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Introduction to Christian Caucasian History: The Formative Centuries (IVth-VIIIth)∗
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Extract
It is no doubt a commonplace to state that Western Civilization is an heir, one among several, of an anterior unity: Christian Mediterranean Civilization. In that earlier unity all the local cultures that had sprung up round the great central sea — Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Aegean, Syrian, Iranian, Hellenic, Italic — had coalesced in three successive and increasingly comprehensive phases within the corresponding imperial frameworks of the pax achaemenia, the pax macedonica, and the pax romana. With the advent of Christianity this political and cultural amalgam passed into still another phase, that of the pax christiana, which fell heir also to the hitherto seclusive cultural tradition of the Jews. But, before this last phase was reached, the rhythm of history had changed from gathering to scattering; Iran, which once itself had contributed to the cultural syncretism of the Mediterranean world, and which can be regarded as that world's easternmost bastion, withdrew from it under the impact of the ‘neo-Achaemenian’ and anti-Hellenic reaction which inaugurated the Sassanian age. Iran was to remain hostile to the pax romana and, although Christian enclaves were to be established in its territory, outside the new unity of Christendom. But, even though withdrawn back to the pre-Hellenistic phase of history — as if Alexander the Great had never lived — New Iran exercised, chiefly through Syria, a profound influence, especially in art, upon the rest of the Mediterranean world, both before and after the ushering in of the pax christiana. With time, the disintegration begun in Iran spread. Christian Mediterranean Civilization was broken up and succeeded by several others that derived from it: that of the West was one, that of Byzantium another, and so also that of Christian Caucasia.
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References
1 The word ‘Transcausasia,’ moreover, denotes an administrative unit of today that is considerably smaller than the territory of historical Caucasia, for a great part of Armenia and some sections of Georgia lie outside it. On the other hand, historical Armenia is often spoken of as a neighbor rather than part of Caucasia. The above does not, of course, imply that the regions north of the Caucasus and Caucasia were unknown to one another before the eighteenth century. Actually, e.g., the Khazar State and the Golden Horde played a certain role in Caucasian history; there were a number of dynastic and cultural contacts between medieval Georgia and medieval Russia, and the Georgian-Russian diplomatic relations can be traced back to the sixteenth century. Google Scholar
2 See Baltrušaitis, J. Études sur l'art médiéval en Géorgie et en Arménie (Paris 1929) and Henri Focillon's Preface for the resemblances between Caucasian and Romanesque art: ‘on peut les considérer l'un et l'autre comme deux expériences historiques sur le même problème, avec des données et dans des conditions analogues, mais conduites par des expérimentateurs différents’ (viii). Caucasian architecture appears to display a certain inchoate tendency towards Gothic forms; Pope, A. U., ‘Iranian and Armenian Contributions to the Beginnings of Gothic Architecture,’ Armenian Quarterly 1/2 (1948).Google Scholar
3 St. Ignatius of Antioch, Smyrn. 8.2, in conjunction with Rom. For a recent analysis of the second letter, cf. Quasten, J., Patrology I (Utrecht/Brussels 1950) 68–70; Lebreton, J. ‘Les Pères Apostoliques et leur époque,’ in Fliche, A. and Martin, V., Histoire de l'Église I (Paris 1946) 331–334.Google Scholar
4 The adjective ‘Byzantine’ is used here in its restrictive and divisive sense. Google Scholar
1 A detailed treatment of proto-Caucasian and early Armeno-Georgian history, which is here briefly touched upon, will be found in Adontz, N., Histoire d'Arménie (Paris 1946); Armenija v ĕpoxu Justiniana (St. Petersburg 1908); Piotrovskij, B. Istorija i kul'tura Urartu (Erivan 1944); Manandyan, H. P'eodalizmĕ hin Hayastanum: Aršakunineri ew marzpanut'yan šržan (Erivan 1934); K'nnakan tesut'yun hay žolovrdi patmut'yan I (Erivan 1945); O nekotoryx spornyx problemax istorii i geografii drevnej Armenii (Erivan 1956); O torgovle i gorodax Armenii υ svjazi s mirovoj torgovlej drevnix vremen (Erivan 1954); Grousset, R. Histoire de l'Arménie (Paris 1947); Goetze, A., Kleinasien (Kulturgeschichte des alten Orients 3 [2nd ed. Munich 1957]) 187–200; I. J̌avaxišvili, K'art'veli eris istoria I (4th ed. Tifiis 1951); Allen, W., A History of the Georgian People (London 1932); also Š. Amiranašvili, Istorija gruzinskogo iskusstva I (Moscow 1950). — Armenian and Georgian names and phrases are transcribed as they appear in the original: according to either the old or the new spelling as the case may be. Armenian and Georgian names transcribed into Russian are re-transcribed into English as they are in the original, with no attention paid to the Russian transcription. On the other hand, the various west European transcriptions of Armenian, Georgian, and Russian names of authors who have written in West European languages are everywhere respected.Google Scholar
2 Coulborn, R. ed., Feudalism in History (Princeton 1956). There are a few passing references to Urartu and to Armenia, the latter rather in need of revision, because based on passing and rather unsatisfactory remarks in Christensen, A., L'Iran sous les Sassanides (2nd ed. Copenhagen 1944). But there is no mention of Georgia, which, after the appearance of the English work of Allen, ought not any longer to remain a terra incognita. Google Scholar
3 Cf. Strayer, J. and Coulborn, R., ‘The Idea of Feudalism,’ Feud. in Hist. I/i.7; Bodde, D. ‘Feudalism in China,’ ibid. II/iv. 90; Coulborn, ‘A Comparative Study of Feudalism,’ ibid. III.189, 197–198, 236–253, 256–257, 270. — A ‘dying empire’ is not, however, always found at the basis of a feudal society; cf. Strayer and Coulborn 7; Brundage, B., ‘Feudalism in Ancient Mesopotamia and Iran,’ ibid. II/v.100, but cf. 116, and Goetze, Kleinasien 64–81 for Akkadian influence and Assyrian colonization in Anatolia.Google Scholar
4 Cf. Strayer and Coulborn, op. cit. 7–8; Reischauer, E., ‘Japanese Feudalism,’ Feud. in Hist. II/iii.28; Bodde, Feud. in China 90; Coulborn, Comp. Study of Feud. 188–203, 257, 270, 374. — For the Heroic Age, see Chadwick, H. M.'s classical The Heroic Age (Cambridge 1912).Google Scholar
5 Cf. Coulborn, , Comp. Study of Feud. 197–199, 364, 374–375.Google Scholar
6 Cf. Strayer and Coulborn, Idea of Feud. 4–5; Strayer, ‘Feudalism in Western Europe,’ Feud. in Hist. II/ii.16–18; Bodde, Feud. in China 87, 90–91; Kantorowicz, E., ‘Feudalism in the Byzantine Empire,’ ibid. II/viii.152; Coulborn, Comp. Study of Feud. 190–191, 196. — The concluding sentence of the above paragraph is nearer to truth, I believe, than the assertion that in feudalism ‘political authority is treated as private possession’ (Strayer and Coulborn 5). The reyes católicos, to give an instance, did not hold their crowns as private possession, but such was their position that a private act of theirs, their marriage, entailed an event of public significance, the union of Castile and Aragon. To say, moreover, that ‘political power [in a feudal society] is personal rather than institutional’ (ibid.) is to suggest that the two terms are mutually exclusive; yet political power can be both personal and institutional, as in a monarchy; the antithesis is rather between ‘institutional’ and ‘private.’Google Scholar
7 Cf. Chadwick, , Heroic Age 376–378. 390–391; there is an intermediary type: a nation migrating in toto; ibid. 378. — The hierophany, or theophany, of kingship must be regarded an integral part of what Voegelin, E. has called ‘the cosmological myth.’ ‘The symbolization of society and its order [he writes] as an analogue of the cosmos and its order … is generally the first symbolic form created by societies when they rise above the level of tribal organization … It is the mythical expression of the participation, experienced as real, of the order of society in the divine being that also orders the cosmos. To be sure, the cosmos and the political cosmion remain separate existences, but … the participation is so intimate, indeed, that in spite of the separateness of existences, empire and cosmos are parts of one embracing order’; Order and History I: Israel and Revelation (Baton Rouge 1956) 5, 14, 27. Of inner necessity, then, the rulers of the cosmion stand in a special relation with the rulers of the cosmos. The character of that special relation must have varied in different places and at different times, exactly as do the interpretations of it by modern specialists. The Anglo-Scandinavian school has seen the ‘divine kingship pattern’ throughout the ancient East Mediterranean world; others regard this as over-simplifying and, in many cases, overstating the matter; see the discussion of the problem in J. de Fraine, L'aspect religieux de la royauté israélite: L'institution monarchique dans l'Ancien Testament et dans les textes mésopotamiens (Rome 1954). Actually, as is made clear by the following statement of an eminent representative of the School, ‘divine kingship,’ a few certain cases of the deification of living kings apart, means far less than the name connotes: ‘But the point is, of course, to keep clearly in mind … what the king's divinity really means. I believe that even the man of antiquity knew as well as does the « non-civilized » man of to-day the difference between a god and a king, be the latter ever so divine. That the king is god, implies, in my opinion, above all two things: the king is the human maintainer of the divine ideology — the king as « law-king-sky-god » in Hocart's terminology — and the king has — as « executive king » — to represent, especially in the cult, one or several divine characters. But this said, it is also said that the king is in no way just « another feeble creature »’; Engnell, I., Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East (Uppsala 1943) 31. It is interesting to compare this admission with the conclusions (regarding Mesopotamian kingship) reached by Fr. de Fraine, who represents an opposition to the ‘Uppsalians’: ‘Toute royauté, en effet, consacre le roi comme « lumière des dieux », c'est-à-dire comme un reflet vivant de la divinité. Mais ce reflet se trouve perpétuellement conditionné par une « bénédiction constante » des dieux: si cette faveur se détourne du souverain, il ne reste plus l’être privilégié qui régnait au-dessus des hommes, il retombe dans la foule anonyme, vidé de tout ce qui faisait sa grandeur. La divinisation du roi ne fait que donner un semblant d'absolu et de définitif à un homme, « qui n'est rien par lui-même, mais tout par la divinité »’; Aspect religieux 261, and: ‘En vérité, les différences entre les dieux et les rois étaient, sous certains rapports, assez minimes’; ibid. 217. There is hardly any discordance between them. Cf. also ibid. 57–74, 169–186, 217–263, 285–309, 342–370 (and valuable notes). Formal deification of kings is observable in Mesopotamia three times: with the Sargonids of Akkad; with the III Dynasty of Ur and those of Isin and Larsa; and with the Kassites; ibid. 218. In these circumstances, ‘theophanic kingship’ seems preferable to ‘divine kingship,’ since it is applicable to the sacral and sacred as well as to the deified monarchs.Google Scholar
8 This is the class of the Homeric (σηπτοῦχοι) βασιλῇες; cf. Chadwick, Heroic Age 378–382, 391–392; Bury, J. B., A History of Greece (3rd ed. London 1951) 54 -55; Rostovtzeff, M. A History of the Ancient World I (Oxford 1930) 183–184, 187, and (for the Aegean world) 87; Calhoun, G., ‘Classes and Masses in Homer,’ Classical Philology 29/3 (1934) 192–208; 29/4 (1934) 301–316; Jessen, ‘Basileus,’ RE 3/1.56–62.Google Scholar
9 That the Homeric Age already saw the rise of a non-dynastic nobility, distinct from the dynastic Basileids, is affirmed by Adolf Fanta (Der Staat in der Ilias und Odyssee [Innsbruck 1882]) and his school and denied by others, including Chadwick (Heroic Age 364 and n.2) and especially Calhoun (Classes and Masses). For the rise of the Iranian gentry, see Adontz, , L'aspect iranien du servage (Recueil de la Société Jean Bodin 1937) 144; cf. Christensen, Iran Sass. 111–112. Internal warfare and tribal conquests, too, must introduce a stratification of the conquerors and the conquered in a tribal society.Google Scholar
10 Cf. Strabo 15.3.2, on Achaemenid Iran. — For a similar process in Hellas, see Bury, , Hist. of Greece 54.Google Scholar
11 See also Chadwick, Heroic Age 374–375, 391, for the ‘fatherhood’ and ‘sonship’ among kings. Upon the whole, the case of Caucasia closely approximates to that of Japan, for which see Reischander, , Jap. Feud. 26–28; and Coulborn, Comp. Study of Feud. 194–196, 198, 221 n.11. Possibly, Japan's beginnings were dynasticist, and feudalism was, as in Caucasia, only subsequently superadded to dynasticism; but in Japan, unlike Caucasia, feudalism seems to have supplanted dynasticism.Google Scholar
12 Besides Caucasia, Russia and Lithuania, i.e., the lands of the Rurikid and Gediminid inheritance, present a typical example of a surviving dynasticist society with their multiplicity of princes (knjaź, kunigas, rikis), reduced to obedience by super-dynastic ‘Grand Dukes’ and ultimately mediatized though always distinct from the non-princely families of the nobility. This society, moreover, never passed beyond what has been called the ‘protofeudal’ stage; cf. Szeftel, M., ‘Aspects of Feudalism in Russian History,’ Feud. in Hist. II/ix. Unlike the aristocracy of Caucasia, these princes seem for the most part to have belonged to one or the other of only two chief dynasties, of Rurik and of Gediminas; unless this unity of descent be in many cases legendary, like that of the Armenian Haykids and Iberian K'art'losids (infra at nn. 90–94, 120–122). However, in Lithuania and Western Ruś, there were also a number of princes not belonging to either of the two official houses; cf. Wolff, J., Kniaziowie Litewsko-ruscy (Warsaw 1895).Google Scholar
