task was accomplished in 404, somewhat at the expense of the future devotees of the language, for the alphabet contains thirty-eight letters.32Nevertheless, most of the sounds of foreign languages were represented, making it particularly useful as a foundation language for other languages. St. Mesrob, with a body of translators trained by himself and St. Sahak, then proceeded to the translation of the Bible, which was not completed until 433. Liturgies and song-books quickly followed. To be sure the effect of the invention of the alphabet and the distribution of the various religious publications that followed were not felt during the period of the Arsacidae, for the Bible was not published until after the break-up of the kingdom in 428, when it was divided between Persia and Rome. But the important point is that the time had come when the need for an alphabet was making itself very strongly felt, and this could not have been true of a diversified, heterogeneous population.

For the three reasons above mentioned, i.e., first, the work of minstrels, second, the Christianizing of the nation, and third, the invention of the alphabet, all occurring during the successive reigns of the Arsacid kings, I should ascribe to this period (150 B.C.-A.D. 428) the integration of the Armenian people into a national unit.33Christianity must have come as a disrupting force, as a terrible shock, necessitating a complete social readjustment, but the fact that the readjustment was made shows that the people were ready for it. For better or for worse the yoke of Christianity was fastened to the neck of the people, and with it they had toreplow the social soil. The job was a good one, for the Armenian church has been the chief power during the last ten or fifteen centuries in keeping alive the streams of national life, and in holding the people together in the face of invasion and repeated attempts at proselytization by the Persians and by the Greek and Roman Catholic churches.

Section 7. Legends of Artasches and ArtavasdThe legends of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd, the son of Artasches, belong to the Arsacid period, for Artavasd and Artasches are Armenian kings of the Arsacid dynasty, according to Moses.34The Alans who, according to the legend, were a neighboring people residing in the mountain region in the vicinity of Georgia, spread themselves over Armenia while Artasches, the Armenian king, collected a great army and forced the Alans to retreat across the river Kur where they pitched camp. The son of the Alan king was taken captive and brought to Artasches, which forced the former to seek peace on whatever terms the Armenian king might wish, provided only his son was returned in safety. But Artasches refused, whereupon the sister of the captured boy came to the river bank, and standing upon a great rock spoke to the camp of Artasches by means of interpreters saying: “Oh brave Artasches, who hast vanquished the great nation of Alans, unto thee I speak. Come, hearken unto the bright-eyed daughter of the Alan king and give back the youth. For it is not the way of heroes to destroy life at the root, nor for the sake of humbling and enslaving a hostage to establish everlasting enmity between two great nations.”35Artasches, having heard of these sayings went to the river bank and having seen that the girl was beautiful, and listened to her words of wisdom, wished to marry her. His chamberlain considered it a wise stroke of policy, and therefore went to the Alan king, soliciting the hand of the princess for his master, whose oaths and assurances of peace he vouched for, together with the promise to return the boy. The king of the Alans answered, “From whence shall brave Artasches give thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands upon tens of thousands in return for the maiden?”Writes Moses:Concerning this, the poets of that land sing in their songs:“Brave King ArtaschesMounted his fine black charger,And took the red leathern cordWith the golden ring.Like a swift winged eagleHe passed over the riverAnd cast the golden ringRound the waist of the Alan Princess;Causing much pain to the tender maidenAs he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”Which being interpreted meaneth that he was commanded to give much gold, leather, and crimson dye in exchange for the maiden. So also they sing of the wedding:“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”For it was the custom of our kings to scatter coins amongst the people when they arrived at the doors of the temple for their wedding, as also for the queens to scatter pearls in their bride-chamber.36The couplet quoted is still sung by the Armenians, and it is still customary for the bridegroom to scatter money on his way to the church, and though it may be for queens to scatter pearls, the Armenian bride is not to be outdone. She is given a partly opened pomegranate which she throws at the door of the bridegroom upon the arrival at the bridegroom’s home after the ceremony at the church, the bits of pomegranate scattering themselves about as pearls.After fifty-one years of a very prosperous reign, Artasches, who was very much beloved by his people, died. The funeral procession was a most magnificent one, and many of the people killed themselves, out of love for their dead king, according to the custom of the time. And when the body was laid in the grave they threw precious jewels, gold, and silver after it. Nor did the lamenting and suicide stop after his burial, for upon the grave of their dead king the nobles and the people continued to kill themselves. So great was the slaughter that Artavasd, son of Artasches, and king after his father’s death, addressed the spirit of his dead father, saying, “Behold, thou art taking all with thee; dost thou leave me to rule over ruins and the dead?” The words given by Moses of Khorene are: “Now that thou art gone, and hast taken with thee the whole land, how shall I reign over the ruins?”37Whereupon the spirit of Artasches cursed him and said,“When thou ridest forth to huntOver the free heights of Ararat,The strong ones shall have thee,And shall take thee upOn to the free heights of Ararat.There shalt thou abide,And never more see the light.”38These words together with those of Artavasd spoken to his father’s spirit were sung by the singers of the time.39One day while out hunting Artavasd was seized by some visionary terror and lost his reason. Urging his horse down a steep bank he fell into a chasm where he sank and disappeared. Old women told how he was confined in a cavern and bound with iron chains which his two dogs gnawed at daily in order to set him free. But somehow at the sound of the hammers striking on the anvils, the chains were continually strengthened, and it was customary among the blacksmiths of the time to strike the anvil three or four times to strengthen, as they said, the chains of Artavasd. And so the tradition was kept up by singers and blacksmiths; the blacksmiths and old women having consigned the jealous king to the world’s nethermost regions, while the singers left him to the solitude of Ararat in accordance with the curse of Artasches.

