ARMENIA IN THE PARTHIAN AND SASANIAN PERIODS:

It is said that the Armenians are descendants of tribes from Thrace, a region of northern Greece, who invaded Anatolia (modern Turkey) in the mid-second millennium B.C. Some of these tribes settled around the western coasts, and these people came to be called the Phrygians by Classical Greek writers. Others penetrated farther inland, conquering the mighty Hittites and settling somewhere to the west of Lake Van, in lands occupied by yet another people, the Urarteans.

Urartu was weakened by constant war with its powerful southern neighbor, Assyria, and it seems that the tribes from the west became the rulers of the various provinces of Urartu in the neighborhood of Van. They called themselves hay, a word which probably comes from a form of hatti or "Hittite," the name of the empire over whose territory they had passed in their long migration. But others called them Armenians, probably after the first part of the name of the province of Arme-Shupria, where they had first settled. Assyria itself was destroyed at the end of the 7th century B.C. by a new power, the Medians, who had probably conquered the Armenian highlands several decades earlier.

The Medians, an Iranian people, seem to have appointed the Armenians as satraps, or provincial governors, of the conquered lands of the Armenian plateau with its largely non-Armenian population. In ancient times, alliances were sealed not so much by written documents as by marriages between noble families, and Medians and Armenians probably intermarried.

The Armenians had adopted many of the religious traditions of the various Anatolian peoples with whom they had come in contact, in addition, of course, to the native customs of their own Thraco-Phrygian ancestors. Yet at this early stage the Armenians came into close contact with pre-Islamic Iran; of all the peoples encountered by the Armenians in the formative period of their culture, the Iranians were without a doubt the most important and influential. It was a relationship that was to last, unbroken, for 1,300 years.

In its most basic form, the religion of the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathushtra) teaches that from the beginning there existed two spirits: one wise, good and creative; the other confused, evil and destructive. The wise one was called Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom; the evil one was called Angra Mainyu, the Evil Spirit. Only the first of these two is worthy to receive the reverence of men, but because there are two spiritual existences in this cosmic scheme that Zoroaster saw, the good and the evil, Zoroastrianism is called dualistic. Judaism and Christianity -- and later, Islam, as well -- are fundamentally different, since in them all things, good and evil alike, proceed from a single origin, the all-powerful God.

Zoroaster taught further that Ahura Mazda created the spirits of men as well as various supernatural beings, and all these became his servants -- the latter by their nature, the former by free will. Ahura Mazda was not all-powerful, for if he had been, he surely would have destroyed Angra Mainyu. But he was wise and could create, while Angra Mainyu could only destroy. So Ahura Mazda created this material world perfect and beautiful, knowing that Angra Mainyu would be lured into it as into a trap, there to be opposed and ultimately destroyed by good men, Ahura Mazda, and his spiritual beings all working together.

Through one of those spiritual beings -- Vohu Manah, the Good Mind -- Zoroaster was instructed in the way one must live. Zoroastrians believe that through good thoughts, good words and good deeds they fight Angra Mainyu, who has indeed invaded the world. Over the three millennia that Zoroastrianism -- which its own adherents call Mazda-worship or simply the Good Religion -- has been practiced in the world, its pre-eminent symbol has been fire, whose light, warmth and power are seen to oppose demonic darkness, cold and death. Zoroastrians tend sacred fires in their temples, carefully covering the glowing embers with ash to keep them warm between religious ceremonies. Non-Zoroastrians, partly through ignorance and partly through malice, have called the Good Religion fire-worship (krakapashtut'iun) or even ash-worship (mokhrapashtut'iun).

It may be worthwhile to recall, however, that for about a thousand years Zoroastrianism was the main influence on the spiritual culture of the Armenian people, and when we come to consider the armed confrontation between Christians and Zoroastrians that is commemorated on Vartanantz, it is well to remember also the tragic character of that war. For the Armenians and Iranians were very closely linked to each other by many common elements of language, culture, and social structure.