13 Cf. my article ‘La noblesse géorgienne: sa genèse et sa structure,’ Rivista Araldica 54/9 (1956) 262: ‘La survivance de l'aristocratie tribale-dynastique en Orient méditerranéen et en Europe Orientale résulte en ce que la noblesse y diffère de sa sœur occidentale par son caractère nettement dichotomique. Elle est de par nature divisée en deux couches ou ordres distincts: des dynastes et des guerriers, ou, pour employer la désignation officielle, des Princes et des Nobles. La dignité princière en Caucasie et en Europe Orientale est presque uniquement l'expression d'une origine dynastique. En Occident, d'autre part, la haute noblesse et la noblesse ordinaire sont pour la plupart d'une même origine: maisons de guerriers et de fonctionnaires avec quelques races dynastiques parsemées ci et là, et la division même en ces deux couches n'exprime généralement que les différences de possession et de fonction et non pas celles d'origine.’ Cf. Manandyan, P'eodal. Hay. 241–242. Google Scholar
14 As a result, notable differences of emphasis obtained between the Caucasian and the West European nobiliary structure. ‘Ainsi, en Occident, les noms nobles et surtout les titres sont pour la plupart territoriaux — l'idée de ce qu'on a; en Orient, les noms nobles tendent à être dynastiques et donc patronymiques — l'idée de ce qu'on est — et les titres à y être attachés. En Occident, la dignité d'une maison dépend surtout des terres et des offices — et la terre elle-même est devenue un office en l'espèce du fief; en Orient, elle repose sur l'origine ou « sang », de quoi il résulte que tandis qu'en Occident la tendence est vers la loi de primogéniture, celle de l'Orient est au contraire de tous les membres d'une maison, tous ceux qui partagent le même sang, à en partager aussi d'une manière égale les titres, les biens et parfois même les offices …’; Toumanoff, Nobl. géorg. 261. Google Scholar
15 Cf. Adontz, , Armenija 194–195. 434–436, 441, 444; Manandyan, ‘Problema obščestvennogo stroja doaršakidskoj Armenii,’ Istoričeskie Zapiski 15 (1945) 21–22. 27–28; P'eodal Hay. 241–242. On the other hand, extremist views have not been wanting, like those, e.g., of Pertzold, A. Der Kaukasus II (Leipzig 1867) 67, and A. v. Haxthausen, Zur Jurisprudenz in Transkaukasien I (Leipzig 1856) 217, who denied Armenian feudalism, or of Samuelyan, X., Hin hay iravunk'i patmut'yunĕ I (Erivan 1939), who denies Armenian allodialism.Google Scholar
16 For the relative geographical position of the proto-Caucasian States of the Hittite and Assyrian records, I have followed Manandyan's remarkable study, O nek. sporn. probl. Google Scholar
17 Urarṭian has also been called ‘Vannic,’ ‘Alarodian,’ or ‘Chaldian/Ḫaldian.’ ‘Urartu’ is used here as an equivalent of ‘Vannic Monarchy’ and ‘Urarṭian’ as that which pertains to it. Piotrovskij, Urartu, uses this term in a narrower sense of the nucleus of that monarchy and as distinct from the other Caucasian people-states contained in it. Here, ‘proto-Caucasian’ denotes also the ethnic and political groups that were not included in Urarṭu. — The Assyrian Urarṭu/Urašṭu of the Babylonians is not a word that can be found in the documents written in the Urarṭian language; instead, they use the word Biaini/a (Van); Adontz, Hist. d'Arm. 270. Google Scholar
18 In addition to the titles: ‘King of Kings,’ ‘Great King,’ ‘Mighty King,’ ‘King of Biaina,’ ‘King of Nairi,’ ‘Prince of the City of Tušpa,’ the Vannic emperors used also the title of ‘King of the Universe [of All]’ (in Assyrian: šar kiššati); Adontz, Hist. d'Arm. 213–215: in particular Sarduri I (cf. ibid. 145; Lehmann, C. F. -Haupt, ed. Corpus inscriptionum Chaldicarum I [Berlin/Leipzig 1928] 1–3, P1. xl, xli = Konig, F. ed., ‘Handbuch der chaldischen Inschriften,’ Archiv für Orientforschung 8/1 [1955] 1 a-c) and Išpuini (cf. Tseretheli, ‘Études ourarṭéennes,’ IV: ‘La stèle de Kélichine,’ Revue d’ Assyriologie 47 [1953] 132–133, 135–136; Corpus inscr. chald. 12 = König 9. The šu-ra-a-ú-e of the Urarṭian version of this bilingual stele [line 3] Tseretheli considers to be the equivalent of the kiššati of the Assyrian version [line 2]; others would see in it the territorial epithet: ‘of Šura’; Manandyan, O nek. sporn. probl. 13–14; cf. Adontz, loc. cit.; Goetze, Kleinasien 191). In this, they were the heirs of the Mesopotamian, rather than the Anatolian, tradition, for the Hittite kings do not appear to have used any cosmocratic titles; cf. Goetze, Kleinasien 88; and, for the problem of cosmocracy in Mesopotamia and Anatolia, Schwarzenberg, K., Adler und Drache : Der Weltherrschaftsgedanke (Vienna/Munich 1958) 22–33, 289–291. To borrow the terminology adopted in the latter work, while the Urarṭian monarchs belonged to the category of the world-claiming Grosskönige, those of the Hittites, though vastly more powerful in their day, can be classed only with the — imperial indeed, but not cosmocratic — Hochkönige; Schwarzenberg 289. — The available Urarṭian sources show the Vannic Monarchy to have been strongly theocratic; Adontz 227–230, 247–254. In the light of modern interpretation and Hittite and Sumero-Akkadian example, this can mean only the Vannic emperor's theophanic character, for which see supra n. 7. For the religious connotation of ‘King of Kings,’ see Griffith, J. G. ‘βασιλεὺς βασιλέων: Remarks on the History of a Title,’ Classical Philology 48 (1953) 145–154. The sacred character of kingship must be presumed in the case of subordinate kings no less than in that of the High King. — The King of Urartu was called ‘brother’ by the King of Assyria, until Sarduri III, c. 648/636 B.C., treated Asurbanipal as a ‘father,’ as is clear from the latter's Annals; Adontz 139–140 (who tries, against Winckler and Streck, to explain this change merely by the difference in the age of the two sovereigns). — The cosmocratic claims were a corollary of the ‘cosmological myth,’ for which see supra n.7. For the facility of coexistence among several neighbouring cosmions, see Voegelin, , Order and History I 7.Google Scholar
19 Brundage, , Feud. in Mesop. and Iran 100–102; Goetze, Kleinasien 95–109.Google Scholar
20 Adontz, , Hist. d'Arm. 219.Google Scholar
21 The origin of the ethnicon ‘Armenian’ is still unclear (infra, nn. 32, 114); I therefore hesitate to apply it, without any further qualification, to the Thraco-Phrygians; this hesitation, by the way, has not always been shared by modern historiography. Google Scholar
22 In their treatment of the Thraco-Phrygian advent to Caucasia, Adontz and most Western scholars tend to underestimate the proto-Caucasian Ḫayas a and to represent, in accordance with a fashionable cliché, the newcomers as ‘conquering Aryans/Indo-Europeans’; but, upon the whole, modern Caucasiology has shown a healthy reaction against such simpliste views (cf. infra n.30). On the other hand, some Caucasiologists go to the opposite extreme of ignoring or negating (with, e.g., Piotrovskij and Lap'anc'yan) the Indo-European Thraco-Phrygian admixture in the proto-Armenians; Piotrovskij, Urartu; Lap'anc'yan, G. (in Russian transcription: Kapancjan), Xajasa — Kolybel’ Armjan: Ĕtnogenez Armjan i ix načal'naja istorija (Istoriko-Lingvističeskie Raboty; Erivan 1956). Piotrovskij, however, is right in interpreting the rise of the latter as the formation of still another federation, rather than a conquest, for which there is no indication. What has been in the past taken as a reference to such a conquest, the struggle of the Armeni and the Chaldaei (rather: Chaldi) as reported in the Cyropaedia of Xenophon, in actual fact indicates nothing of the sort. The Chaldians do not represent the Urarṭians in general (as has been held ever after Lehmann-Haupt), but a particular north-western proto-Caucasian people of the Ḫal(Xal-) ethnicon, of which another form is ‘Chalybes,’ and who may or may not have been included in the Urarṭian empire; Urartu 326–331; Adontz, Armenija 58, 398; Hist. d'Arm. 270; infra n. 114. If a conquest there had been at all, it must have been effected by the Thraco-Phrygians only over the Ḫayasa, else it was merely an infiltration by the latter of the territory of the former. At any rate, this must have taken place before the rise of the Medes, who would not have allowed such a conquest or infiltration of their own imperial territory; it most probably occurred during the Cimmerian invasion. The mingling of the Indo-European Thraco-Phrygians and the proto-Caucasian Ḫayasa must at all events have implied a struggle of the two elements for predominance. The former must at first have achieved it; hence the basically Indo-European character of the Armenian language. But the latter must soon enough have replaced it in that position. Thus, the ethnicon Hay became the Armenian word for ‘Armenian,’ and, as Marr, Izbrannye Raboty I (Leningrad 1933) 39, has noted, while the Indo-European linguistic elements are at the base of the popular speech (including, e.g., agricultural terms), the proto-Caucasian Ḫayasa linguistic elements are at the base of the old or classical literary language (grabar), i.e., the language of the upper class; Piotrovskij, Urartu 334–335, 338. The Median empire-builders, finding, upon their advent, the proto-Armenian enclave in the Urarṭian territory, tended to patronize it; Markwart, J., Die Entstehung und Wiederherstellung der armenischen Nation (Berlin 1919) 16; Manandyan, O torgovle 44–45. Possibly the linguistic affinity determined their choice.Google Scholar
23 Additional information can be found in Thompson, R. C., ‘Assyria,’ CAH 2.239, 249; Hogarth, D. G. ‘The Hittites of Asia Minor,’ ibid. 271; Smith, S. ‘The Supremacy of Assyria, ‘CAH 3.55; Goetze, Kleinasien 178–179, 185; Cavaignac, E. Le Monde méditerranéen (Histoire du Monde 2; Paris 1929) 57, 62, 74; Adontz, Hist. d'Arm. 275–277; Manandyan, O nek. sporn, probl. 85–89; Kuftin, B. Materialy k arxeologii Kolxidy II (Tiflis 1950); Ruge, ‘Kolchis,’ RE 11/1.1070–1071; Diehl, E. ‘Phasis’ (1,2) RE 19/2.1886–1895; Th. Reinach, Mithridate Eupator, roi de Pont (Paris 1890) 77–78, 221–224, 301, 389. — The earliest Greek references are in Hecataeus fr. 188; Scylax, Per. 81; Aeschylus, Prom. vinct. 415. — The root of the ethnicon is K-S, for which see Hrozný, B., Histoire de l'Asie Antérieure, de l'Inde et de la Crète (Paris 1947) 77–83; infra n.114.Google Scholar
24 Gen. 10.2; 1 Par. 1.5, 17; Eze. 27.13; 32.36; 38.2, 3; 39.1. Google Scholar
25 Ibid . and Gen. 4.22.Google Scholar
26 For additional information, see Langdon, S. H., ‘The Dynasties of Akkad and Lagash,’ CAH 1.418; Thompson, Assyria 247–249; Hogarth, Hittites 272, 274; idem, ‘The Hittites of Syria,’ CAH 3.137–138; idem, ‘Lydia and Ionia,’ ibid. 503; Smith, Supr. of Assyr. 55; Gray, G. B. and Cary, M., ‘The Reign of Darius,’ CAH 4.195; Goetze, Kleinasien 179, 185, 200, 202; Cavaignac, Monde méd. 74; Adontz, Hist. d'Arm. 277–278; S. anašia, ‘T'ubal-Tabal, Tibareni, Iberi,’ Bulletin de l'Institut Marr de Langues, d'Histoire et de Culture matérielle 1 (1937) 185–245; ‘Ujvelesi erovneli c'noba k'art'velt'a pirvel sac'xovrisis šesaxeb maxlobeli ağmosavlet'is istoriis sanat'eze,’ ibid. 5–6 (1940) 633–694; Reinach. Mithridate 17–20. — The earliest Greek references are in Hecataeus fr. 188, 193 [τιβαϱοί]; Scylax, Per. 87; Herodotus 3.94; 7.78; Xenophon, Anab. 5.5. In the late-Classical times, some of the Tibareni remained in the Pontic regions, in Lesser Armenia and in Colchis; Strabo 12.3.28–29; cf. Plutarch, Lucullus 19.1. Others had remained in the Cilician Taurus; Cicero, Ad fam. 15.4. — The roots of the two ethnica are M-S and B-L, for which see infra n. 114. Marr postulated the following equation: Sumer-Thubal-Tibar-Hiber-Speir; Izbr. raboty 22 n.3, 112, 225. And now official Soviet historiography accepts the derivation of ‘Iberia’ from the ethnicon of the Saspeires (N. Berjenišvili et al., Istorija Gruzii I [Tiflis 1946] 17), who appear to have been a remnant of the Subareans or Ḫurrians, and who, together with the (Ḫurrian) Matieni and the (Urarṭian) Alarodii, formed the 18th Satrapy of the Achaemenian realm; Herodotus 3.94; infra n.33. The land of Syspiritis or Sper (Ispir) on the Armeno-Georgian confines was the last homeland of the Saspeires (also: Sapeires, Sabiri, Esperitae); Toumanoff, ‘The Early Bagratids: Remarks in Connexion with Some Recent Publications,’ Le Muséon 62 (1949) 24.Google Scholar
27 The root of the first ethnicon is K-D; of the second, Č-N/S-N/H-N. The former can belong to the group of ethnic names known from the Karda(ka) of a Babylonian monument of the third millennium B.C. to the modern Kurds, together with the Guti, the Qurti (Cyrtii), and possibly the proto-Ḫattian Cataonians; Speiser, E., Mesopotamian Origins (Philadelphia 1930) 110 -119; Driver, G. ‘The Name Kurd in its Philological Connexions,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1923.393–403; Tseretheli, M. ‘The Asianic (Asia Minor) Elements in National Georgian Paganism,’ Georgica 1.1 (1935) 37 n.5. More particularly, the K'art’-vels have been identified with the Carduchi of Xenophon (Anab. 3.5; 4.1, 2, 3, 4; 5.5) and thus held to have originated in Gordyene, while their name may be related to that of the chief god of the Urarṭians, Ḫaldi; Lehmann-Haupt, ‘On the Origin of the Georgians,’ Georgica 3–4 (1937) (he denies any kinship between the Carduchi and the Kurds); Xudadov, V. ‘Xaldy-Urartijcy posle padenija Vanskogo carstva,’ Vestnik Drevnej Istorii 1938/2.3.122; Baschmakoff, A., La Synthèse des Périples pontiques (Paris 1948) 37; Adontz, Armenija 398. The ethnicon of the Suans is traced back by specialists to the second element of the biblical name of Tubalcain (Gen. 4.22) as denoting a group closely related to the Tabalians; it appears at any rate in the sixth and following centuries as the Sanni, the Heniochi, and as the second element in the Mossynoeci, of Hecataeus, fr. 191, 192; Scylax, Per. 76, 86; Herodotus, 3.94; 7.78; Xenophon, Anab. 5.4,5. The last two ethnica are, of course, rendered into Greek paronomastically. The name of Ḫaysa and the Armenian word Hay (‘Armenian’) are likewise derived from this root; Marr, Izbr. raboty 105, 115; infra n. 114.Google Scholar
28 The ethnogenetic process of the Georgians has left traces in the linguistic division as still prevalent among them. The following are the languages spoken by the Georgians : (1) Georgian or K'art'velian (K-D) — the historical and literary language of all the Georgians; (2) Mingrelian (B-L; infra n. 114); (3) Lazian or Čanian (Č-N/S-N/H-N); (4) Suanian (S-N); (5) Abkhazian (M-S; infra b. 114); Marr and Brière, M., La Langue géorgienne (Paris 1931) viii-ix.Google Scholar
29 For the Albanians, see infra nn. 33, 114. Google Scholar
30 See infra, Supplementary Note A. Google Scholar