Section 7. Legends of Artasches and Artavasd

The legends of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd, the son of Artasches, belong to the Arsacid period, for Artavasd and Artasches are Armenian kings of the Arsacid dynasty, according to Moses.34The Alans who, according to the legend, were a neighboring people residing in the mountain region in the vicinity of Georgia, spread themselves over Armenia while Artasches, the Armenian king, collected a great army and forced the Alans to retreat across the river Kur where they pitched camp. The son of the Alan king was taken captive and brought to Artasches, which forced the former to seek peace on whatever terms the Armenian king might wish, provided only his son was returned in safety. But Artasches refused, whereupon the sister of the captured boy came to the river bank, and standing upon a great rock spoke to the camp of Artasches by means of interpreters saying: “Oh brave Artasches, who hast vanquished the great nation of Alans, unto thee I speak. Come, hearken unto the bright-eyed daughter of the Alan king and give back the youth. For it is not the way of heroes to destroy life at the root, nor for the sake of humbling and enslaving a hostage to establish everlasting enmity between two great nations.”35Artasches, having heard of these sayings went to the river bank and having seen that the girl was beautiful, and listened to her words of wisdom, wished to marry her. His chamberlain considered it a wise stroke of policy, and therefore went to the Alan king, soliciting the hand of the princess for his master, whose oaths and assurances of peace he vouched for, together with the promise to return the boy. The king of the Alans answered, “From whence shall brave Artasches give thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands upon tens of thousands in return for the maiden?”Writes Moses:Concerning this, the poets of that land sing in their songs:“Brave King ArtaschesMounted his fine black charger,And took the red leathern cordWith the golden ring.Like a swift winged eagleHe passed over the riverAnd cast the golden ringRound the waist of the Alan Princess;Causing much pain to the tender maidenAs he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”Which being interpreted meaneth that he was commanded to give much gold, leather, and crimson dye in exchange for the maiden. So also they sing of the wedding:“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”For it was the custom of our kings to scatter coins amongst the people when they arrived at the doors of the temple for their wedding, as also for the queens to scatter pearls in their bride-chamber.36The couplet quoted is still sung by the Armenians, and it is still customary for the bridegroom to scatter money on his way to the church, and though it may be for queens to scatter pearls, the Armenian bride is not to be outdone. She is given a partly opened pomegranate which she throws at the door of the bridegroom upon the arrival at the bridegroom’s home after the ceremony at the church, the bits of pomegranate scattering themselves about as pearls.After fifty-one years of a very prosperous reign, Artasches, who was very much beloved by his people, died. The funeral procession was a most magnificent one, and many of the people killed themselves, out of love for their dead king, according to the custom of the time. And when the body was laid in the grave they threw precious jewels, gold, and silver after it. Nor did the lamenting and suicide stop after his burial, for upon the grave of their dead king the nobles and the people continued to kill themselves. So great was the slaughter that Artavasd, son of Artasches, and king after his father’s death, addressed the spirit of his dead father, saying, “Behold, thou art taking all with thee; dost thou leave me to rule over ruins and the dead?” The words given by Moses of Khorene are: “Now that thou art gone, and hast taken with thee the whole land, how shall I reign over the ruins?”37Whereupon the spirit of Artasches cursed him and said,“When thou ridest forth to huntOver the free heights of Ararat,The strong ones shall have thee,And shall take thee upOn to the free heights of Ararat.There shalt thou abide,And never more see the light.”38These words together with those of Artavasd spoken to his father’s spirit were sung by the singers of the time.39One day while out hunting Artavasd was seized by some visionary terror and lost his reason. Urging his horse down a steep bank he fell into a chasm where he sank and disappeared. Old women told how he was confined in a cavern and bound with iron chains which his two dogs gnawed at daily in order to set him free. But somehow at the sound of the hammers striking on the anvils, the chains were continually strengthened, and it was customary among the blacksmiths of the time to strike the anvil three or four times to strengthen, as they said, the chains of Artavasd. And so the tradition was kept up by singers and blacksmiths; the blacksmiths and old women having consigned the jealous king to the world’s nethermost regions, while the singers left him to the solitude of Ararat in accordance with the curse of Artasches.

