ARMENIA, a high table-land on the southern slope of the Caucasus, stretching down towards Mesopotamia. It has had different boundaries in the various centuries of its history. It is the original seat of one of the oldest civilized peoples in the world, the Armenians, who belong to the Indo-Germanic family of nations. Their oldest records contain nothing certain beyond the factS that, in ancient times, they were governed by independent kingst but afterwards became tributary to the Assyrians and Medes. That dim period which wavers between myth and history begins, in the case of A., about the middle of the 6th c. B.C., when king Dikran, or Tigranes I. of the Haig dynasty, restored the independence of the kingdom. The last king of this dynasty was slain in battle against Alexander the great, who conquered the country. After Alexander's death, A. passed through several changes of fortune under the Seleucklie, who appointed governors over it. Of these, two—Artaxias and Zariadres—made themselves independent of their sovereign, Antiochus the great, during the time when he was engaged in his contest with the Romans, 223-190 B.C. They divided the province into two districts—Artaxias taking A. major (that part of the country lying e. of the Euphrates), and Zariadres A. minor (the part to the w. of that river). The dynasty of Artaxias did not reign long: for about the middle of the 2d C. B.C., we find A. major in the possession of a branch of the Parthian Arsacidn, of which the most powerful king was Tigranes the great, who added to the conquests made by his predecessors in lower Asia and the region of the Caucasus, Syria, Cappadocia, and A. minor; defeated the Parthians, and took from them Mesopotamia and other countries. He lost all these territories by his war with the Romans, into which he was led by his father-in-law, Mithridates, king of Pontus, in 63 tc.c. After this, the assaults of the Romans from the west, ever growing more and more vigorous, and those of the Parthians from the east, hastened the downfall of A. major. The successors of Tigranes-became dependent, partly on the one nation and partly on the other, while internally the nobles broke through the restraints of a feeble monarchy, and claimed the privileges kings. Under Trajan, A. major was for a short time a Roman province. Its subsequent history exhibited an unbroken series of tumults and wars, of violent successions to the throne, despotic reigns, and rapid decay. In 232 A.D.,
the province was conquered by the Sassanides, who held possession of it 28 years, until Tiridates III., the rightful heir, was restored to the throne by Roman assistance.
It was about this time that Christianity became the religion of A., which was thus the first nation to embrace the new religion. Tiridates himself had been converted by St. Gregory the illuminator as early as about 800 A.D. The old religion of Armenia had for its basis the doctrines of Zoroaster, with a curious intermixture of Greek mythology, and of ideas peculiar to the country. It is certain that the Armenians worshiped, as their mightiest gods, Aramazt and Mihir (the Ormuzd and Mithras of the old Persians); but they had also a kind of Venus, whom they styled Anaitis, and several other deities, to whom they offered animal sacrifices. This change of creed, however, made no im provement in the political circumstances of the falling state. The Byzantine Greeks on one side, and the Persians on the other, regarded A. as their prey; and in 428, Bahram V. of Persia made A. a province of the empire of the Sassanides, and with the deposition of Artasir the dynasty of the Arsacidme was brought to a close. The rule of the Sassan ides in A. was marked chiefly Ity their sanguinary but unsuccessful attempts to extirpate Christianity. In 632, the unhappy country was subjected to another form of despotism under the Arabian caliphs, and suffered terribly during their contest with the Byzantine emperors. In 885 A.D., Aschod I., of an old and powerful Armenian family, ascended the throne, with the permission of the caliphs, and founded the third Armenian dynasty— that of the Bagratidte. tinder them A. was prosperous till the 11th c., when divisions and internal strife began to weaken the country; till at length the Greeks, having mur dered the last monarch of the Bagratidte, seized a part of the kingdom, while the Turks and Kurds made themselves masters of the rest—only one or two of the native princes maintaining a perilous independence. In 1242, the whole of A. major was conquered by the Mongols, and in 1472 became at Persian province. Afterwards the western part fell into the hands of the Turkish sultan, Selim II.