31 In the religion of the proto-Caucasians and the pre-Christian Armenians and Georgians one observes an amalgam of Anatolian, Ḫurrian, Sumero-Akkadian, and even Aegean elements or of their equivalents — celestial and chthonian deities, gods of vegetation and fertility, the Great Mother, ancestor worship, ‘divine kingship pattern,’ temple-states; cf. Adontz, Hist. d'Arm. 222–230, 247–254, 381–394 (= ‘Les vestiges d'un ancien culte en Arménie’; extrait de l’Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire orientales et slaves 4 [= Mélanges Franz Cumont] Brussels 1936); Lap'anc'yan, Xajasa 84–98; Maloazijskie (Azianičeskie) bogi u Armjan (Istoriko-lingv. raboty); Tseretheli, Elements; O. v. Wesendonk, ‘Über georgisches Heidentum,’ Caucasica 1 (1924); Toumanoff, ‘A Note on the Orontids,’ Le Muséon 72 (1959) I § 14–15; infra nn. 18, 55, 81, 111, 120. — For the importance of Urarṭian architecture, see Herzfeld, , Arch. Hist. Iran (cf. Note A) 14–17, 35–36. ‘Armenia … with its prodigal wealth of metals and its central position between the lands of old oriental history and Asia Minor, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and South Russia, must be regarded as the true home of aeneolithic metallurgy. The farther back in history, the greater becomes the importance of this almost unexplored country,’; ibid. 1–2 (the author would include Armenia in Western Iran).Google Scholar
32 Αϱμένιοι : Hecataeus (c. 550 B.C.) fr. 203 (195); Armina in Old Persian, Harminuya in Elamite, but Urašṭu in Babylonian: the Bīsutūn Inscription § 6, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 (520/519 B.C.); the Persepolis Inscription e § 2 (516/509 B.C.); the Naqš-i-Rustam Inscription a § 3 (516/485 B.C.); the Daiva Inscription (486/465 B.C.); cf. Weissbach, F. H. Die Keilinschriften der Achämeniden (Leipzig 1911) 10, 30–32, 34–35, 36–37, 82, 88–89; Kent, R. G. ‘The Daiva-Inscription of Xerxes,’ Language 13/4 (1937). The ethnicon is arminiya in Old Persian; harmi-nu-ya-irl-ra in Elamite; u-ra-aš-ṭa-a-a in Babylonian; Weissbach 30–34, 54, 60–61; cf. 138–139. — For the dating of these Achaemenian inscriptions, see Ehtécham, M. L'Iran sous les Achéménides (Fribourg 1946) 152–155, 156, 163–165. For the name itself, see Adontz, , Hist. d'Arm. 322–329. The origin of the name is still a matter of some uncertainty (infra n. 114) and its appearance is subsequent to the appearance of the proto-Armenians. It was indeed at first applied precisely to them, but its traditional use has of course been to designate the nation that resulted from the fusion of these with the Urarṭians; it is in the latter sense that ‘Armenian’ is used here (supra n. 21).Google Scholar
33 Armina was the 11th Satrapy on the Bīsutūn list, 7th on the Persepolis list, 19th on the Naqš-i-Rustam list, and 4th on that of the Daiva Inscription. According to Herodotus, the Armenii and the Pactyes formed together the 13th Satrapy (3.93); the 18th included the Urarṭian and Ḫurrian remnants: the Matieni, the Sapeires, and the Alarodii (3.94); the 19th, the proto-Georgian Moschi, Tibareni, Macrones, Mossynoeci, and Mares (ibid.); and the 11th, other proto-Caucasian peoples, like the Caspii (3.92). For the different lists of the Achaemenid provinces, see Ehtécham, , Iran Achém. 121–184. The Moschi may be identical with the people called in Old Persian Mačiyā, in Elamite Maṣṣiya, and in Babylonian Maṣu, appearing in the Naqš-i-Rustam list, especially as they precede the Karkā (Kurqa, Karsa), who can only have been the Colchians; cf. Weissbach, Keilinschriften 88–89. The inclusion of the proto-Georgians in the empire must have taken place under Darius I (e.g., Cavaignac, Monde méd. 455); along with them, some proto-Caucasians of the Isthmus must also have been included in it, for Herodotus, 3.97, speaks of the Caucasus as the northern boundary of the Achaemenid State. — The Albanians are mentioned as vassals of the Achaemenids in Arrian 3.11.4; they seem to have been referred to as Άϱιανοί by Ps. Apollodorus; Markwart, Eranšahr nach der Geographie des Ps. Moses Xorenac’ i (Berlin 1901) 116–199; cf. Andreas, ‘Albania,’ RE 1/1.1303–1305; Tomaschek, ‘Albanoi,’ ibid. 1305–1306; infra n. 114. — The Achaemenid imposts bear witness to the prosperity and populousness of Caucasia at that time; Cavaignac 421–425.Google Scholar
34 Colchis is not found in the list of the vassal States in Ehtécham, Iran Achém. 117–120; but see Herodotus 3.97, supra n. 33. Google Scholar
35 Cf. Kapanaje, D., Gruzinskaja numizmatika (Moscow 1955) 31 -35; Lang, D., Studies in the Numismatic History of Georgia in Transcaucasia (New York 1955) 6–9.Google Scholar
36 Ehtécham, , Iran Achém. 170 175.Google Scholar
37 Cf. Manandyan, , Probl. ob. stroja 15.Google Scholar
38 Anab . 4.5–6. For the equivalence with the viθapaitiš, see Adontz, , Aspect 140; for the latter term, Ehtécham, Iran Achém. 18–26, 40, 110–111. Cf. also Manandyan, O torgovle 18–19; Probl. ob. stroja 15–17.Google Scholar
39 The Cyropaedia, a romance indeed, but one woven with threads of history, contains references to a King of the Armenians (i.e., proto-Armenians), who was an ally of Cyrus the Great, and to his two sons, Tigranes and Sabaris, as well as his struggle with the Chaldians (‘Chaldeaeans’; cf. supra n. 22); Cyrop. 2.4; 3.1, 2, 3 — the title of king is used only in 3.1.3, 4; — Tigranes is also mentioned in 4.2.3; 5.1, 3; 6.1; 8.3, 4. It is in Cyrop., 8.7.11, that we learn of (proto-)Armenia's passing under satrapal control only shortly before the death of Cyrus the Great (529 B.C.). The Armenian historical tradition preserved in Ps. Moses, Hist. Arm. 1.22–31 (cf. infra n. 123), knows of King Tigran, an ally of Cyrus. The evidence of the Cyrop. is discussed by Adontz in Hist. d'Arm. 331–344. For the sociological implication of this evidence, see Manandyan, , O torgovle 43–44; Probl. ob. stroja 16–17. In the proto-Armenians, Dādaršiš, Darius I's general, and Araḫu, the false Nabuchodonosor, Manandyan would see dynasts; ibid.; O torgovle 43.Google Scholar
40 This is the conclusion reached by Manandyan chiefly on the basis of the high number of the proto-Armenian auxiliaries in the Iranian armed forces, as given by the Cyrop. The proto-Armenians, thus, appear as a free armed people; O torgovle 43–45; Probl. ob. strofa. For the Iranian parallel, see Adontz, , Armenija 378–383; Manandyan, Zametki o feode i feodal'nom vojske Parfii i Aršakidskoj Armenii (Tiflis 1932).Google Scholar
41 Infra at nn. 187, 188, 190, 191, 192; Tourmanoff, ‘Some Aspects of Caucasian Social History, A: Lists of the Armenian Princes,’ to appear in Le Muséon. Google Scholar
42 Anab. 5.4.26; cf. 5.4.15 and 5.4.3, 4, 8.Google Scholar
43 Cf. Adontz, , Armenija 390 n.1; Hist. d'Arm. 332–344; Manandyan, O torgovle 43; Probl. ob. stroja 16–17. — It is to be noted in this connexion that some of the assumptions of Adontz, in Armenija, especially 371–426, and in Aspect cannot be readily accepted. (1) He appears to assume that Xenophon told all there was to be told about the social structure of proto-Armenia. In actual fact, of course, Xenophon had no intention of describing the social conditions of that country; and the experience of the Ten Thousand was, after all, of necessity a limited one. On their march through what could only be narrow sections, strips really, of proto-Armenia, they came upon not more than three of four rural settlements (ϰώμαι). These indeed appear to have been still in tribal conditions; but there is nothing in this to negate the existence of bigger dynasts, already emancipated from the tribal ways, to whom Xenophon does refer elsewhere (supra n. 39) and whom the passing Greeks may simply not have happened to meet. — (2) Adontz seems to refer, as a matter of course, this information of the Anab. to all of the territory of future Armenia, i.e., inclusive of the Urarṭians and other proto-Caucasians who only subsequently became parts of Armenia, but who at that time were outside the proto-Armenian federation. The sociological level of these must of necessity have been more advanced than that of the proto-Armenians, weakened as it was by the Thraco-Phrygian admixture. (3) He assumes that the Armenian social development was part and parcel of the Iranian: this is to overlook completely the role of the Ḫayasa, let alone that of the surviving Urarṭians and other proto-Caucasians.Google Scholar
44 Plutarch, , Crassus 33. — For the historic performance of the Bacchae, see Goyan, G., ‘Čerty svoeobrazija armjanskogo ĕllinističeskogo teatra,’ Vestnik Drevnej Istorii 1950/3 (33) 178–183.Google Scholar
45 Manandyan discusses at some length the various theories about the position of this trade route; O torgovle 53–62. The network of trade routes in Caucasia is analyzed ibid. 126–168 and by Markwart, Skizzen zur historischen Topographie und Geschichte von Kaukasien (Vienna 1928). For Armenia's Hellenism, trade, metal industry and toreutic art, see also Rostovtzeff, M., The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford 1941) 856, 576, 586, 540, 376.Google Scholar
46 The Artaxiad house showed a predilection for the name of Tigranes, and this may indicate Artaxias I's descent from, or at least a connexion with, the proto-Armenian Tigranids (Adontz, Armenija 390 n. 1 and 389–390, where the Artaxiads are simply called ‘Tigranids’), who must have been not a little reduced when the proto-Armenians were placed in 529 B.C. under a satrap; cf. supra n.39. It is worth noting that ‘Artaxias’ renders the purely Armenian form (Artašēs) of the name, of which the Iranian form, Artaxšaθra, is customarily given in Greek as ‘Artaxerxes’; H. Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik (Leipzig 1895) 28–29, 505; for a different opinion, not accepted by Hübschmann, see Justi, F., Iranisches Namenbuch (Marburg 1895) 36–37, cf. 34–36. The King Assuerus of the Book of Esther is called Artašēs in the Armenian Bible. — The revolt of Artaxias suggests a dynastic as well as a nationalistic enmity towards the Iranian and satrapal Orontids.Google Scholar
47 For the Orontid dynasty and the above summary of the history of the First Armenian Kingdom, which bridged the gap between the Achaemenian phase and the Second Kingdom of the Artaxiads, see my Orontids. — Our sources for Lesser Armenia and its dynasts are: Strabo 12.3.28; Polybius 25.2; cf. 8.25; cf. also Reinach, Mithridate 78–79; Adontz, Armenija 66–90. Google Scholar
48 The last Orontid, Orontes (Artanes) V, perished in the struggle, but his dynasty survived in several princely houses of Armenia and in the royal house of Commagene; cf. my Orontids I.2, 3, 4, 11–16; II; infra at nn. 181, 194. Google Scholar
49 Iberia was ruled by a branch of the Artaxiads (infra n.68) and Commagene by a branch of the Orontids; supra n. 48. Google Scholar
50 Grousset, , Histoire 89. — The capitals of Armenia were: Armawir of the Orontids (Manandyan, 0 torgovle 37) until Orontes IV transferred his residence to Eruandašat (= ∗Orontaxata), while Armawir remained the holy city (ibid. 38–39); then Artaxata or Artašat, founded by Artaxias I (ibid. 48–53, 109; Manandyan, Tigran Vtoroj i Rim [Erivan 1943] 20–21); and finally, Tigranocerta (∗Tigranakert), later called Neronia; Tigran 56; O torgovle 71–79; Lehmann-Haupt, ‘Tigranokerta,’ RE 6A/1.981–1007. In Sophene, Arsamosata appears to have been built while the Orontids were kings in undivided Greater Armenia (cf. Orontids I.2, 5), so that the capital of the separate Sophenian kingdom could only have been Carcathiocerta or Arcathiocerta; cf. Manandyan, O torgovle 32–35; Tigran 61; Markwart, Südarmenien und die Tigrisquellen (Vienna 1930) 33–38, 68 n.1 (69).Google Scholar
51 The Armenian historical tradition is aware of no break between the Vannic and the Armenian Monarchy and takes for granted the Urarṭian heritage. The Orontid First Armenian Kingdom explains this continuity. Thus, Aram (c. 880–844 B.C.), the founder of the empire of Urartu is regarded by that tradition as one of the royal successors of Hayk, the eponym of the Armenians; Prim. Hist. Arm. (for which, see infra n. 113: apud Sebēos, Hist. Heracl.; ed. Tiflis 1912) 3, 7; Ps. Moses 1.5, 12, 13, 14, 19; cf. infra n. 114. Ps. Moses also refers (1.12) to the derivation of the non-Armenian term ‘Armenia’ from the same Aram. — For the imperial title of Tigranes and his successors, see infra n. 53. ‘Greater Armenia’ has here rendered μεγάλη Ἀμενία = Armenia maior of the Graeco-Latin sources, as used in contradistinction to μιϰϱὰ Ἀϱμενία = Armenia minor. On the other hand, ‘Great Armenia’ is used herein to render the terminology of the national historical tradition, which, because Lesser Armenia had long passed outside the Armenian political sphere, and, no doubt, also under the influence of the imperial tradition, acquired an absolute sense, comparable to that of ‘Great Britain.’ Cf. the fifth-century historian, Faustus of Buzanda, Hist. Arm. 3.3 (ed. Venice 1933, 20): mecin Hayoc’ tiknoJ̌n; 3.8 (29); ašxarhin Hayoc’ mecac’; ibid. (31): zōravarn Hayoc’ mecac’; 3.10 (36): kat'oḷikosin Hayoc’ mecac’, etc. (lit. ‘Great Armenians’). — The latest study on Tigranes the Great is Manandyan's monograph, Tigran, in many respects a most excellent work. Very important is the author's contribution towards clearing the great king's reputation from a certain stigma which modern historiography inherited from the Roman war propaganda. For this, see also Grousset, Histoire 84–100 (and, for a similar task, Tarn, Sir W. W.'s chivalrous treatment of Cleopatra in CAH 10, chaps. 2, 3).Google Scholar
52 The last Artaxiad sovereign was Queen Erato, who was definitively dethroned — for the second time — c. A.D. 14 (P. Asdourian, Die politischen Beziehungen zwischen Armenien und Rom [Venice 1911] 69–72, 78) or earlier (N. Debevoise, A Political History of Parthia [Chicago 1938] 147–148); cf. Stein, ‘Erato,’ RE 6/1. 355–356 (No. 9). — The Armenian historical tradition, as found in the Prim. Hist. Arm. 15–16 and Ps. Moses 1.8; 2.2; 3ff., commits the curious error of regarding the Artaxiads as one continuous dynasty with the Arsacids, who began to reign in Armenia in the first century of our era, and thus of referring to them as also Arsacids; infra at n. 126. For the history of Armenia under the Artaxiads and their successors, see also Debevoise, op.cit. 121–202; Magie, D., Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton 1950) passim.Google Scholar
53 The official title of Tigranes the Great and his successors was βασιλεὺς βασιλέων or μέγας βασιλεύς; cf. the numismatic evidence cited in Asdourian, Arm. u. Rom 51 n. 1, 52 n. 2, 68 n. 2, 69 n. 1, 77 n. 3. In the Garni stele, Tiridates III entitles his consort μεγάλη βασίλισσα cf., e.g., Kherumian, in Vostan 1 (1948–1949) 278. Cf. also Plutarch, Lucullus 14.5; 21.7; Appian, Syr. 48; Dio Cassius 37.6. Alexander Helios, son of Marc Antony and Cleopatra, was made King of Kings of Parthia, Media, and Armenia (Plutarch, Ant. 54; Dio Cassius 49.41), and Marc Antony's coin struck to commemorate the conquest of Armenia in 34 B.C. has the legend: Cleopatrae reginae regum filiorum regum; Asdourian, op. cit. 64 n. 2. — For the equivalence of ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Great King’ and their religious significance, see Griffith, , βασιλεὺς βασιλέων ; cf. also Jessen, Basileus 80–81. It is difficult to agree with Herzfeld, E. that the title of Tigranes the Great signified ‘the aspiration to the suzerainty over all Iran’ (Paikuli: Monument and Inscription of the Early History of the Sasanian Empire I [Berlin 1924] 217); although it may have been assumed in imitation of the Iranian monarchs, it was not a title peculiar to Iran. For the theophanic character of the Armenian kings, see infra n. 120; for that of the Vannic kings, supra at n. 18.Google Scholar