The legends of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd, the son of Artasches, belong to the Arsacid period, for Artavasd and Artasches are Armenian kings of the Arsacid dynasty, according to Moses.34The Alans who, according to the legend, were a neighboring people residing in the mountain region in the vicinity of Georgia, spread themselves over Armenia while Artasches, the Armenian king, collected a great army and forced the Alans to retreat across the river Kur where they pitched camp. The son of the Alan king was taken captive and brought to Artasches, which forced the former to seek peace on whatever terms the Armenian king might wish, provided only his son was returned in safety. But Artasches refused, whereupon the sister of the captured boy came to the river bank, and standing upon a great rock spoke to the camp of Artasches by means of interpreters saying: “Oh brave Artasches, who hast vanquished the great nation of Alans, unto thee I speak. Come, hearken unto the bright-eyed daughter of the Alan king and give back the youth. For it is not the way of heroes to destroy life at the root, nor for the sake of humbling and enslaving a hostage to establish everlasting enmity between two great nations.”35Artasches, having heard of these sayings went to the river bank and having seen that the girl was beautiful, and listened to her words of wisdom, wished to marry her. His chamberlain considered it a wise stroke of policy, and therefore went to the Alan king, soliciting the hand of the princess for his master, whose oaths and assurances of peace he vouched for, together with the promise to return the boy. The king of the Alans answered, “From whence shall brave Artasches give thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands upon tens of thousands in return for the maiden?”

Writes Moses:

Concerning this, the poets of that land sing in their songs:“Brave King ArtaschesMounted his fine black charger,And took the red leathern cordWith the golden ring.Like a swift winged eagleHe passed over the riverAnd cast the golden ringRound the waist of the Alan Princess;Causing much pain to the tender maidenAs he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”Which being interpreted meaneth that he was commanded to give much gold, leather, and crimson dye in exchange for the maiden. So also they sing of the wedding:“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”For it was the custom of our kings to scatter coins amongst the people when they arrived at the doors of the temple for their wedding, as also for the queens to scatter pearls in their bride-chamber.36

Concerning this, the poets of that land sing in their songs:

“Brave King ArtaschesMounted his fine black charger,And took the red leathern cordWith the golden ring.Like a swift winged eagleHe passed over the riverAnd cast the golden ringRound the waist of the Alan Princess;Causing much pain to the tender maidenAs he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”

“Brave King ArtaschesMounted his fine black charger,And took the red leathern cordWith the golden ring.Like a swift winged eagleHe passed over the riverAnd cast the golden ringRound the waist of the Alan Princess;Causing much pain to the tender maidenAs he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”

“Brave King ArtaschesMounted his fine black charger,And took the red leathern cordWith the golden ring.Like a swift winged eagleHe passed over the riverAnd cast the golden ringRound the waist of the Alan Princess;Causing much pain to the tender maidenAs he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”

“Brave King Artasches

Mounted his fine black charger,

And took the red leathern cord

With the golden ring.

Like a swift winged eagle

He passed over the river

And cast the golden ring

Round the waist of the Alan Princess;

Causing much pain to the tender maiden

As he bore her swiftly back to his camp.”

Which being interpreted meaneth that he was commanded to give much gold, leather, and crimson dye in exchange for the maiden. So also they sing of the wedding:

“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”

“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”

“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”

“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom,

It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”

For it was the custom of our kings to scatter coins amongst the people when they arrived at the doors of the temple for their wedding, as also for the queens to scatter pearls in their bride-chamber.36

The couplet quoted is still sung by the Armenians, and it is still customary for the bridegroom to scatter money on his way to the church, and though it may be for queens to scatter pearls, the Armenian bride is not to be outdone. She is given a partly opened pomegranate which she throws at the door of the bridegroom upon the arrival at the bridegroom’s home after the ceremony at the church, the bits of pomegranate scattering themselves about as pearls.

After fifty-one years of a very prosperous reign, Artasches, who was very much beloved by his people, died. The funeral procession was a most magnificent one, and many of the people killed themselves, out of love for their dead king, according to the custom of the time. And when the body was laid in the grave they threw precious jewels, gold, and silver after it. Nor did the lamenting and suicide stop after his burial, for upon the grave of their dead king the nobles and the people continued to kill themselves. So great was the slaughter that Artavasd, son of Artasches, and king after his father’s death, addressed the spirit of his dead father, saying, “Behold, thou art taking all with thee; dost thou leave me to rule over ruins and the dead?” The words given by Moses of Khorene are: “Now that thou art gone, and hast taken with thee the whole land, how shall I reign over the ruins?”37Whereupon the spirit of Artasches cursed him and said,

“When thou ridest forth to huntOver the free heights of Ararat,The strong ones shall have thee,And shall take thee upOn to the free heights of Ararat.There shalt thou abide,And never more see the light.”38

“When thou ridest forth to hunt

Over the free heights of Ararat,

The strong ones shall have thee,

And shall take thee up

On to the free heights of Ararat.

There shalt thou abide,

And never more see the light.”38

These words together with those of Artavasd spoken to his father’s spirit were sung by the singers of the time.39

One day while out hunting Artavasd was seized by some visionary terror and lost his reason. Urging his horse down a steep bank he fell into a chasm where he sank and disappeared. Old women told how he was confined in a cavern and bound with iron chains which his two dogs gnawed at daily in order to set him free. But somehow at the sound of the hammers striking on the anvils, the chains were continually strengthened, and it was customary among the blacksmiths of the time to strike the anvil three or four times to strengthen, as they said, the chains of Artavasd. And so the tradition was kept up by singers and blacksmiths; the blacksmiths and old women having consigned the jealous king to the world’s nethermost regions, while the singers left him to the solitude of Ararat in accordance with the curse of Artasches.