The Christian Armenians went to war with reluctance; the religion they fought could in no respect be regarded as pagan. As we shall see, their enemy was rather fanaticism, an imperial power which sought to subjugate all men, in whose talons religion was but a tool. The struggle of Vartan was one whose principles and ideals should be alive to us.

In the early third century A.D., Armenia was ruled by a branch of the Parthian Arsacid dynasty that ruled Iran. At banquets, the Armenian king sat to the right of the Parthian King of Kings; often, the son of a Parthian king would rule Armenia until his time came to mount the throne of Iran. The rule of the king was not absolute; in both Iran and Armenia noble families whose landed property was sometimes the size of a small country exercised considerable sovereignty and sometimes rebelled openly if they disagreed with a royal policy. Parts of southwestern Armenia appear to have been almost completely independent, and their status was supported by the Roman empire, which regarded Parthia with hostility and periodically intervened in Armenia.

The Armenian king enforced his power as best he could, sometimes exterminating whole noble families to crush rebellion. More often, though, the nobles (who were called nakharars, an Iranian word) would withdraw to their impregnable fortresses in the mountain fastnesses of the rugged Armenian plateau.

Although Armenian society appears at first glance to have been more a complex family squabble than a state, it worked. Each nakharardom had a hereditary role to play in the religion and government of the country. The Vahuni clan, for instance, were the priests of Vahagn (the Armenian name of the Zoroastrian divine being Verethraghna, whose strength and favor supported the Arsacid dynasty; whose seal was a wild boar, symbol of Vahagn). The Mamigonians were the commanders-in-chief of the army. Another clan, the Bagratunis, placed the crown on the king's head, and held another part of the key to his legitimacy. Each nakharardom had its place, its power, and its indispensability. And over them all was the bnik ter, the "natural lord" of the land, the Arsacid king.

Just as one's role in the kingdom was determined not by a civil service examination but by birth, so the rules of proper public conduct for noblemen were considered inherent, inborn if you will. Law and manners were a single concept called in Parthian advenak and in Armenian awren-k' (which, through the application of certain regular sound changes, can be shown to be a borrowing from the Parthian form). One of these rules was that of blood ties, Arsacids engaged in frequent and bloody feuds amongst themselves, but woe betide the foreigner who raised his hand against the king; the relatives of the slain monarch were sworn to exact vengeance, no matter how long it might take or how impolitic it might be.

Another rule was, of course, the sanctity of temples. At that time, Zoroastrian temples contained sacred fires, images of the various divinities, and images of ancestors, particularly royal ancestors. The Armenian word for a temple was mehean, which probably meant originally 'the place of Mithra, Mithra being an important supernatural being of the Zoroastrian pantheon.(We find him in the Armenian national epic of Sasun as Mher.) A fire-altar was called by the Iranian word atrushan; an image-shrine was called bagin, also from Parthian; and the spirits of the ancestors were called hro(r)ts, from an old Iranian word fravart. The latter name survives in the name of the 12th month of the Armenian calendar, Hrot-its', meaning the month of the spirits, corresponding to the Zoroastrian month of Fravashayo, in which a festival similar to the Christian All Souls' Day is celebrated.

Persia, or Pars, is a province in southwestern Iran. In the 6th century B.C. the Persians had wrested control of Iran from the Medians and had founded the great Achaemenian Empire, so named after its founder. The Achaemenians had ruled from the coasts of Asia Minor, threatening Greece itself, as far east as the borders of China. One of their kings, Cyrus, helped rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, which the Babylonians had destroyed, and was hailed by the Hebrew prophets as the anointed of God.

In the late 4th century B.C., the Achaemenian Empire was conquered by Alexander of Macedon, and only in the late 3rd century B.C. did the Parthians, a people from the north of Iran, east of the Caspian Sea, succeed in liberating all Iran from the rule of the Greek descendants of Alexander's generals. Pars came under Parthian rule, but preserved considerable regional independence -- and remembered its past grandeur.