54 Plutarch, , Lucullus 21.2, 5; Appian, Syr. 48; cf. Manandyan, Tigran, passim; O torgovle 66–69; Probl. ob. stroja 24. — The unfavorable Graeco-Roman sources caricature Tigranes and the Achaemenian ceremonial of his Court; Manandyan, Tigran 58; cf. Grousset, Histoire 89. This caricature has been repeated to this day; cf., e.g., Magie, Roman Rule 338–340 etc.Google Scholar
55 For the role of the Armenian military-landowning aristocracy, see Manandyan, , Tigran 56; O torgovle 67–82; Probl. ob. stroja 22–25; cf. Grousset, Histoire 91. For the temple-states, the most celebrated of which was no doubt that of Anaitis in Acilisene (Strabo 11.14.16), see Rostovtzeff, . Soc. Econ. Hist. 505–506; also cf. Carrière, A., Les huit sanctuaires de l'Arménie payenne, d'après Agathange et Moïse de Khoren (Paris 1899).Google Scholar
56 On the similar development in Iberia, cf. infra at nn. 97–99. See also Rostovtzeff, Soc. Econ. Hist. 1157–1159 for the general social conditions in Hellenistic Armenia and other Hellenistic States of Asia Minor. Google Scholar
57 Toumanoff, , Some Aspects of Caucasian Social History , B: The Caucasian Vitaxae. Google Scholar
58 Infra at nn. 187–197; Toumanoff, Orontids; Lists.Google Scholar
59 Syr . 48.Google Scholar
60 Ehtécham, , Iran Achém. 113–115. 184; Bengtson, H., Die Strategie in der hellenistischen Zeit II (Munich 1944) 38–64; Lehmann-Haupt, ‘Satrap,’ RE. 2A/1.Google Scholar
61 Bengtson, , Strategie , esp. 90–193.Google Scholar
62 Strabo 11.14.5, 15; cf. Bengtson, Strategie 409. Google Scholar
63 Bengtson, , Strategie 255–257, cf. 412; cf. Manandyan, Tigran 58; O torgovle. Google Scholar
64 Bengtson, , Strategie 78–142. This was an obvious equivalent of the Achaemenian institution of the toparch or bēvarāpaitiš, for which see Ehtécham, , Iran Achém. 70–71, 114, 184.Google Scholar
65 Nat. hist. 6.27. Cf. Adontz, Armenija 391–392, 433; and infra at nn. 207–208.Google Scholar
66 The Japanese parallel once again (cf. supra n. 11) suggests itself. Both Caucasia and Japan were — to use the terminology of the authors of Feud. in Hist. (supra n. 2 ff.) — ‘ghost empires,’ i.e., ‘something which necessarily accompanies feudalism.’ Though formed through the projection of an ‘old empire’ upon tribal territory (thus the Han Empire of China and the Achaemenid Empire of Iran) each ‘ghost’ was in actual fact modelled on a ‘real and solid,’ and moreover contemporary, imperial formation which had succeeded the ‘old empire’ (the T'ang in one case, the Seleucid and Parthian in the other) and which occupied ‘the main part of the society’ (Far East, Near East) and was ‘an empire of different quality,’ i.e., one devoid of feudal features; cf. Coulborn, Comp. Study of Feud. esp. 246–247. Google Scholar
67 The Georgian form of this Iranoid name, for which see Justi, , Namenbuch 92; Hübschmann, Grammatik 89; infra n. 111, is P'arnavaz. The dynastic patronymic is P'arnavazian; Leontius of Ruisi (hereinafter: Leont. Mrov.; cf. infra n. 79), Hist. of the Kings of Iberia (ed. Qauxč'išvili, S., K'art'lis C'xovreba I [Tiflis 1955]) 7–66; cf. the P'aṛ[n]awazean of the Armenian historical tradition; Prim. Hist. Arm. 14; Faustus 5.15. P'arnavaz-P'aṛnawaz was incorporated into the royal theogonies of that tradition; Prim. Hist. Arm. 9. For the divine descent claimed by the Iberian dynasts, see infra at n. 81; for the royal theophany in Iberia, infra at n. 111.Google Scholar
68 The Iberian historical tradition, as found in Leont. Mrov. and, to a lesser extent, in the Convers. Iber. with its appendages: the Prim. Hist. Iber., the Roy. List I, the Roy. List II and the Roy. List III (cf. infra n. 79: ed. E. T'aqaišvili, in Sbornik Materialou dlja opisanifa … Kavkaza 41 [1910] 48–96 and 42 [1912] 1–57) provides a few synchronisms of value, on the basis of which an approximate chronology of early Iberian history can be established. For a recent attempt in this direction, see Ingoroqva, P., ‘Jvel-k'art'uli matiane « Mok'c'eva K'art'lisa » da antikuri xanis Iberiis mep'et'a sia,’ Sak'art'velos Sax. Muzeuṁis Moambe 11 (1941) 294–299. — The male posterity of Pharnabazus became, according to that tradition, extinct with his son Sauromaces or Saurmag, and the throne passed to the latter's cousin by marriage, son-in-law, and adopted son Mirvan, Mirvan I. was an Iranian and his family is known as the Nebrot'ian dynasty; Leont. Mrov. 27–30, 33–35, cf. 63. The name means ‘the race of Nemrod,’ by which the Iranians as a people were occasionally designated in early Georgian literature; cf. Leont. Mrov. 10, 12. This dynasty, which may be called ‘Second Pharnabazid,’ was momentarily replaced by a branch of the Armenian royal house, related to it in its turn through a woman: Mirvan I's daughter; Leont. Mrov. 28–30. The date of this event must lie somewhere in the middle of the second century B.C., wheṇ Armenia was under Artaxiad rule. The Iberian historical tradition indirectly, but unmistakably, supports this when it describes these Armenian Kings of Iberia as Arsacids (Aršakun; Leont. Mrov. 33 etc.), for this is exactly how the Armenian historical tradition regards the Artaxiads (supra n. 52; infra at n. 126). Accordingly, the royal name of Arsaces (Aršak), borne by two Kings of Iberia — one of them Nemrodid, but son of an Artaxiad princess — (Leont. Mrov. 28–30, 33–35; Roy. List I 49 [Arsok, Arsuk]) and by a King of Armenia as given by Leont. Mrov. 28, is an obvious error for Artaxias (Artašēs), the King of Armenia in question being, clearly, Artaxias I. Finally, the momentarily restored Nemrodids were followed by the Third Pharnabazid dynasty, which is said to have been West Georgian by origin and descended from a sister of Pharnabazus and which had no other name than P'arnauazian; Leont. Mrov. 55–57. — Seleucid suzerainty over the early Iberian Monarchy is unequivocally admitted by Leont. Mrov. 23, 25, 28, cf. 19. There seems to be no direct confirmation of this in the sources of Seleucid history. But, as stated above, Seleucid control of Armenia must of historical necessity have implied at least claims to a control of Iberia. Possibly, as with the Caliphate, centuries later, both countries were, from the overlord's point of view, regarded as Armenia. At any rate, the project of Seleucus I to dig a canal between the Caspian and the Black Sea (Pliny, Nat. hist. 6.31), as well as the Caspian expedition of his and Antiochus I's admiral Patrocles (Strabo 2.1.2–7 etc.; Pliny 2.167–168; 6.58) seem to corroborate the Iberian memory of Seleucid overlordship. As for the Iberian dependence on Tigranes the Great, it is well known from the history of that monarch; cf. e.g., Grousset, Histoire 87. Early Iberian history (prior to the fourth century) testifies, as is clear from Leont Mrov., to the preponderant role of Armenia in Iberian affairs. More that that, there are explicit admissions of the suzerainty of the Armenian kings over the Iberian; Leont. Mrov. 44, 49.Google Scholar
69 The last King of Iberia of the Third Pharnabazid dynasty, Amazaspes II, was replaced by his sister's son, Rev, son of the King of Armenia; Leont. Mrov. 57–58. This event took place sometime in the eighties of the second century; cf. Gugushvili, A., ‘The Chronological-Genealogical Table of the Kings of Georgia,’ Georgica 1.2–3 (1936) 112. The period was one of great confusion for Armenia, with the throne wrested from one another by several claimants. Thus, in A.D. 140-c.185, that throne was occupied by the Roman candidate, Sohaemus, a prince of the House of Emesa, who was, however, related to the Arsacids; this reign was interrupted in A.D. 160–163 by that of the Iranian candidate, the Arsacid Aurelius Pacorus; Asdourian, Arm. u. Rom 111–116; Grousset, Histoire 111–113; Debevoise, Parthia 249, 252–254. The name of Rev's grandson, Bakur (Pacorus) suggests that his connection was with the Arsacids rather than with the Emesan dynasty. — To the Albanian throne, the Arsacids may have come as early as the second half of the first century, i.e., soon after the accession of Tiridates I to the throne of Armenia and possibly owing to the efforts of the Great King Vologaeses I; Krymskij, A., ‘Stranicy iz istorii Severnogo ili Kavkazskogo Azerbejdžana (Klassičeskoj Albanii),’ Sergeju Feodoroviču Ol'denburgu (Akademija Nauk S.S.S.R. Leningrad 1934) 294, interpreting Ps. Moses 2.8 and Moses Kalankatuac'i, Hist. Alb. 1.4.15. The Kings of Albania of this dynasty bore the distinctive title of Aran- or Eran-šāh; Krymskij, op. cit., 294 n. 3; 290 n. 3.Google Scholar
70 11.2.18 : Tò μὲν γὰϱ παλαιòν ὃσην ἐπιφάνειαν ἒσχεν ᾑ χώϱα αὓτη, δηλοῦσιν οἱ μῦθοι, τῂν Ἰάσονος στϱατείαν αἰνιττόμενοι πϱοελθόντος μέχϱι ϰαὶ Μηδίας, ἒτι δὲ πϱότεϱον τῂν Φϱίξου. μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα διαδεξάμενοι βασιλεΙς εἰς σϰηπτουχίας διῃϱημένην ἒχοντες τῂν χώϱαν μέσως ἒπϱαττον. Google Scholar
71 11.2.13. δυναστεύονται δὲ ϰαὶ οὗτοι ὑπò τῶν ϰαλουμένων σϰηπτούχων • ϰαὶ αὐτοὶ δὲ οὗτοι ὑπò τυϱάννοις ἢ βασιλεῦσίν εἰσιν. It is difficult to see why Reinach, Mithridate 77, should have thought that there were no kings above the ‘sceptuchs’ in Colchis. For the ‘sceptuchs,’ see supra n. 8; infra n. 115. Google Scholar
72 11.2.18. Αὐξηθέντος δὲ ἐπὶ πολὺ Μιθϱιδάτου τοῦ Εὐπάτοϱος, εἰς ἐκεΙνον ᾑ χώϱα πεϱιέστη • ἐπέμπετο δ’ ἀεί τις τῶν φίλων ὓπαϱχος ϰαὶ διοικητῂς τῇς χώϱας. τούτων δέν ϰαὶ Moaφέϱνης, ὁ τῇς μητϱòς ᾑμων θεΙος πϱòς πατϱός. Google Scholar
73 11.4.6. Διαφέϱουσι δὲ ϰαὶ οἱ βασιλεΙς • νυνὶ μὲν οὖν εἷς ἁπάντων ἄρχει, πϱότεϱον δὲ ϰαὶ ϰαθ’ ἑϰάστην γλῶτταν ἰδίᾳ ἐβασιλεύοντο ἕϰαστοι. γλῶτται δ’ εἰσιν ἕξ ϰαὶ εἴϰοσι αὐτοΙς διὰ τò μῂ εὐεπίμιϰτον πϱòς ἀλλήλους. Google Scholar
74 11.14 (on Armenia). For Iberia, see infra n. 88. Google Scholar
76 Supra n. 42.Google Scholar
76 Supra n. 7.Google Scholar
77 Though there are really no indications for supposing the early Iberians to have been, like the proto-Armenians, an army-people superimposed upon the subjugated autochthon (cf. supra n. 40), as does Manandyan, O torgovle 17, the element of conquest must nevertheless have indeed played a certain role in the formation of the Georgian, as in that of any other nation; cf. infra n. 97. This element modern Georgian historiography rather tends to understate; cf. J̌avaxišvili, K'art’. er. ist.; K'art'uli samart'lis istoria I (Tiflis 1928); Gosudarstvennyj stroj drevnej Gruzii i drevnej Armenii (St. Petersburg 1905); Allen, History 221–227. The following statement of Brosset can not be taken without further qualification: ‘En Géorgie, comme dans tous les pays de l'Europe jusqu'au xix e siècle, le féodalisme florissait depuis les temps les plus reculés, non, il est vrai, par le droit de la guerre, de la conquête, de la force brutale, mais comme une dérivation de l’état patriarchal, de la construction de la famille naturelle, de l'agrégation sociale, puis de la variété et de l'inégalité des facultés et de l'intelligence’ (Introduction à l'Histoire de la Géorgie [St. Petersburg 1858] lxxv). Karst, J., Corpus juris ibero-caucasici I/2/1 (Strasbourg 1935) 251–254, quite correctly sees the combination of the basic tribal evolution with an element of conquest, but fails to discern by whom that conquest could have been effected and so, according to the familiar cliché (infra, Note A), suggests ‘une ancienne invasion ou immigration ario-mède’ (253, but cf. 241).Google Scholar
78 Cf. Rostovtzeff, , Hist. Anc. World 184.Google Scholar
79 In order to avoid confusion between the Georgian Leontius of Ruisi and the Armenian historian Leontius the Priest, the former is herein referred to by the Georgian form of his name ‘Leont[i] Mrov[eli]’ and the latter by the Armenian form of ‘Ḷewond.’ See, for Leont. Mrov. and his dating, Tarchnišvili, M. Geschichte der kirchlichen georgischen Literatur (ST 185; Vatican City 1955) 91–94; ‘La découverte d'une inscription géorgienne de l'an 1066,’ Bcdi Karthlisa 26- 27 (1957) 86–89; and, for the Conversion of Iberia, the Prim. Hist. Iber., and the Royal List I, II, III, found together with them in the MSS, my ‘Caucasia and Byzantine Studies,’ Traditio 12 (1956) 413–417.Google Scholar
80 Leont. Mrov. 3–8; Prim. Hist. Iber. 49 (for the divergence between the two versions, see infra n. 85). Google Scholar
81 Leont. Mrov. 8–11. The name ‘K'art'losid’ (K'rart'los[i]an) is also found ibid. 13, 18, 24, etc. (The Greek endings of the ethnarchal names reflect the Graecism of early Georgian literature; cf. my ‘Medieval Georgian Historical Literature,’ Traditio 1 [1943] 167 n. 14 [== 168]). — Like the Homeric Basileids (cf., e.g., Bury, Hist. of Greece 55; Jessen, Basileus 56), the Iberian K'art'losids claimed divine descent. In the latter case, this descent was deduced from K'art'los, the divinized eponym of the people. In national literature, however, formed as it was under Christian auspices, the character of gods or demi-gods once attributed to that eponym and his family was changed to that of heroic giants (gmir: Leont. Mrov. 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) — possibly under the influence of Gen. 6.4 — and K'art'los himself was attached genealogically to the tabula populorum of Genesis by being made a son of Thogarma, who likewise was represented as a giant; Leont. Mrov. 4. Certain revealing details were nevertheless left unaltered. Thus, according to Leont. Mrov. 8–10, 11, K'art'los raised a fortress upon a mountain at the confluence of the Cyrus and the Aragus or Aragvi rivers, and both that fortress and that mountain received thereupon the founder's name, as ‘K'art'li’ (the same word as that for ‘Iberia’; cf. infra at n. 113); and it is there that he was buried. His tomb, then, became the centre of an ancestor-cult and was, moreover, connected with an astral cult. The latter cult is believed by specialists to have been peculiar to the proto-Caucasian autochthons; and that of K'art'los, to the proto-Georgian newcomers. The cult of K'art'los may have been connected, as, according to some, is his name, with the chief Urarṭian god Ḫaldi. The conjunction of an astral religion and ancestor-worship with the eponym of the nation is observable also in Armenia. For all this, see Melikset, L. -Bekov, Armazni (Materialy po Istorii Gruzii i Kavkaza 1938 2) 19–21; Marr, N., ‘Astronomičeskie i ĕtničeskie značenija dvux plemennyx nazvanij Armjan,’ Zapiski Vostočnogo Otdeleneija Russkogo Arxeologičesogo Obščestva 25 (1922); infra n. 120. In the Iberian tradition, moreover, K'art'los is represented as a younger brother of Haos, i.e., Hayk, the eponym of the Armenians (supra n. 51). And in the Armenian historical tradition, as will be seen (infra at n. 120), no less than in the Iberian, traces are found of the divine origin claimed by the Armenian counterparts of the K'art'losids: the Haykids; ibid. With the establishment of the Iberian Monarchy, the castle of K'art'li became the centre of the cult of Armaz, chief god of Georgian paganism, as well as of the cults of other deities, and came to be called ‘Armaz(n)i’; Leont. Mrov. 25; cf. Tseretheli, Elements 41–42, 50; Melikset-Bekov 22–24; infra nn. 111, 120. — The assertion of the Iberian tradition that at the beginning the descendants of K'art'los spoke Armenian (Leont. Mrov. 16) may be a memory of the original proto-Caucasian unity, if by Armenian the language of the Ḫayasa, or of the Urarṭians, be meant (cf. supra n. 30).Google Scholar