Section 8. ConclusionsSuch are the ancient legends of Armenia, in their respective historical settings: the legends of Haic, of Semiramis and Ara, of Vahakn, of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd. All of them antedate the Christian era, and some of them by many centuries. Each one of them is told by Moses of Khorene. But as to origin and probable historic roots Moses was silent, for he was writing a history. He constantly laments the absolute dearth of material and sources and begins his accounts of these legends with the words “This is as it is told,” or “the singers say,” indicating that his only sources for them were the songs and reports current among the people during his own time. The legends of Haic and of Semiramis and Ara are told by Moses as though he believed them historic fact, but of course Moses had no materials to serve as a basis of criticism. He is careful to quote Mar Apas Catina as his only source for this material. The other three legends are regarded as such. Artavasd is spoken of as an historical king who lost his reason while riding horseback and fell into a deep chasm. The practice of suicide at the death of Artasches, his father, was a pagan custom. The curse of the spirit of the dead father, the chains, the dogs, and the anvils were of course recognized as the work of ingenious fancy. In view therefore, of the questionable character of Moses’ sources these legends have very little historic value. They do, however, have a high social value inasmuch as the common knowledge of them among the people was the only ultimate source at the disposal of the historian.The second conclusion is that these legends formed a very important part of the larger mass of tradition and songs that served to cementthe people into a nation. Just how important, it would be difficult to say, but the fact that they were current at the time Moses wrote indicates that they were current and passed on from generation to generation during the whole period of the Arsacidae kings. And as the people had no alphabet during this whole period, they must have been passed on by song and word of mouth. This was a time of special activity on the part of the minstrels and singers, and therefore the development of the national consciousness characteristic of the period must have been brought about in a large measure through the medium of these legendary beliefs.Furthermore these legends are known by the Armenian people to-day and are taught in the schools that are not too severely under the rules of Turkish and Russian censorship. Naturally enough, they are a source of great pride since they breathe national independence and loyalty. But of course, the Turks and Russians have suppressed all public singing of songs, and public teaching of history and legend that may possibly be construed as partaking of the national spirit.It may be argued that these legends slumbered between the covers of Moses’ history during the centuries known as the dark ages, and that they had no social value until the contagion of the European spirit of the Renaissance awoke the legends and the people at the same time. But the mere dearth of record is no proof of this Rip Van Winkle theory. There is at least one reliable authority sufficient to disprove it, viz., Grigor Magistros, a scholar of the eleventh century who wrote that he heard the Artasches epic sung by minstrels.40Besides the unreasonableness of the supposition, there is the added fact of an independent Armenian kingdom known as the Bagradouni dynasty, whose capital seat was at the famous city of Ani. This kingdom included greater Armenia and continued from A.D. 887 to 1079.41But 1079 does not mark the end of Armenian independence though it marks the destruction of Ani, for Reuben, a member of the royal family, made his way into Cilicia in the year 1080, and rallying a handful of Armenians about him, overpowered the Greeks and founded what is known as the Rupenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which continued during a period of 300 years. So that here again is a period of very nearly five hundred years (889–1380), during which time the Armenian people enjoyed national political independence.42And this during the very period of the dark ages, about which we know so little! We could not, therefore, for a moment suppose the traditions and legends to have had no social importance during these centuries, for such an assumption would be in flat contradiction to the witness of Grigor Magistros, and to the facts of Armenian history.