In A.D. 224, the Persian Ardeshir, son of Papak and grandson of Sasan (who was a priest at the temple of Anahid, or Anahit, at Istakhr), rebelled against the Parthians. The Parthian kingdom was weakened by war with Rome and by internal strife: two brothers, Valakhsh and Ardavan, were fighting for the throne. Ardeshir was victorious. By 226, he was in effective control of the entire country, and the Parthian king Ardavan lay dead.

Our sources for the events that followed are, for Armenia at least, the work of historians of the 5th century or later, but what they tell us accords for the most part with contemporary records, amongst which are the 3rd century inscriptions of Persian kings and priests on stone. There is also a Persian text called the letter of Tansar (a Persian priest of the time of Ardeshir) which is in all likelihood a document of the 3rd century, although only a mediaeval version of it survives.

According to the latter, Ardeshir either confiscated or caused to be extinguished the sacred fires of those temples that had not been established by the Achaemenians. These measures were undertaken, it seems, in an effort to create a centralized religious bureaucracy to support a monolithic state. How did this policy affect the Armenians?

From the outset, it seems that Armenia remained effectively independent of the new Sasanian dynasty until about A.D. 252. The Armenian historian Movses Khorenats'i -- whose dates are uncertain, being estimated by some scholars as early as the 5th century and by others as late as the 8th -- writes that Ardeshir invaded Armenia and destroyed cult images and ancestral shrines of the Arsacids, but commanded that sacred fires be kindled and kept burning unceasingly. Agathangelos, whose name and identity are a mystery -- although his history was at all events composed earlier than that of Khorenats'i -- relates for his part that the Armenian king raided and destroyed Persia to avenge the death of his kinsman, Ardavan. It seems likely that the Persian invasion of Armenia probably took place, not under Ardeshir but under his successor, Shapur I, in 260.

Armenia seems to have preserved its independence under king Tiridates II ( called Khosrov by some writers, including Agathangelos); yet an inscription does survive which records the campaigns of Shapur I in various countries, including Armenia, in 260-1. The inscription, which covers historical events down to the year 293, was made by the Sasanian high priest Kartir on the side of a great stone building in Persia near the rock carvings of Naqsh-i Rustam, called the Ka'aba-yi Zardusht in modern Persian. The structure may have housed the Sasanian royal archives. In his inscription, Kartir boasts that he established sacred fires and persecuted unbelievers and heretics in the various foreign lands -- including Armenia -- which Shapur invaded. Near the inscription is a bas-relief, probably from the late 230's, showing the investiture of Ardeshir as king. The king, on horseback, is shown receiving the ring with tresses of the royal glory from another man-like figure on horseback facing him who is labeled Ahura Mazda, the Creator and supreme god of the Zoroastrians. Ardeshir is also identified, and called a divinity. Under the hoof of Ardeshir's mount lies the prostrate Ardavan; beneath Ahura Mazda's steed is a figure with snake-like curls who, it has been suggested, is Angra Mainyu, the Evil Spirit. This indelible example of political advertisement, in which the victory of Sasanian over Parthian is apparently equated with the triumph of Good over Evil, contains other information of interest to us.

It has been suggested that the Sasanians, in smashing the image-shrines of Armenia, were overthrowing a corrupt and syncretistic paganism and replacing it with a pure and iconoclastic cult of fire. Yet the carving at Naqsh-i Rustam depicts as a human eidolon Ahura Mazda himself: the Sasanians, at least in the 3rd century, were not averse to images when it suited their policies to make them. Armenia had fire altars before Ardeshir in any case, for the word atrushan mentioned above is pre-Sasanian. The Letter of Tansar states that the Sasanians dismantled fire temples in conquered territories wherever these did not serve their campaign of religious centralization. As for the suppression of the cult of the Arsacid ancestral spirits, one need only note that Ardeshir, and, indeed, later Sasanians, called themselves divine just as the Armenian Arsacids were praised as dits'akharrn, or "of divine parentage."

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