82 Armazi-K'art'li was the original center of the dynasty that was to unify the whole of Iberia; early enough, however, and before the formation of the Iberian Monarchy, it was superseded in that role by the neighboring town of Mc'xet'a — a populous settlement already in the second millennium B.C., as has been revealed by recent archaeological discoveries (Amiranašvili, Ist. gruz. isk. 84) — while Armazi remained the holy city of Iberia; cf. Melikset-Bekov, Armazni 17–28; cf. Markwart, Skizzen 9–23. To the Graeco-Roman world, the first capital was known as Ἁϱμοζιϰή (Strabo 11.3.5), Harmastis or Hermastus (Pliny 6.11, 12), Ἀϱμακτίκα or Ἀϱμάστιϰα (Ptolemy 5.10; 8.10 tab. 3 Asiae), also simply Ἀϰϱόπολις (Dio Cassius 37.1) — showing by the way that it was also called ‘Armaz-c'ixe’ (‘Armaz-Castle’) — and the second capital was known as Μετλῇτα (Ptolemy 5.10.3), Μεσχιθά (Agathias 2.22). — For the rise of the dynasty of Armazi-Mc'xet'a to a position of hegemony, see Leont. Mrov. 10–11. It was no doubt the projection upon the past of the Crown's point of view to assert with our historian that the dissensions among the dynasts (t'avad is the term used: having originally the sense of princeps and later that of ‘prince’; infra n. 93) were a corruption of the previous subordination of all to the eldest line of the posterity of K'art'los — a sort of monarchical Golden Age. For mamasaxlisi see infra n. 89. Google Scholar
83 Leont. Mrov. 12–16. In accord with the Iranian national epic Xwāδay-Nāmaǧ (from which, on his own admission, he borrowed; cf. Toumanoff, Hist. Lit. 166–167), Leonti knows of the Achaemenids under the disguise of the mythical Kayanids. Google Scholar
84 Leont. Mrov. 17–20. The fact of Seleucid overlordship (supra n. 68) and of the passing of Iberia, like Armenia (for which, see, e.g., Grousset, Histoire 79–80), from Achaemenid to Macedonian control must have implied the presence, or at least the appearance, of Macedonian troops in the country. Strabo, at any rate, preserved the memory of an expedition sent by Alexander, under the command of Menon, to Sper on the confines of Iberia in search for its golds mines; 11.14.9: Μέταλλα δ’εν μὲν rᾗ Συσπιϱίτιδί ἐστι χϱυσoῦ ϰατὰ τὰ κάβαλλα, ἐφ’ ἅ Μένωνα ἒπεμψεν Ἀλέξανδϱος μετά στρατιωτών, άνήχθη [ἀνῃϱέθη, ἀνεδείχθη, ἐδείχθη, ἀπήχθη, ἀνεφχθη, ἀπήγχθη?] δ’ ὑπò τῶν ἐγχωϱίων. Syspiritis ϰατὰ τὰ κάβαλλα = Sper; Adontz, Hist. d'Arm. 322 n. 2. This and similar other manifestations of Macedonian power must have been represented by the Iberian historical tradition as Alexander's invasion of Iberia itself and his lieutenant Azon's rule in it; for this rule, see Leont. Mrov. 18–23. Google Scholar
85 Leont. Mrov. 20–26. According to the Prim. Hist. Iber., 48–49, Azo (= Azon) was not the Macedonian commander, but the first King of Iberia, son of the ‘King of Arian-K'art'li,’ who was brought, together with followers, to Iberia by Alexander; and Pharnabazus was his successor. ‘Arian-K'art'li’ of this version refers presumably to the region whence the K'art'vels migrated to Iberia; and this migration is, accordingly, made contemporaneous with Alexander's conquests. The entire story is quite obviously a highly telescoped version of the tradition recorded by Leonti Mroveli. This, however, has not been noticed by modern Georgian historiography, and the information of the Prim. Hist. Iber. has been accepted in preference over the less foreshortened version; cf. Berjenišvili, Ist. Gruzii 60–61 (where ‘Azο[n]’ is even equated with Jason); Gugushvili, Table 109–110. The fact that the Prim. Hist. Iber. may have been compiled at an earlier date than Leonti's History does not, of course, necessarily imply its greater trustworthiness when reporting the memory of such remote events. Google Scholar
86 Infra at n. 104.Google Scholar
87 11.3.1, 3. Google Scholar
88 11.3.6. τέτταϱα δέ ϰαὶ γένη τῶν άνθϱώπων οἰϰεΙ τῂν χώραν • ἓν μὲν ϰαὶ πϱῶτον, ἐξ οὗ τοὺς βασιλέας ϰαθιστᾷσι, ϰατ’ ἀγχιστείαν τε ϰαὶ ᾑλικίαν τòν πϱεσβύτατον, ὁ δὲ δεύτεϱος διϰαιοδοτεΙ ϰαὶ στϱατηλατεΙ • δεύτεϱος δὲ τò τῶν ἱεϱέων, oἵ ἑπιμελοῦνται ϰαὶ τῶν πϱòς τοὺς ὁμόϱους διϰαίων • τρίτον δὲ τò τῶν στϱατευομένων ϰαὶ γεωϱγούντων • τέταρτον δὲ τò τῶν λαῶν, oἵ βασιλικοί δοῦλοί εἰσι ϰαὶ πάντα διακονοῦνται τὰ πϱòς τòν βίον. ϰοιναὶ δ’ εἰσὶν αὐτοΙς αἱ ϰτήσεις ϰατὰ συγγένειαν, ἄϱχει δὲ ϰαὶ ταμιεύει ἑϰάστην ὁ πϱεσβύτατος. Strabo mentions in the same breath as the Iberians also some highland tribes north of them, undoubtedly vassals of the Iberian Monarchy, who are, according to him, more numerous than the former and, unlike them, similar to the Scythians and the Sarmatians; Strabo 11.3.3. This made Adontz think these tribes to have also been Iberians and equate them with Strabo's Third Class; Armenija 407 n. 1. Adontz is also in error when he presumes the Iberians of that time to have been less advanced than the Armenians (Aspect 141), because the former had communal ownership; actually, in Armenia, too, property was held communally by a family; infra n. 160. Google Scholar
89 Older historians taught that the class formation in Iberia, and Georgia in general, became crystallized only at the time of Strabo or even later; J̌avaxišvili, Gos. stroj 55; Adontz, Armenija 406–409; cf. among modern scholars, Allen, History 244–245. Corporate ownership must in part have influenced these opinions (supra n. 88), although in actual fact this kind of ownership has no relation whatsoever to the degree of social crystallization, subsisting, as it did, in Georgia well into modern times; Karst, Corpus juris I/2/2 (Strasbourg 1937) 147–154, 160–164; cf. Lang, D., The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy . 1658–1832 (New York 1957) 61; infra at n. 160. Nor need the prevalence of corporate ownership of gentilitial lands be necessarily taken to imply that private ownership was unknown (cf. Allen, History 223–224); for indeed the two systems co-existed in Georgia; Gvritišvili, D., P'eodaluri Sak'art’ velos soc'ialuri urt'ieri'obis istoriidan (Tiflis 1955) 271–274; Lang 61–62. In this connexion the term mamasaxlisi, which the historical tradition applies to the Dynasts of Armazi-Mc'xet'a (Leont. Mrov. 11, 15, 16, 20, 22), was presumed to have belonged, still in the historical epoch, to every head of family; J̌avaxišvili, Gos. stroj 11–16. However, what sources there are do not help to substantiate this claim; and some medieval and early modern uses of the term (for village chiefs or town mayors; ibid. 11–16, 45) appear to have been mere examples of the degeneration of an ancient title. This term is a compound of mama (‘father’; and of the genitive of saxl (‘house’), and thus an equivalent of the paterfamilias and the Armenian tanutēr (infra at n. 137). This equivalence, as J̌avaxišvili (Gos. stroj 51, 100–103, 106–107, 121–128, 136–137) himself admitted, was not only etymological, but also functional. As with its Armenian equivalent (and another one: nahapet; infra at n. 137), the use of the term in historical times was somewhat archaistic and, whatever may have been its pre-historic, tribal uses of which we have no record, decidedly princely. In the same way, the term saxl has, in all the instances adduced by J̌avaxišvili (Gos. stroj 31–33), the significance of ‘domain’ and thus the equivalent of the Armenian tun (infra at n. 137). See also Karst, Corpus juris I/2/1.75 n. 3, 76 n. 2.Google Scholar
90 J̌avaxišvili, , Gos. stroj. 9; Allen, History 222.Google Scholar
91 Karst, , Corpus juris I/2/1.204, 237–240, 244–249, 251–254.Google Scholar
92 The eighteenth-century Georgian scholar Prince Vaxušt (natural son of King Vaxtang VI) has preserved much interesting information on the social structure of early Georgia. He asserts that the princes (mt'avarn) were descended from K'art'los and honored as such; when of the royal family, they enjoyed a still greater consideration; Geogr. Descr. (Aǧcera samep'osa Sak'art'velosa, ed. Brosset, M. F., Description géographique de la Géorgie par le tsarévitch Wakhoucht [St. Petersburg 1842]) 12. Vaxušt also mentions the submission of the princes to the Dynast of Mc'xet'a; ibid. 6, 8. For the divine descent once claimed by the K'art'losids, see supra n. 81. The term K'art'los[i]an, be it noted, had a general and a particular sense: it denoted (a) in an elevated style, the Iberians in general (Leont. Mrov. 16; i.e., ‘the race of K'art'los,’ cf. ‘the race of Nemrod’ as applied to the Iranians; supra n. 68); and (b) the dynasts descended from the Eponym, the K'art'losids par excellence. Google Scholar
93 The earliest instances of the use of mt'avar are in: the Martyrdom of St. Susan (fifth c.; ed. Qubanei, S. švili in Jveli k'art'uli ena da literatura [Tiflis 1947]) 13(41); the Martyrdom of St. Eustace of Mc'xet'a (sixth c.; ed. Qubaneišvili, op. cit.) 3, 4(47); and various biblical texts, as an equivalent of ᾑγεμών, ἄϱχών, πϱῶτος; cf. Molitor, J., Monumenta iberica antiquiora (CSCO 166: Subsidia 10 [Louvain 1956]) 114. See also Karst, Corpus juris I/2/1.204, 237–240, 244–249, 251–254. Like its later equivalent t'avad, mt'avar is derived from ∗t'avel, t'av (‘head’); Marr and Brière, Langue 636. In compound words, mt'avar renders ἀϱχι- and -αϱχης ibid. 636, 629 [mt'avar-ebiskopos = ‘archbishop’], 648 [mamat’-mt'avar = ‘patriarch’]. — The earliest use of sep'ecul is in Mart. St. Eustace 3(47); also in Ps. Moses 2.7 (ed. Tiflis 1913; p. 105). Sep'e, the first part of the compound, is an adjectival formation parallel to the substantive mep'e (‘king’); S. anašia, K kritike Moiseja Xorenskogo (Materialy po Istorii Gruzii i Kavkaza 6 [1937]) 477–480. It is, accordingly, a purely Georgian word and one not connected (as affirmed by Marr, J̌avaxišvili, Adontz, but denied by Hübschmann) with the Armenian sepuh (infra at. n. 138). The second part denotes ‘child.’ Ps. Moses, 2.7 (105), states that the term sep'cuḷ designated those who were descended from the first Kings of Iberia; this anašia takes au pied de la lettre and, since he regards the First Class as the royal family only, holds the sep'eculn to have been descendants of kings; op. cit. 475–503; in Bull. Inst. Marr 4/2 (1938) 178; cf. Berjenišvili, Ist. Gruzii 108. In the controversy between anašia and Kakabaje, which went on in the pages of the Bull. Inst. Marr, 4/2.163–186. the latter was quite correct in asserting that the First Class was indeed a class and that sep'ecul was an equivalent of mt'avar (177–178), but he made the mistake of thinking that aznaur was another equivalent of the same (cf. infra at nn. 97, 98). The text of the Mart. St. Eustace has the following: ‘there rose the mt'avarni of Iberia, and Samuel, Katholikos of Iberia, and Gregory, Mamasaxlisi of Iberia, and Aršuša, Vitaxa of Iberia, and the other sep'eculni.’ The Katholikos (a prince of the Church), the Mamasaxlisi Gregory, and the Vitaxa Aršuša III were not of the royal house, but members of the princely class, hence at once mt'avarn and sep'eculn; for the Mamasaxlisi and the Vitaxa, see Toumanoff, ‘Iberia on the Eve of Bagratid Rule,’ Le Muséon 65 (1952) § 15, Excursus A; Vitaxae V.Google Scholar
96 Cf. Karst, , Corpus juris I/2/1.238–239. There is actually no basis for speaking of a ‘theocracy’ or domination by the slave-owning priestly caste in Hellenistic Iberia, as does anašia, in Bull. Inst. Marr 4/2.170–173; Sak'art'velo adrirideli p'eodal. gzaze (Tiflis 1937) 36–38. The king's theophanic position, which can be inferred from the available data (supra n. 81; infra at n. 111), does not favor the theory of a priestly domination; and slavery does not appear to have flourished on any extensive scale in Caucasia; infra n. 103. — For the Albanian priesthood, see Strabo 11.4.7.Google Scholar
94 Thus, the Mart. of the Nine Infants of Kola, a work of not later than the 6th c. and one reflecting a tradition of still higher antiquity (Tarchnišvili, Georg. Literatur 401–403; cf. Karst, Corpus juris I/2/1.175–176, 245 n. 4) bears witness to the sovereign rights exercised by the mt'avarn in Iberian cantons; ibid. 248. The Princes of Kola are not known to us also from Armenian sources, as are some other Georgian princes of the Georgio-Armenian marchlands; infra n. 225. Google Scholar
95 The historical tradition is conveniently epitomized, in this respect, in Brosset, Histoire de la Géorgie … traduite du géorgien II/l (St. Petersburg 1856) Addition ix: Tables généalogiques 619–622; cf. also Gugushvili, Table 112–113; Ingoroqva, Jv. k'art.’ matiane. Of these two, the former cites both the data of Leonti Mrov. and that of the Roy. List I and II, as well as the results of the researches of Gorgaje, S., Cerileba Sak'art'velos istoriidan (Tiflis 1908–1910); the latter, like Gorgaje, seems to regard the Roy. List, because attached to the Convers. Iber., as a better source than Leonti. For the system of succession in Caucasia, see infra at n. 159.Google Scholar
96 Cf. Karst, , Corpus juris I/2/1.238–239. There is actually no basis for speaking of a ‘theocracy’ or domination by the slave-owning priestly caste in Hellenistic Iberia, as does J̌anašia, in Bull. Inst. Marr 4/2.170–173; Sak'art'velo adrirideli p'eodal. gzaze (Tiflis 1937) 36–38. The king's theophanic position, which can be inferred from the available data (supra n. 81; infra at n. 111), does not favor the theory of a priestly domination; and slavery does not appear to have flourished on any extensive scale in Caucasia; infra n. 103. — For the Albanian priesthood, see Strabo 11.4.7.Google Scholar
97 Cf. supra at nn. 38–40, 77. It is important to note that the Georgian word er means both ‘people’ and ‘army.’ In the earliest biblical translations this word corresponds to λαός, ἄχλος, ἄχλοι, πλῇθος; whereas its derivative erisagan (‘one of er’) is the equivalent of στϱατιώτης; Molitor, Monumenta 105. anašia and Kakabaje apply these terms to the Third Class; Bull. Inst. Marr 4/2.177–178. Cf. infra n. 104. Google Scholar