Section 8. Conclusions

Such are the ancient legends of Armenia, in their respective historical settings: the legends of Haic, of Semiramis and Ara, of Vahakn, of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd. All of them antedate the Christian era, and some of them by many centuries. Each one of them is told by Moses of Khorene. But as to origin and probable historic roots Moses was silent, for he was writing a history. He constantly laments the absolute dearth of material and sources and begins his accounts of these legends with the words “This is as it is told,” or “the singers say,” indicating that his only sources for them were the songs and reports current among the people during his own time. The legends of Haic and of Semiramis and Ara are told by Moses as though he believed them historic fact, but of course Moses had no materials to serve as a basis of criticism. He is careful to quote Mar Apas Catina as his only source for this material. The other three legends are regarded as such. Artavasd is spoken of as an historical king who lost his reason while riding horseback and fell into a deep chasm. The practice of suicide at the death of Artasches, his father, was a pagan custom. The curse of the spirit of the dead father, the chains, the dogs, and the anvils were of course recognized as the work of ingenious fancy. In view therefore, of the questionable character of Moses’ sources these legends have very little historic value. They do, however, have a high social value inasmuch as the common knowledge of them among the people was the only ultimate source at the disposal of the historian.The second conclusion is that these legends formed a very important part of the larger mass of tradition and songs that served to cementthe people into a nation. Just how important, it would be difficult to say, but the fact that they were current at the time Moses wrote indicates that they were current and passed on from generation to generation during the whole period of the Arsacidae kings. And as the people had no alphabet during this whole period, they must have been passed on by song and word of mouth. This was a time of special activity on the part of the minstrels and singers, and therefore the development of the national consciousness characteristic of the period must have been brought about in a large measure through the medium of these legendary beliefs.Furthermore these legends are known by the Armenian people to-day and are taught in the schools that are not too severely under the rules of Turkish and Russian censorship. Naturally enough, they are a source of great pride since they breathe national independence and loyalty. But of course, the Turks and Russians have suppressed all public singing of songs, and public teaching of history and legend that may possibly be construed as partaking of the national spirit.It may be argued that these legends slumbered between the covers of Moses’ history during the centuries known as the dark ages, and that they had no social value until the contagion of the European spirit of the Renaissance awoke the legends and the people at the same time. But the mere dearth of record is no proof of this Rip Van Winkle theory. There is at least one reliable authority sufficient to disprove it, viz., Grigor Magistros, a scholar of the eleventh century who wrote that he heard the Artasches epic sung by minstrels.40Besides the unreasonableness of the supposition, there is the added fact of an independent Armenian kingdom known as the Bagradouni dynasty, whose capital seat was at the famous city of Ani. This kingdom included greater Armenia and continued from A.D. 887 to 1079.41But 1079 does not mark the end of Armenian independence though it marks the destruction of Ani, for Reuben, a member of the royal family, made his way into Cilicia in the year 1080, and rallying a handful of Armenians about him, overpowered the Greeks and founded what is known as the Rupenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which continued during a period of 300 years. So that here again is a period of very nearly five hundred years (889–1380), during which time the Armenian people enjoyed national political independence.42And this during the very period of the dark ages, about which we know so little! We could not, therefore, for a moment suppose the traditions and legends to have had no social importance during these centuries, for such an assumption would be in flat contradiction to the witness of Grigor Magistros, and to the facts of Armenian history.

Such are the ancient legends of Armenia, in their respective historical settings: the legends of Haic, of Semiramis and Ara, of Vahakn, of Artasches and Satenik, and of Artavasd. All of them antedate the Christian era, and some of them by many centuries. Each one of them is told by Moses of Khorene. But as to origin and probable historic roots Moses was silent, for he was writing a history. He constantly laments the absolute dearth of material and sources and begins his accounts of these legends with the words “This is as it is told,” or “the singers say,” indicating that his only sources for them were the songs and reports current among the people during his own time. The legends of Haic and of Semiramis and Ara are told by Moses as though he believed them historic fact, but of course Moses had no materials to serve as a basis of criticism. He is careful to quote Mar Apas Catina as his only source for this material. The other three legends are regarded as such. Artavasd is spoken of as an historical king who lost his reason while riding horseback and fell into a deep chasm. The practice of suicide at the death of Artasches, his father, was a pagan custom. The curse of the spirit of the dead father, the chains, the dogs, and the anvils were of course recognized as the work of ingenious fancy. In view therefore, of the questionable character of Moses’ sources these legends have very little historic value. They do, however, have a high social value inasmuch as the common knowledge of them among the people was the only ultimate source at the disposal of the historian.

The second conclusion is that these legends formed a very important part of the larger mass of tradition and songs that served to cementthe people into a nation. Just how important, it would be difficult to say, but the fact that they were current at the time Moses wrote indicates that they were current and passed on from generation to generation during the whole period of the Arsacidae kings. And as the people had no alphabet during this whole period, they must have been passed on by song and word of mouth. This was a time of special activity on the part of the minstrels and singers, and therefore the development of the national consciousness characteristic of the period must have been brought about in a large measure through the medium of these legendary beliefs.

Furthermore these legends are known by the Armenian people to-day and are taught in the schools that are not too severely under the rules of Turkish and Russian censorship. Naturally enough, they are a source of great pride since they breathe national independence and loyalty. But of course, the Turks and Russians have suppressed all public singing of songs, and public teaching of history and legend that may possibly be construed as partaking of the national spirit.

It may be argued that these legends slumbered between the covers of Moses’ history during the centuries known as the dark ages, and that they had no social value until the contagion of the European spirit of the Renaissance awoke the legends and the people at the same time. But the mere dearth of record is no proof of this Rip Van Winkle theory. There is at least one reliable authority sufficient to disprove it, viz., Grigor Magistros, a scholar of the eleventh century who wrote that he heard the Artasches epic sung by minstrels.40Besides the unreasonableness of the supposition, there is the added fact of an independent Armenian kingdom known as the Bagradouni dynasty, whose capital seat was at the famous city of Ani. This kingdom included greater Armenia and continued from A.D. 887 to 1079.41But 1079 does not mark the end of Armenian independence though it marks the destruction of Ani, for Reuben, a member of the royal family, made his way into Cilicia in the year 1080, and rallying a handful of Armenians about him, overpowered the Greeks and founded what is known as the Rupenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which continued during a period of 300 years. So that here again is a period of very nearly five hundred years (889–1380), during which time the Armenian people enjoyed national political independence.42And this during the very period of the dark ages, about which we know so little! We could not, therefore, for a moment suppose the traditions and legends to have had no social importance during these centuries, for such an assumption would be in flat contradiction to the witness of Grigor Magistros, and to the facts of Armenian history.