98 The earliest sources to mention aznaur are the Mart. St. Susan, 2 (35), 16 (43), and biblical texts in which it corresponds to πϱῶτος while its derivative has also the significance of ‘freedom’; Molitor, Monumenta 94. The first part of this compound word is the Armenian azn, meaning ‘birth,’ ‘origin,’ etc., of which azat, the Armenian equivalent of aznaur, is a cognate; its second part is the Georgian suffix -ur; it is thus, basically, ‘one who is born.’ Both aznaur and azat mean at once ‘noble’ and ‘free’; Allen, History 224–227; Karst, Corpus juris I/2/1.204, 232 and n. 1, 233, 239–241; infra n. 167, also n. 228. Google Scholar
99 Leont. Mrov. 25 paronomastically derives the aznaur class from the 1000 ‘Roman,’ i.e., Macedonian warriors of Azon, who passed to the side of King Pharnabazus. Under the latter's successor, Leonti records, 26–27, an insurrection of the high nobility from which the Crown was saved through the loyalty of the aznaurn; the King, then, ‘humiliated the K'art’-losids and honored the aznaurni.’ This etymology led J̌avaxišvili, Gos. stroj 57, to assume that, in consequence, the K'art'losids in this case were, not dynasts, but all Iberians. Google Scholar
100 The fact that Strabo says that the people ‘provided all things [necessary] for life’ (supra n. 88) need not perhaps imply that they were exclusively farmers; some may well have been artisans. At any rate, Strabo does mention many urban centres in Iberia (11.3.1), and that must mean that there was an urban plebs. Google Scholar
101 J̌avaxišvili, , Gos. stroj 70–71; Allen, History 223; Karst, Corpus juris I/2/1.240; Rostovtzeff, Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Kolonates (Leipzig 1910) 281; Soc. Econ. Hist. 1515 (n. 49); anašia, in Bull. Inst. Marr 4/2.178; cf. for the Armenian parallel, infra n. 174. The adjective βασιλιϰοί may suggest that the coloni were found only on the lands of the First Class, or even, by those who would equate that class with the royal house, only on those of the king's family (so J̌avaxišvili, Adontz, Allen; cf. Kakabaje, in Bull. Inst. Marr. 4/2.178), but this is hardly credible, since the pagan priesthood and temples must surely have had bondsmen, and so also at least some of the Third Class. Now, if certain nobiliary characteristics be conceded to the latter class already at this epoch, or if it be assumed that it represented the conquerors of old as distinct from the conquered (cf. Karst, op. cit. 432) and that, consequently, the difference between the Third and the Fourth Class was not only that between the free and the unfree (or half-free), it may be conjectured that the Fourth Class itself consisted both of the free (farmers) and of the unfree (or half-free: coloni). This seems indeed to be the situation revealed in the earliest monuments, like the Mart. St. Susan 17 (43), where the population of Iberia is spoken of as divided into nobles and non-nobles (uazno: since by the fifth century, when this work was composed, the aznaurn had indeed become a social class, the latter term must denote non-nobles rather than the unfree; cf. infra n. 174). If this was the case in the days of Strabo, βασιλιϰοὶ δοῦλοι must mean something else. In the first place, δοῦλος need not be taken to mean ‘slave’; it can also signify ‘subject.’ It is important, in this connexion, to exercise a certain caution when dealing with terms applied by Graeco-Roman sources to the social and political phenomena of the Eastern Mediterranean; see on this matter Manandyan, Probl, ob. stroja 8, 22; Zametki o feode 3–6; J̌avaxišvili, Gos. stroj 71; Masson, M. ‘Nekotorye novye dannye po istorii Parfii,’ Vestnik Drevnej Istorii 1950/3 (33) 42 (much of this has to do with the terms δοῦλος and servitium as used of what in reality was the Parthian military retainer, one of the comitatus; for a compromise: ‘personal servant,’ see Coulborn, , Comp. Study of Feud. 337 and n. 1). As J̌avaxišvili remarks, loc. cit., since the Fourth Class is that τῶν λαῶν, the expression βασιλιϰοὶ δοῦλοι, predicated of it, cannot mean ‘slaves.’ As a matter of fact, the juxtaposition of λαῶν and βασιλιϰοί suggests the λαοί βασιλικοί of the Hellenistic Near East: the peasants settled on Crown lands (χωϱὰ βασιλιϱή); cf. Rostovtzeff, Soc. Econ. Hist. 508f., 562; Kolonat 247ff., 258f., 263f., 308f.; Magie, Roman Rule II.1028 (n. 72). Accordingly, Strabo's words must simply imply a greater dependence, greater subjection, of the Fourth Class, than in the case of the Second and Third, on the holders of sovereign power in the polity, i.e., the entire First Class, since, in addition to being unprivileged subjects, the people were, wholly or in part, also coloni. Google Scholar
102 Karst, , Corpus juris I/2/1.236; Lang, Georg. Monarchy 10, 55; cf., for Armenia, infra at n. 174.Google Scholar
103 Cf. anašia, in Bull. Inst. Marr 4/2.178. As Manandyan has shown about ancient Armenia — and this must also apply to ancient Iberia — slavery was not found there on any scale of importance or in any way reminiscent of the scale of the Graeco-Roman world; infra n. 174; anašia, Sak'art’. p'eodal. gzaze 37. This, to be sure, clashes with those (e.g., J̌avaxišvili, K'art’. samart'l. ist. 198; Kakabaje and anašia, in Bull. Inst. Marr 4/2.164–174) who, adverting to Marxian dogma, are fain to discover a ‘slave-owning society’ preceding a ‘feudal’ one. — See also Strabo, 11.14.16 and 11.4.7, for the temple slaves in Armenia and Albania. Although slavery may not have played as great a role in Caucasia as it did in the Graeco-Roman world, the former, especially Pontic Georgia, contributed in the course of centuries to its existence in that world and in its Byzantine and Ottoman successors by supplying the material (war prisoners, serfs, etc.) for the East Mediterranean slave trade, from the epoch of the Greek cities on the Pontic coast (Polybius 4.38) to the nineteenth century; Allen, History 282–288; Karst, Corpus juris I/2/2.76; Lang, Georg. Monarchy 22, 69, 201. For the similar situation in Hellenistic Armenia, see Rostovtzeff, , Soc. Econ. Hist. 782.Google Scholar
104 Leont. Mrov. 24–25. — Erist'av is one of the terms corresponding to στϱατηγός in early biblical texts (Ezech. 23.12, 23; Luke 22.52; Acts 16.20, 22, 35, 38); other Georgian terms being spaspet (infra at n. 105), mt'avar, eris-mt'avar, and various descriptive compounds. In the eighth-century Mart. St. Abo, erist'av and eris-mt'avar are used interchangeably, the latter also translating the biblical ἂϱχών τοῦ λαoῦ (Acts 23.5). Both terms are derived from the genitive of er (‘people,’ ‘army’; cf. supra n. 97), the second element being in the one case t'av (‘head’) and in the other mt'avar (‘prince’); cf. supra n. 93. Erist'av can be regarded as a functional and semantic equivalent of Herzog, i.e., ‘duke,’ by which title medieval Western documents designate the Georgian erist'avn (cf. my ‘The Fifteenth-Century Bagratids and the Institution of Collegial Sovereignty in Georgia,’ Traditio 7 [1949–1951] 186 n. 99; infra n. 118), and possibly also of the Urarṭian ir-ta; Marr, Izbr. raboty 328, cf. 113. For this office, see J̌avaxišvili, , Gos. stroj 62–63, 67–70; K'art’. samart'l. ist. 40–63; Karst, Corpus furis I/2/1.203, 204, 216–220; Marr and Brière, Langue 629. J̌avaxišvili assumed that mt'avar was derived from eris-mt'avar (Gos. stroj 68; cf. Allen, History 239), on the ground that the former was found first: in the Life of St. Serapion of Zarzma. This is inexact: the work in question has reached us in a twelfth-thirteenth-century redaction (P. Peeters, ‘Histoires monastiques géorgiennes,’ AB 36–37 [1923] 166–167) or in one of the eleventh century (Tarchnišvili, Georg. Lit. 103–104, 415); whereas mt'avar is found in the two earliest known Georgian hagiographical monuments and in the earliest biblical translations (supra n. 93). Moreover, eris-mt'avar must of semantic necessity be a derivative of mt'avar and not vice versa. — According to the treatise on the Georgian institutions with which Vaxušt prefaced his Geogr. Descr., the dukes administered justice, commanded the armed forces, and collected the taxes in their duchies (10–12). The reference to the generals (spasalar, from Pers, O. ∗spada-sālār, later sipāh-sālār; Hübschmann, Grammatik 239) is interesting. The text is vague, but it seems rather clear that it is question of generals, rather than a general, under each duke (Leont. Mrov. 25: = ‘and under these dukes, he appointed, here and there, generals and heads of a thousand’). The presence of these under a duke may suggest that, unlike the Armenian princes that were each in command of his own army, the princes of Iberia were deprived of such command in favor of the duke, who then exercised it (in the principalities) through his generals.Google Scholar
105 Both the Iberian spaspet and the Armenian sparapet (for which see infra, Supplem. Note E) are derived from the Old Pers. spada-paitiš, of which the Sassanian (Pehl.) Ērānspāhbāδ was likewise derived; J̌avaxišvili, Gos. stroj 68–69; Ehtécham, Iran Achém. 63–64; Christensen, Iran Sass. 130–132; Adontz, Armenija 445. — For the institution of this office in Iberia, see Leont. Mrov. 24–25, who states that, ‘prince-like, he administered all the dukes’ (mt'avrobit’ gangebdis qovelt'a erist’ avt'a zeda); he is called ‘ruler of all the dukes’ (mp'lobeli qovelt'a erist’ avt'a) by uanšer (786/800), Hist. Vaxt. Gorg. (e d. Qauxč‘išvili, K’ art'lis C'xovreba I) 185. Being thus commander-in-chief of the army and at the head of the dukes, who as civil governors administered justice, the High Constable of Iberia was obviously Strabo's ‘Second after the King’; and Leontius’ text offers further support to this. Immediately before the above statement (24–25), he says: da ese spaspeti iqo šemdgomadve cinaše mep'isa. Now, šemdgomad is an adverb meaning ‘next,’ thereafter,’ and also a preposition (requiring the genitive and the dative-accusative case) meaning ‘next to,’ ‘after,’ whereas -ve is an enclitic particle used for emphasis and with the sense of ‘also,’ ‘even,’ ‘still’; Marr and Brière, Langue 625, 630. So the meaning of the above phrase can be: ‘and this High Constable was also/even/still next (to) before [= in the presence of] the King.’ It is difficult to see what the two words, šemdgomadve and cinaše (a preposition requiring the genitive case) are doing together here, and one is tempted to suspect an omission or error here somewhere. Indeed, the King Vaxtang VI Recension of the Annals has qovladve instead of šemdgomadve. This word (though ending in -ve) simply means ‘entirely,’ ‘in all ways,’ ‘always’(cf. qovelive = πάντα, in Mat. 7.12; Molitor, Monumenta 106). Possibly both words were in the original phrase, and the similarity of their abbreviated forms in the ecclesiastical minuscules (cf. Leont. Mrov. 25 n. 1) made the copyists omit one or the other. In this case, the original phrase may have been something like this: = ‘and this High Constable was also [i.e., in addition to being Duke of Inner Iberia and spaspet] next to, and always in the presence of, the King.’ At all events, J̌avaxišvili was perplexed (Gos. stroj 68–69), in connection with his belief that the First Class was solely the royal family (supra at n. 90), at finding what to him was a contradiction between Strabo's counting the ‘Second after the King’ within that class, and that dignitary's unmistakable identity with the High Constable who was not of the royal house; the contradiction, to be sure, does not exist in reality. Some modern authors like to see in the ‘Second after the King’ a brother or next of kin of the Iberian monarch; Karst, Corpus juris I/2/1.238; Allen, History 223; Berjenišvili, Ist. Gruzii 74; Adontz, Armenija 407–408. The reason for this identification, for the support of which there is no direct evidence, seems to be an interpretation of Strabo on the royal succession which I do not believe to be correct; infra at nn. 158–161; cf. supra at n. 95. Adontz, moreover, seems to have been struck by the fact that the Albanian army that encountered Pompey was commanded by the King's brother (Plutarch, Pomp. 35); Armenija 409 n. 3. But this is obviously irrelevant. ‘Second after the King’ was a usual enough way of entitling chief ministers; cf. Esther 13.3, 6. — It is possible that the medieval title erist'avt’-erist'av (‘duke of dukes,’ i.e., ‘great duke’) originally designated the High Constable (J̌avaxišvili, Gos. stroj 69); in this case, the compound in question must indeed have had at one time a definite administrative significance (like the Armenian išxanac’-išxan or the mep'et’-mep'e of the late-medieval Georgian constitution; cf. Toumanoff, Fifteenth-Cent. Bagr. II), but in the medieval period the distinction between erist'avt’-erist'av and erist'av was inexistent, the one being a mere epitheton ornans of the other. Thus, all attempts to differentiate between the two in that period must fail, since holders of the same dukedoms are indifferently referred to by one or the other of the two terms; cf. Allen, History 238–242. — The non-hereditary character of the office of High Constable of Iberia is apparent from uanšer 145. Google Scholar
106 Cf. Ehtécham, , Iran Achém. 110–111, 114, 184; Christensen, Iran Sass. 17.Google Scholar
107 Every Armenian prince, on the other hand, was the duke of his dominions; infra at nn. 139–141. This is another indication (cf. supra n. 104) that the Iberian Crown was relatively more powerful than the Armenian. Google Scholar
108 The erist'av appears indeed to have been the head of the er, i.e., the people-army of his province (for this term, see supra n. 97), which is another way of saying that he was at the head of the aznaurn of that province; and the Third Class, it will be recalled, makes its appearance in the Iberian historical tradition as loyal to the Crown and opposed to the dynasts; supra at n. 99. Google Scholar
109 Cf. supra at nn. 3–15. Google Scholar
110 Cf. supra at n. 15. Google Scholar
111 See infra, Supplementary Note B. Google Scholar
112 For Armenia, see infra at nn. 139–141. When even in Iran, with its powerful Crown, the satrap was at first the former dynast (dahyupaitiš) and the nobility monopolized the higher administrative positions (Ehtécham, Iran Achém. 114–115, 184, 110–111; Christensen, Iran Sass. 19, 20, 25, 258–260), the weakish early Iberian Monarchy can hardly be expected to have dared not to recruit most of its great officers from the dynastic aristocracy. To be sure, the aims of the Crown went counter to the interests of that class, yet by resorting to the principle of divide et impera, those aims could be achieved, or at least advanced, without antagonizing that entire class and in fact with the cooperation of some of its members. The Crown, thus, might appoint lesser princes to the position of control over the greater ones, it might give out ducal fiefs to cadets of the princely houses, or it might win over by such grants some of the more important princes. The best indication that the dukes were recruited from among the princes is the fact that Strabo counts the ‘Second after the King’ with the First Class. The Iberian historical tradition confirms this. Leont. Mrov., 26–27, records the revolt against Pharnabazus’ successor that was organized by the dukes of Iberia with the aim of becoming ‘independent as we have been at the beginning [= originally]’ ); the attempt failed thanks to the rallying of the aznaurn round the Crown; the King, thereupon, ‘seized Iberia and destroyed those who had rebelled against him, sparing some; and he humbled the K'art’-losids and honored the aznaurn.’ The reference to their former independence of the Crown, of which there could have been no question for the dukes qua dukes, and the application to them of the term K'art'losid can leave no doubt as to their being of the princely group. Here, at the outset, the Crown's aims can be seen doomed to frustration. The polyhistor Vaxušt states that the dukes were recruited among the princes and the principal personages Geogr. Descr. 12. It is evident, of course, that not all of the dukes could be exclusively of the dynastic class, and Leonti, 47, 48, mentions two, for instance (of Ojrxe and of Cholarzene or KlarJ̌et'i) who were of aznaur origin. Google Scholar
113 For Ps. Moses Xorenac'i, see infra n. 123. For the Prim. Hist. Arm and its date, see Marr, N., ‘O Pervonačal'noj Istorii Armenii Anonima,’ Byzantina Chronica 1 (1894) 293–299; cf. Adontz, ‘Pervonačal'naja Istoriija Armenii u Sebeosa,’ ibid. 8 (1901) and, for an analysis of Markwart's theory of its late origin, Toumanoff, Orontids II.Google Scholar
114 Cf. Allen, W. E. D., ‘“Ex Ponto” I and II,’ Bedi Karthlisa (1958) 39–54; Marr, Izbr. raboty, esp. 105, 112, 115; Allen, History 16–19, 24–29, 54 n. 4, 63 n. 1; Baschmakoff, Cinqu. siècles 89–94; Hrozný, Hist. Asie ant. 77–83; and bibliogr. infra Note A. The name κόλχος may have been preserved in Kax-et'i (-et’ is the Georgian toponymic suffix), the easternmost province of Iberia-K'art'li, which would provide an indication of internal migrations. Moreover, while the south-western province of Iberia, in the Acampsis valley and at the sources of the Cyrus, is called Mesxet'i (Μεσχία of the Byzantines; cf.,e.g., Cedrenus 2.572), the north-westernmost province of Colchis-Egrisi was Ap'xazet'i (modern Abkhazia, ’Aβασγία as the land of the ’Aβασγοί of the earlier Byzantines; cf.,e.g., Procopius, Bell. pers. 2.29; Bell. goth. 8.3. 4.9. 17; also Toumanoff, ‘Chronology of the Kings of Abasgia,’ Le Muséon 69 [1956] 73 and n. 1; Gugushvili, ‘Ethnographical and Historical Division of Georgia,’ Georgica 1.2–3 [1936] 54–59), both being derived from the root M-S, and its variant B-S. To appreciate the mutations of these Caucasian terms, it is necessary to bear in mind that they often passed through several linguistic strata, each occasionally adding its own determinative suffixes to the original word. There are several Caucasian suffixes indicative of the plural and of origin: -k/ḫ-i [= Arm. -k’], -pi/bi [= Georg, -eb], -n-i [= Old Georg, -n], -d [= Georg, -et’]. Realizing this helps to detect the persistence of old tribal roots in Caucasian ethnica and toponyms. Thus, e.g., the root K-S: Kaš-kai, Cau-cas-us, κάσ-πι-οι and (through the mutation š-l; cf. Kašdu-Kaldu, i.e., Chaldaea) Qul-i and κόλ-χ-οι, κόλ-χις, Possibly the root X-L is related to it, as in Hal-ys, χαλ-δ[α]ι-οι, χαλ-ύβ-ες, ‘Αλ-ιζώνοι, Alazani. The root M-S: Muš-ki, Μόσ-χ-οι, Mes-x, and (through the mutation m-b) ’Α-βασ-γ-οί and A-p'xaz. The root B-L: Ta-bal, Ti-bal, and (through the mutation l-r) Ti-bar, τι-βαϱ-εν-οί [τ]ίβηϱες, ‘Iβηϱία, then (through the mutation b-g) E-gr-isi, Me-gr-el, Ming-gr-elia. The root K-D (the same as in aldi and Kašdu-Kaldu?): καϱδοῦ-χ-οι, K'art’-u/vel, K'art'li. The root Č-N/S-N/H-N: [Μοσ-]σύν-οιϰοι, ‘Ηνί-ο-χοι, ∗Han-Hay-asa, Hay. As has been stated earlier, the origin of the ethnikon ’Αϱμενίοι-Arminiya is not defintively known. In the maze of scholarly speculation on this subject one can discern three general theories, often overlapping and converging, as to that origin. One, on the basis of some half-legendary data of Greek sources, would connect that ethnicon with the Thraco-Phrygians (Strabo 11.14.12–13 and Trogus in Justin 42.2–3 on the basis of the lost work of Cyrsilus of Pharsalus and Medius of Larissa). Another sees in it the same proto-Caucasian-Urarṭian root as in names like that of Aram, the first Vannic emperor, whom the subsequent Armenian historical tradition incorporated in the theogony of the early kings (Ps. Moses 1.12; supra n. 51). Still another would attach it (with Strabo 1.1) to the same root as in ‘Aramaean.’ The last two theories have occasionally been combined, and the ethnicon in question would appear as Ar[a]m-en. In this connexion, numerous geographical and ethnic names, like Thessalian ’Αϱμένιον, 'Aϱμένη-Ephesus and ’Aϱμένη-Sinope, the Cappadocian ῎Αϱιμοι (of the Iliad), the Urarṭian Armarili, Armiraliu, Armani(?), Armuna, Armiuk, and the proto-Armenian Armawir, have, since the Hellenistic days, offered themselves to the consideration of specialists. For the various discussions of this problem, see Adontz, , Hist. d'Arm. 311–330; Armenija 396–398; Grousset, Histoire 74–75; Markwart, ‘Le berceau des Arméniens,’ Revue des Études Arméniennes 8/1 (1928); Lap'anc'yan, Xajasa 172–210. The Armenian term for ‘Georgian’ and the Georgian for ‘Armenian’ are not devoid of interest in this connexion. The former is Vra-c'i, and the land is Vra-stan (meaning to-day ‘Georgian,’ ‘Georgia,’ but originally ‘Iberian,’ ‘Iberia’), which some derive from Urarṭu/Urašṭu (Xudadov Xaldy), and which may have been the Thraco-Phrygian term for the proto-Caucasians in general. On the other hand, the Georgian term for ‘Armenian’ is Somex, a contraction of So[n]+Me[s]x i.e., S-N + M-S, the first part representing the Ḫayasa and the second the Thraco-Phrygians, to whom the pre-Indo-European ethnicon of the Muški came to be applied. The ethnicon of the Albanians, which was something like Aran (= Aram ?), had two classical equivalents: 'Aϱιανοί (supra n. 33) and, via the Armenian Auan-k’, ’Αλβανοί. On the other hand, it is possible that Vrastan, Vrači are related to 'Iβηϱία; and that ’Αλβανία is a derivation of the root B-L. The kinship of the onomastic data throughout the Mediterranean world — Caucasian and Pyrenean Iberia; Caucasian and Balkan Albania; Abasgi and Basques; Heniochi, Heneti, Veneti, and so many other cases of affinity — is perhaps the most palpable argument in favor of the existence of the ‘third’ element in that world, for which see infra, Supplem. Note A.Google Scholar
115 In the Hittite, Urarṭian, and Assyrian monuments, all the Caucasian dynasts are called kings. The Greek sources of the Achaemenian period refer to them as βασιλεΙς and ἂϱχοντες; Xenophon, Anab. 5.4; Curop. 3.1.3, 4. The second term is, of course, ambiguous and, without the juxtaposition of the first, could mean no more than ‘commander,’ as it does in Herodotus 7.61–82. In the Hellenistic phase terms like βασιλεύς (Plutarch, Lucullus 21.5; Strabo 11.2. 13; 11.4.6; Procopius, though belonging to a later period, uses interchangeably βασιλεύς and ἄϱχων for lesser Caucasian dynasts; cf. e.g., Bell. goth. 8.3,9); σκηπτοῦχος (Strabo 11.2.13; cf. 11.2.18; Appian, Mithr. 117 — which very appropriately harks back to the Homeric counterparts of the early Caucasian dynasts — the ‘sceptre-bearing kings’ of Scheria; Odys. 8.41; 10.390–391; cf. supra n. 8); proceres and megistanes (also nobiles, which is vague; Tacitus, Ann. 2.56; 12.44; 15.27; 2.58; 2.2; 6.31, 42) are used of them. 'Hγεμών (Appian, Mithr. 117) need not indicate a dynast (any more than nobilis). Google Scholar
116 That of Iberia has already been examined (supra at nn. 89–108); that of Armenia will be examined presently (infra at nn. 135–173). Google Scholar
117 The same lack of clear distinction between the βασιλεΙς and the δννάσται is observable in the late-Seleucid empire; Bengtson, Strategie 3 n. 4. Google Scholar
118 Thereafter, the ordinary dynasts are referred to in foreign sources by a variety of terms, such as σατϱάπης (Cod. Theod. 12.13.6; Justinian I, Nov. 31.3; Procopius, Aed. 3.1.17–29; — for the six Roman Satraps, see infra at nn. 182, 201–203), ἄϱχων (Procopius, cf. supra n. 115; Constantine Porphyr., De caerim. 2.48), ϰύϱιος (Theophanes, Chron. [PG 108] 792, 793; also the vague πϱῶτος; ibid. 796,797), princeps (Anastasius Apocrisiarius [PG 90] 174–176), dux (Aeneas Sylvius [Pius II], Epistolarum lib. I [Basel 1571] 849–850; Wadding, L., Annales Minorum XIII [Rome 1735] 153, 160); but the super-dynastic kings are invariably βασιλεΙς and reges. It was only after the Greek term for ‘king’ had become, in the seventh century, the official Byzantine translation of imperator that the Byzantines began avoiding its use for foreign kings; cf. e.g., Ostrogorsky, G., History of the Byzantine State (Oxford 1956) 95 n. 2 (95–96). As a result, foreign loan words like ϱήξ and various circumlocutions were used of them, in Caucasia as elsewhere. Thus, the Kings of Armenia were styled ἄϱχων τῶν ἀϱχόντων μεγάλης ’Αϱμενίας, those of Iberia, ϰονϱοπαλάτης 'Iβηϱίας and those of Abasgia (former Colchis) ἐξονσιαστῂς 'Aβασγίας; Constantine Porphyr., De caerim. 2.48. It is not correct, therefore, to argue, as does J̌avaxišvili, K'art’. er. ist. II (Tiflis 1914) 391, a diminution of the international position of the Caucasian States from the fact that, by the tenth century, their rulers had no longer been called βασιλεΙς by the Byzantines.Google Scholar
119 Adontz, , Armenija 237–238, 489–490 (on Ps. Moses); 211–213, 28–45, 236–493 (on the princes). See also Manandyan, P'eodal. Hay. 32–124.Google Scholar
120 Prim. Hist. Arm. 2-10; Ps. Moses 1.5–31 (this occupies practically the entire Book One; history begins in Book Two). Like K'art'los of the Iberians (supra at n. 81), Hayk is made in Christian Armenian historiography a son of Thogarma, and so connected with Genesis, and his pagan deification is watered down to his being one of the giants (Ps. Moses 1.10: 'i meJ̌ skayic'n). Nevertheless, traces of his cult, part ancestor worhsip and part astral religion, survived, as also in the case of K'art'los. His name designated Orion; Marr, Astronom. značenija. More than that, Ps. Moses (3.651364]) felt obliged to deny that ‘the princes, as the poets say, be of the kin and race and seed of the gods’ () Finally, several deities of the pantheon of the pagan Armenians were incorporated in the genealogy — the theogony — of Hayk's descendants, such as Tork’-Angl, who was, according to the Prim. Hist. Arm. 9, worshipped as a god in pagan times (cf. also Ps. Moses 2.8); King Ara the Fair, the object of Semiramis’ love, whose story is found both in the Prim. Hist. Arm., 7–8, and in Ps. Moses, 1.15; and King Vahagn, also said to have been worshipped by pagan Armenians and Iberians; Ps. Moses 1.31. Tork’-Angl represents a syncretistic figure, at once Tarku/Tarḫu, the Asianic divinity of fertility and vegetation, and the Ḫayasa-Armenian god of the netherworld, an equivalent of the Sumero-Akkadian Nergal, the solar deity of war and the dead (in the Armenian Bible, ‘Angl’ translates ‘Nergel’; 4 Kings 17.30). Ara was the Armenian version of the Asianic Araš/Attys (and Semiramis a memory of Cybele), who as ‘Er the Armenian’ appears in Plato's Rep. 10. Vahagn was the Armenian equivalent of the Indo-Iranian Vtrahan-Vĕrĕθrağna (= Hephaestus). For all this, see my Orontids 1.14–15, II; Marr, Astron. značenija: Adontz, Vestiges; ‘Tarku chez les anciens Arméniens,’ Revue des Études Arméniennes 7 (1927); Lap'ančyan, Bogi Armjan 273–276, 318–323; Xajasa 84–98. — Besides these mythological figures, the genealogies of the early kings contain some Vannic, Orontid, and Artaxiad monarchs and the eponyms of various tribes; cf. Piotrovskij, Urartu 283–284, 334–335, 338; Manandyan, O nck. sporn. probl. 145–155. — The fact that these theogonies contain certain historical kings alongside pagan deities, and at the same time represent some of the latter as Kings of Armenia or members of their family, suggests the existence among the pre-Christian Armenians not only of the claims of the dynasts to be descended from gods, but also of the cult of the kings; cf. also Ps. Moses 2.66, and Lap'anc'yan, Xajasa 86; Bogi Armjan 284–285. This ‘pattern of divine kingship,’ the Hellenism of the Orontids and the Artaxiads must have enhanced. The Orontid necropolis at Ang appears to have been associated with the cult of a solar deity of the netherworld and a vegetation cult; Orontids 1.14–15. The Commagenian Orontids associated in the tumulus of Nimrud-dağ ancestor worship with the cult of Zeus-Oromasdes (the sky), Apollo-Mithras-Helios-Hermes (the solar psychopomp), and (the astral) Artagnes (Vĕrĕθ-rana)-Heracles-Ares; Jalabert, L. and Mouterde, R., Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie I: Commagène et Cyrrhestique (Paris 1929) 15–16. The Armenian Arsacids had their necropolis at Ani (now Kamax), in Upper Armenia, and their ancestor worship was associated with the cult of the Asianic sky- and fertility-god Mazan (Masanes), Iranianized as Aramazd and syncretized with Zeus; Arm. Agath. 109/785, 12/125; Gk. Agath. 132, 56; Gk. Life of St. Gregory 110; Arab. Life 98; Faustus 4.24; cf. Lap'anc'yan, Xajasa 86. Cf. supra n. 111 for the association of the Kings of Iberia with the holy city-necropolis of K'art'li-Armazi, which was a center of ancestor worship, an astral cult, and the cults of the sky-god Tešub, Iranianized as Armaz, and the vegetation-god Zaden.Google Scholar
121 Adontz, , Armenija 491.Google Scholar
122 Supra n. 81 and at nn. 90–94.Google Scholar