1Mar Apas Catina. Langlois’Collection des Histoires de l’Arménie1:16.2St. Martin,Mémoire sur l’Arménie1:281.3Mar Apas Catina. Langlois 1:15–18.Moses of Khorene. Langlois 3:63–64.4St. Martin 1:306.5Ibid.1:282–3. Moses of Khorene 2:67–69.Mar Apas Catina 1:26–27.The first Arsacidae king of Armenia, Valarsace, whose reign began in 149 B.C. found the kingdom in general disorder and was the first to organize the country along national lines. As a Parthian he was unacquainted with the history and institutions of the people, and desiring to build upon the established foundation, such as it was, he sent a Syrian scholar, Mar Apas Catina by name, with a letter to his brother, Arsace, king of Persia, requesting the latter to allow the Syrian access to the royal archives with the view of finding a history of Armenia. Mar Apas Catina found an old MS containing a history of ancient Armenia which bore the name of no author, and which was translated from Chaldean to Greek by order of Alexander the Great. It was translated into Syriac by the Syrian scholar for the benefit of Valarsace, but the MS has been lost, and there is not the slightest trace of it anywhere. It must have been in existence however, during the fifth century after Christ for Moses of Khorene used it as his only source for Armenia’s ancient history, in writing his general history of Armenia. The old MS being lost, the translation by Mar Apas Catina and the first part of the history of Moses are given as identical to each other in Langlois’ collection of Armenian historians. The ancient history contains the legends of Haic, of Ara and Semiramis, and of Vahakn, some of the songs of heroes, still sung, and other matter which is strictly speaking not historical. As a history, therefore, it is unreliable and unauthentic, but from the standpoint of the social historian it is invaluable, for a belief is as important a fact to sociology as the dethronement of a king is to history.6Boyadjian,Armenian Legends and Poetryp. 33.7St. Martin 1:409.8Lynch 2:65.9Lynch,Armenia, chapter entitled “Van.”10Raffi, article in Boyadjian’sArmenian Legends and Poetry,p. 125.11Lynch, chapter on Van.12Moses of Khorene 2:69.13Ibid.14Lynch 2:65.15Moses of Khorene 2:68, 69.16St. Martin 1:285.17Raffi p. 129. Abeghian pp. 49, 50.18Moses of Khorene 2:76. Translation from Moses, Boyadjian p. 10.Mar Apas Catina 1:40.19Mar Apas Catina 1:41. Moses of Khorene p. 76.Moses of Khorene, called the Herodotus of Armenia, has written the best known history of the Armenian people. The work has been translated into Latin, Italian, French, German, and Russian. Moses lived in the fifth century, two centuries after the conversion of the nation to Christianity. He belonged to the second order of translators in the school of St. Sahag and St. Mesrob, and was sent to Syria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome in order to complete his studies. Upon returning to his country he found everything in disorder. St. Sahag and St. Mesrob were dead, the king had been overthrown, and he chose the life of solitude. Sometime later he was chosen bishop and requested by an Armenian prince, Sahag Bagratide, to write a history of his country, which task he took up with great enthusiasm. The translation of Mar Apas Catina was his only source for Armenian ancient history. He carefully differentiates hearsay from fact, never fails to stamp a fable or legend as such, and generally quotes his authorities where he has them. Considering the limitation of his materials, and the time in which he wrote, Moses wrote a really remarkable book, although the verdicts of a few critics have been unfavorable.20Raffi p. 129.21Lidgett,An Ancient People. St. Martin 1:409. Mar Apas Catina p. 41.22The influence of Greek culture is chiefly indicated by the fact that the pagan divinities were Greek and that many temples were erected to these gods and goddesses all over the country. (Agathange,Histoire du Règne de Tiridate. Langlois 1:164–70.) Secondly, there were formed by St. Sahag and St. Mesrob in the fifth century after the conversion of the nation to Christianity, schools of translators, who studied in Greece, Egypt, and Rome and whose chief works were translations from the Greek. With the conversion (301) came the necessity for a written language, the characters of which were invented by St. Mesrob in 404. Thereupon were organized the schools of translators whose chief study of necessity was Greek, and whose translations and original works have given to the fifth century the title of “Golden Age of Armenian Literature.” (Langlois 1:xxi–xxvi, 2:vii.)23St. Martin 1:288, 289. Mar Apas Catina 1:41.Moses of Khorene 2:81.24Ibid.25Gibbon,Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire3:393.Moses of Khorene 2:155.26Ibid.pp. 88, 89.27St. Martin 1:291. Moses of Khorene p. 88.28Raffi p. 126.29Langlois 1:ix, x. These songs of which Moses of Khorene very frequently speaks are classified by Langlois into songs of the first order, the second order, and the third order. The first are relative to the prowess of Armenian kings and gods; the second concern a long series of military exploits accomplished against the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians; the third refer especially to traditions in connection with the Assyrians. The birth-song of Vahakn is an illustration of the songs of the first order (p. x, xi). Flint in hisHistory of the Philosophy of History, p. 42, speaks of this period of minstrelsy as necessarily preceding the use of letters everywhere. “The myth and legend interest primitive man more than real fact. His vision is more largely of the imagination than of the sense of judgment. It is an error to regard the rude minstrelsy which generally preceded the use of letters as essentially historical.”30Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco,Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs, chapter on Armenia.31The battle of Avarair under the leadership of the celebrated Vartan, where Armenia defended her national ideals against the intrusion of Persia, is proof of this.32Ormanian p. 22. Moses of Khorene p. 158.33There are further proofs that may be cited. The history of English and French literature shows that the golden age of their literature followed a period of social integration along national lines. And it is true that the golden age of Armenian literature dawned with the closing decades of the Arsacidae dynasty, and continued several decades beyond. And finally, when Valarsace, the first Arsacidae, ascended the throne of Armenia, finding everything in a state of disorder, he organized the country along national lines. Dividing the kingdom into provinces he placed his governors at the heads of them; he organized a standing army, appointed guardians of the granaries, established courts of justice, a royal guard, and minutely regulated court life. What is most interesting is that he appointed two reporters, one to remind him in his anger, “le bien à faire,” the other to remind him of the necessity for doing justice.Ibid.pp. 82–85.34St. Martin 1:300. Moses of Khorene pp. 105–6.35Ibid.p. 106.36Boyadjian p. 49. Moses of Khorene p. 106. Moses as translated by Langlois, relates the story as legend, for after telling the tale, and quoting the songs he writes, “Voici maintenant le fait dans toute sa verité comme le cuir rouge est trés-estimé chez les Alains, Artaschés donne beaucoup de peaux de cette couleur, et beaucoup d’or en dot, et il obtient la jeune princesse Satenig. C’est là la lanière de cuir rouge garnie d’anneaux d’or. Ainsi dans les noces, ils chantent des légendes, en disant,‘Une pluie d’or tombaitAu marriage d’Artaschés;Les perles pleuvaitAux noces de Satenig.’”Moses likewise relegates the legend and songs of Artavasd to their proper places.37Moses of Khorene p. 111.38Translation from Moses by Boyadjian p. 65.39Moses of Khorene p. 111.40Raffi p. 42.41St. Martin 1:appendix.42Ibid.

1Mar Apas Catina. Langlois’Collection des Histoires de l’Arménie1:16.

2St. Martin,Mémoire sur l’Arménie1:281.

3Mar Apas Catina. Langlois 1:15–18.

Moses of Khorene. Langlois 3:63–64.

4St. Martin 1:306.

5Ibid.1:282–3. Moses of Khorene 2:67–69.

Mar Apas Catina 1:26–27.

The first Arsacidae king of Armenia, Valarsace, whose reign began in 149 B.C. found the kingdom in general disorder and was the first to organize the country along national lines. As a Parthian he was unacquainted with the history and institutions of the people, and desiring to build upon the established foundation, such as it was, he sent a Syrian scholar, Mar Apas Catina by name, with a letter to his brother, Arsace, king of Persia, requesting the latter to allow the Syrian access to the royal archives with the view of finding a history of Armenia. Mar Apas Catina found an old MS containing a history of ancient Armenia which bore the name of no author, and which was translated from Chaldean to Greek by order of Alexander the Great. It was translated into Syriac by the Syrian scholar for the benefit of Valarsace, but the MS has been lost, and there is not the slightest trace of it anywhere. It must have been in existence however, during the fifth century after Christ for Moses of Khorene used it as his only source for Armenia’s ancient history, in writing his general history of Armenia. The old MS being lost, the translation by Mar Apas Catina and the first part of the history of Moses are given as identical to each other in Langlois’ collection of Armenian historians. The ancient history contains the legends of Haic, of Ara and Semiramis, and of Vahakn, some of the songs of heroes, still sung, and other matter which is strictly speaking not historical. As a history, therefore, it is unreliable and unauthentic, but from the standpoint of the social historian it is invaluable, for a belief is as important a fact to sociology as the dethronement of a king is to history.

6Boyadjian,Armenian Legends and Poetryp. 33.

7St. Martin 1:409.

8Lynch 2:65.

9Lynch,Armenia, chapter entitled “Van.”

10Raffi, article in Boyadjian’sArmenian Legends and Poetry,p. 125.

11Lynch, chapter on Van.

12Moses of Khorene 2:69.

13Ibid.

14Lynch 2:65.

15Moses of Khorene 2:68, 69.

16St. Martin 1:285.

17Raffi p. 129. Abeghian pp. 49, 50.

18Moses of Khorene 2:76. Translation from Moses, Boyadjian p. 10.

Mar Apas Catina 1:40.

19Mar Apas Catina 1:41. Moses of Khorene p. 76.

Moses of Khorene, called the Herodotus of Armenia, has written the best known history of the Armenian people. The work has been translated into Latin, Italian, French, German, and Russian. Moses lived in the fifth century, two centuries after the conversion of the nation to Christianity. He belonged to the second order of translators in the school of St. Sahag and St. Mesrob, and was sent to Syria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome in order to complete his studies. Upon returning to his country he found everything in disorder. St. Sahag and St. Mesrob were dead, the king had been overthrown, and he chose the life of solitude. Sometime later he was chosen bishop and requested by an Armenian prince, Sahag Bagratide, to write a history of his country, which task he took up with great enthusiasm. The translation of Mar Apas Catina was his only source for Armenian ancient history. He carefully differentiates hearsay from fact, never fails to stamp a fable or legend as such, and generally quotes his authorities where he has them. Considering the limitation of his materials, and the time in which he wrote, Moses wrote a really remarkable book, although the verdicts of a few critics have been unfavorable.

20Raffi p. 129.

21Lidgett,An Ancient People. St. Martin 1:409. Mar Apas Catina p. 41.

22The influence of Greek culture is chiefly indicated by the fact that the pagan divinities were Greek and that many temples were erected to these gods and goddesses all over the country. (Agathange,Histoire du Règne de Tiridate. Langlois 1:164–70.) Secondly, there were formed by St. Sahag and St. Mesrob in the fifth century after the conversion of the nation to Christianity, schools of translators, who studied in Greece, Egypt, and Rome and whose chief works were translations from the Greek. With the conversion (301) came the necessity for a written language, the characters of which were invented by St. Mesrob in 404. Thereupon were organized the schools of translators whose chief study of necessity was Greek, and whose translations and original works have given to the fifth century the title of “Golden Age of Armenian Literature.” (Langlois 1:xxi–xxvi, 2:vii.)

23St. Martin 1:288, 289. Mar Apas Catina 1:41.

Moses of Khorene 2:81.

24Ibid.

25Gibbon,Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire3:393.

Moses of Khorene 2:155.

26Ibid.pp. 88, 89.

27St. Martin 1:291. Moses of Khorene p. 88.

28Raffi p. 126.

29Langlois 1:ix, x. These songs of which Moses of Khorene very frequently speaks are classified by Langlois into songs of the first order, the second order, and the third order. The first are relative to the prowess of Armenian kings and gods; the second concern a long series of military exploits accomplished against the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians; the third refer especially to traditions in connection with the Assyrians. The birth-song of Vahakn is an illustration of the songs of the first order (p. x, xi). Flint in hisHistory of the Philosophy of History, p. 42, speaks of this period of minstrelsy as necessarily preceding the use of letters everywhere. “The myth and legend interest primitive man more than real fact. His vision is more largely of the imagination than of the sense of judgment. It is an error to regard the rude minstrelsy which generally preceded the use of letters as essentially historical.”

30Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco,Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs, chapter on Armenia.

31The battle of Avarair under the leadership of the celebrated Vartan, where Armenia defended her national ideals against the intrusion of Persia, is proof of this.

32Ormanian p. 22. Moses of Khorene p. 158.

33There are further proofs that may be cited. The history of English and French literature shows that the golden age of their literature followed a period of social integration along national lines. And it is true that the golden age of Armenian literature dawned with the closing decades of the Arsacidae dynasty, and continued several decades beyond. And finally, when Valarsace, the first Arsacidae, ascended the throne of Armenia, finding everything in a state of disorder, he organized the country along national lines. Dividing the kingdom into provinces he placed his governors at the heads of them; he organized a standing army, appointed guardians of the granaries, established courts of justice, a royal guard, and minutely regulated court life. What is most interesting is that he appointed two reporters, one to remind him in his anger, “le bien à faire,” the other to remind him of the necessity for doing justice.Ibid.pp. 82–85.

34St. Martin 1:300. Moses of Khorene pp. 105–6.

35Ibid.p. 106.

36Boyadjian p. 49. Moses of Khorene p. 106. Moses as translated by Langlois, relates the story as legend, for after telling the tale, and quoting the songs he writes, “Voici maintenant le fait dans toute sa verité comme le cuir rouge est trés-estimé chez les Alains, Artaschés donne beaucoup de peaux de cette couleur, et beaucoup d’or en dot, et il obtient la jeune princesse Satenig. C’est là la lanière de cuir rouge garnie d’anneaux d’or. Ainsi dans les noces, ils chantent des légendes, en disant,

‘Une pluie d’or tombaitAu marriage d’Artaschés;Les perles pleuvaitAux noces de Satenig.’”

‘Une pluie d’or tombaitAu marriage d’Artaschés;Les perles pleuvaitAux noces de Satenig.’”

‘Une pluie d’or tombaitAu marriage d’Artaschés;Les perles pleuvaitAux noces de Satenig.’”

‘Une pluie d’or tombait

Au marriage d’Artaschés;

Les perles pleuvait

Aux noces de Satenig.’”

Moses likewise relegates the legend and songs of Artavasd to their proper places.

37Moses of Khorene p. 111.

38Translation from Moses by Boyadjian p. 65.

39Moses of Khorene p. 111.

40Raffi p. 42.

41St. Martin 1:appendix.

42Ibid.

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