123 This is Adontz's chief argument for so dating Moses Xorenac'i; Armenija 237–238, 489. Most modern investigators — Xalat'eanc’, Akinean, Manandyan, Lewy, to name but a few besides Adontz — assign the work in question to one or another date between the seventh and the ninth century; yet the traditional dating as of the fifth, suggested by a few broad hints in the work itself (3.61, 62, 68), is still defended by the nationalist Armenian scholar Abelyan, M., Istorija drevnearmjanskoj literatury I (Erivan 1948) 203–209. Passing over the much disputed problem of the correlation of the text of Ps. Moses and those of the Eccl. Hist. of Socrates and of the Life of St. Silvester, as well as over Fr. Akinean's conjecture that Ps. Moses was none other than Leontius the Priest, the following facts, because facts and not conjectures, cannot be overlooked. (1) Ps. Moses projects (1.14) into a remote past the division of western Armenia and of some neighbouring lands into I, II, III, and IV Armenia which was instituted by Justinian I in 536; Adontz 203. — (2) He uses the term ‘Sisakan’ to designate Siunia, which term makes its earliest appearance in the Syriac chronicle of Zacharias Rhaetor (554) and is unknown to the early Armenian historians like Faustus, Lazarus, Eliseus; ibid. 421 n. 3. — (3) He uses the term ‘Vaspurakan’ (2.62) to designate the province east of Turuberan, which came to be so called after the partition of Armenia in 591; ibid. 232 and n. 1. — (4) In 3.18, he speaks of the Iranians penetrating Bithynia in a war on the Empire, which they for the first time effected in the war of 604–629. — (5) In 3.46, he mentions the institution of a presiding prince, besides the Roman comes Armeniae, in the provinces belonging to the Empire, which is a reminiscence of the situation first taking place after Heraclius’ victory over Iran in 629. — (6) For him, his hatred of the Mamikonids is a corollary of his devotion to the Bagratids, which can only be the outcome of the dynastic policies of the two houses as they were shaped after the mid-eighth century; cf. Akinian, ‘Moses Chorenaçi,’ RE Suppl. 6.536. It is not devoid of significance perhaps that in defending the ‘traditional’ date of Ps. Moses (A.D. 480), Abelyan relies extensively on the earlier works of Conybeare, F. C. and seems to be unaware of the latter's subsequent opinion, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. ‘Moses of Chorene’ (jointly with A. v. Gutschmid), as to Ps. Moses's writing sometime between 634 and 642. Cf. Orontids II.Google Scholar
124 Cf. Adontz, , Armenija 263–271. 489–491. — The Caliph's suzerainty implied a forceful intrusion of the étatiste principle in Caucasia; simultaneously, the terrible warfare — revolts and repressions — that accompanied it resulted in the reduction, and destruction, of numerous princely houses and in the rise of a few great — super-dynastic — princely States, superseding or controlling the lesser ones, which also conduced to a strengthening of the Crown. For all this, see Grousset, . Histoire 320–322, 329–334; Laurent, J., L'Arménie entre Byzance et l'Islam (Paris 1919) 61–62, 71–82.Google Scholar
125 Ps. Moses mentions 38 houses as ‘raised’ to the princely status by the kings; of these, 13 are, on his own admission, Haykids (Apahuni, Arawenean, Ašoc῾, Bznuni, Manawazean, Mardpet, Orduni, Sisakan-Siunia, Sḷkuni or Slkuni, Xorxoṛuni, Vah[n]uni, Varažnuni, Zarehawanean [1.12; 2.7. 8]) and 17 more are, as we know irrespective of what he has to tell about it,.also of unquestionable dynastic origin (Amatuni [2.57]; Arsacids: Kamsarakan, Abeḷean, Gabeḷean, Hawenuni, Spanduni, Jiwnakan, Rop'sean [2.7, 42, 44, 73, 90]); Mamikonean [2.81]; Mandakuni [2.8]; Orontids: Arcruni, Arzanene, Bagratuni, Gnuni, Ingilene, Sophene [also Arawenean, Colthene, Zarehawanean] [1.22, 23; 2.3, 7, 8, 9, 33, 63]; Aruelean or Arawelean, descended from the Kings of Albania [2.58]). The origin of the remaining 8 (Akē, Anjewac'i [2.8], Corduene [ibid.], Dimak'sean [2.47], Gnt'uni [2.7: Canaanites], Gogarene [2.8: Iranians], Moxoene [ibid.], and Truni or Trpatuni [2.47]) is not ascertainable, but there seems to be no question as to their dynastic origin. Ps. Moses, 2.8, mentions 5 more Haykids (Colthene, Gardman, Otene, Tašir, Zabdicene) and one house descended from Astyages of Media (Murac'an; also 2.44) without insisting on their ever having been ‘created’ princes. Ps. Moses comes nearest to truth in 2.3, where he states that ‘naxararates’ (see at n. 140) were given to various dynasts. For the houses here mentioned, see infra at nn. 181–203 and my Lists. Google Scholar
126 Cf. Adontz, , Armenija 211–212, 236, 433, 453–454, 489–491; cf. supra n. 52. — It was the legendary first ‘Arsacid’ Vaḷaršak who was supposed to have achieved the new organization of Armenia; Ps. Moses 1.8–9; 2.1–8.Google Scholar
127 Manandyan, , P'eodal. Hay. 247–251; O torgoule 67–69; Probl. ob. stroja 27; Tigran 57–58.Google Scholar
128 Adontz's argument in favor of putting the beginnings of Armenian feudalism in the Arsacid period is grounded in a number of misconceptions. He begins by equating — and he is not alone in this — the princely class with feudalism; he thus fails to discern the dynastic-allodial order as distinct from, and parallel to, the feudal-administrative one; for him (as indeed for Manandyan; P'eodal. Hay 241–242; O torgovle 46–48) the Armenian social process consisted in passing from the primitive tribal to the more advanced feudal phase: this feudalization was the origin of the princes; Armenija 436, 444, 491. He would thus derive the Armenian princedoms from the ‘comarchies’ of the Achaemenian period (supra at n. 38) through the intermediary, étatiste phase of the strategiae, mentioned by Pliny (supra at n. 65); the latter, he consequently regards as inchoate princedoms; Armenija 391–392, 433–436. Now, this derivation is only in part correct. Many of the ‘comarchies’ must have failed to become princedoms — exactly as their Iranian counterparts must, obviously, have failed, since there were ultimately only a few princely houses that derived from the viθapaitiš group (cf. Ehtécham, Iran Achém. 21 and n. 4) — and so went to form the lesser noblesse; and, on the other hand, most of the princes owed their origin to the dynasts-βασιλεΙς who were contemporaneous with and superior to the ‘comarchs,’ but whom the Ten Thousand on their brief journey through (proto-)Armenia simply had no occasion of meeting (supra n. 43). Adontz, next, betrays the influence of ancient Armenian historiography with its confusion between the Artaxiads and the Arsacids (supra at n. 126); and he, moreover, argues that since Strabo does not mention any strategiae in Armenia, whereas Pliny does, the rise of these administrative units must be placed between the epochs of the two writers, i.e., in the Arsacid period; Armenija 391–392, 433; Aspect 141. But Strabo says absolutely nothing about any aspect of Armenia's social structure, so that his silence cannot be used as the basis of any argument. Actually, Adontz himself is forced by the facts at his disposal to admit elsewhere that princedoms existed in Armenia before the Arsacid period, under Tigranes the Great or even earlier; Armenija 212, 236, 410–415, 444–445, 461, 491. The institution of the princedoms was — it has been seen throughout this study — quite independent of any feudal-administrative institutions, such as the strategiae, that the Crown might attempt to impose upon it (cf. infra at nn. 207–208). This said, it must nevertheless be stressed that the Parthian phase, ushered in by the establishment of Arsacid rule in Armenia, implied an enhancement of Iranian social and political influence; cf. Manandyan, P'eodal. Hay. 241–242, 248–251. It is to this epoch, therefore, rather than to the Achaemenian or, a fortiori, the Hellenistic, that the great mass of Armenian social and political terms of unquestionably Iranian origin must be due, as well as the introduction of various patently Iranian offices, such as the Coronant, the Seneschal, the Grand Chamberlain, and possibly also the High Constable; cf. Armenija 444–450. It is difficult not to see, however, that these patterns of the more bureaucratized Parthian empire were introduced in Armenia precisely with a view to curbing the ‘polygenetic’ sovereign rights of the already existent princedoms. Google Scholar
129 Aspect 143.Google Scholar
130 Adontz, , Armenija 104–110, 179, 453, 467; Aspect 134; Manandyan, P'eodal. Hay. chap. 10. For the military aspect of the princely States, see infra at nn. 146, 164, 188, 204–207. In Georgia, a very similar situation continued for many centuries to come, until the étatisme of the grands-monarques of the Golden Age (eleventh-thirteenth centuries), expressed in the predominance of feudal-administrative over the dynasticist forms, and the partition of princely domains after the fifteenth century (Karst, Corpus juris I/2/2.161) largely ‘mediatized’ the Georgian princes. In the last centuries of Georgian independence, however, the princes regained a large measure of their former independence; cf. Gvritišivili, P'eodal. Sak'art’. 310–461, also 253–259; Lang, Georg. Monarchy 60–62.Google Scholar
131 Infra at nn. 202–203.Google Scholar
132 Thus, the northern princes vacillated between Armenian and Iberian allegiance; the western between Armenian and Roman; the eastern between Armenian and Iranian or Albanian. In 428 most of the Armenian princes transferred their allegiance from the King of Armenia to the Great King of Iran. Google Scholar
133 Adontz, , Armenija 453 461. Ancient Armenian historians even speak of ‘senior’ and ‘junior’ (awag, krtser) princes, but this must have been a matter of common parlance rather than of legal terminology. In the same, descriptive, way they refer to the high nobility by the terms awag and mecamec, used either as adjectives (‘senior,’ ‘great’) or as substantives (‘seignior,’ ‘grandee’); cf., e.g., Faustus 3.8 (31); 3.12 (42); 3.21 (64); 4.2. (76); (the late-fifth-century) Lazarus of P'arbi, Hist. Arm. 13 (ed. Tiflis 1907; 46, 47); 16 (55); 25 (96); 26 (98). For the precedence among the princes, see Toumanoff, , Lists III. Needless to add, the existence of such a precedence did not impair the essential parity of the princes, any more than it can impair the essential coequality of any body of peers.Google Scholar
134 Adontz, , Armenija 462–463, 468.Google Scholar
135 Cf. Kherumian, (note 167) 8. — The Roman Emperor was occasionally called ‘Great King’ (mec t'agawor) or ‘Caesar’ (kaysr); cf., e.g., Eliseus, History of the Followers of Vardan 3 (ed. Tiflis 1913; 92, 93). Conversely, prior to the seventh century, both the Emperor and foreign kings were called by Greek writers βασιλεΙς; however, the official translation of imperator was then αὐτοϰϱάτωϱ; cf. Ostrogorsky, History 95 n.2; supra at nn. 115–118. — Regarding the date of Eliseus the Vardapet there have been almost as many divergent views as in connexion with that of Ps. Moses (supra n. 123). Those who, with Fr. Akinian (Eļišē Vardapet I [Vienna 1932]) would see in him an author, not of the fifth century, as has been his traditional dating and his own claim, but of the seventh, must face the difficulty of explaining how, in view of the religious development of Armenia of the time, he could refer to the ‘holy clergy’ of Constantinople (3[103–104]: ) after A.D. 555 and, after A.D. 505/506, to the ‘holy Bishop of Rome’ thanks to whom the first Christian King Tiridates had received the Faith (3[92]: . For that religious situation, to be treated later on, see my ‘Christian Caucasia between Byzantium and Iran: New Light from Old Sources,’ Traditio 10 (1945) esp. 137–145. At the same time, Eliseus’ almost deliberate avoidance of all Hellenisms of style does not invite the suggestion that he belonged to the Unionist trend which, in cooperation with the Byzantine government, brought about five religious reunions between (parts of) Armenia and Byzantium within the century following the year 555. For this, see ibid. 148–162. Google Scholar
136 The Iranoid root of the words išxan, išxanut'iwn, išxem (‘I command,’ ‘I rule’) is išxlašx, which is related to the Sogdian axšavan/xšēvan (‘king’) and the Old Pers. xšayāθiya (‘king’) and which is also found in the Armenian and Georgian equivalents of vitaxa, as well as in the Arsacid royal name of Axedares (King of Armenia c. A.D. 110; Asdourian, Arm. u. Rom 103); the basic meaning of išxan in the biblical texts is ‘ruler,’ ‘prince,’ ἂϱχων, ᾑγεμών; cf. Meillet, Altarmenisches Elementarbuch (Indogermanische Bibliothek 1/1/10 [Heidelberg 1913]) 185; Benveniste, E., ‘Titres iraniens en arménien: Nakharar,’ Revue des Études Arméniennes 9/ 1 (1929) 7–10; Markwart, Eranšahr 178–179; Toumanoff, Vitaxae I (see there also Lapa'anc'yan's dessenting opinion on the root of the term). In the Arsacid period, išxan provided a curiously exact equivalent of ‘prince’ in its several senses: (a) a monarch; Prim. Hist. Arm. 14 [išxank’ Part'eac’]; Lazarus 14 (48); — (b) a royal prince (= one meaning of the German Prinz); Lazarus 14 (51); — and (c) a non-royal prince or sub-king (= Fürst); Lazarus 14 (52) [išxanac'n hayoc’]: the most widespread use. Later in the medieval period this title came to designate the greater princes controlling lesser ones (called then naxarark’; infra at nn. 140–142); cf. Laurent, Arménie 71–75; supra n. 124. — It is important to bear in mind that the prevalence in Armenian society of Iranian or Iranoid terms, like išxan, need not necessarily signify that the institutions designated by them were themselves borrowed from Iranian society or even akin to Iranian institutions. These terms are an inheritance of the Parthian phase; cf. supra at n. 128. For the biblical uses of this term, cf infra n. 140.Google Scholar
137 Adontz, , Armenija 435 451–453, 457–458, 463–466; Aspect 141–142. Tēr (= ϰύϱιος) is derived from the particle ti- indicative of divinity (and related to divus) and ayr (‘man,’ ἀνήϱ); its feminine counterpart being tikin (kin = γυνή); Adontz, Armenija 404–405; Meillet, Altarm. Elementarb. 209, 210. — Tanutēr is composed of the preceding term and of the genitive of tun (‘house’), the latter being the exact sociological equivalent of the Georgian saxl, for which see supra n. 89. In the biblical texts it corresponds to οικοδεσπότης (e.g., Matt. 13.52). — Finally, nahapet is a sociological synonym of the preceding; it is variously derived by specialists: either, as an Armenian word, from nax- (πϱώτο-), a derivation by the way of the Iranian nax (ἀϱχή), and from -pet (= the Old Pers. paitiš = -αϱχής), as by Hübschmann, Grammatik 200; or as a direct importation of the Parthian period, a derivation of the Old Pers. ∗nāfapaitiš (‘lord of the family’), as by Adontz, Aspect 142; or, finally, as related to the Urarṭian term naḫadi or nahabi indicative of the royal succession, as by Safrastian, A., ‘The Ḫurri-lands,’ Georgica 4–5 (1937) 263–264. In the biblical texts, it has the meaning of ‘patriarch’ (e.g., Acts 2.29). — The suffix -ut'iwn (= -σύνη) denotes abstract nouns; Meillet, Altarm. Elementarb. 28–29. — The evolution from tribal conditions of the Armenian and Georgian social structure is illustrated by the history of certain social terms, which is one of the adaptation of old terms to new uses. Thus, the Arm. tun and the Georg. saxl originally meant ‘household’ and then came to signify ‘domain,’ ‘seigniory’ and, in the case of the former, also ‘country’ (= Syr. bēθ); the Arm. tanutēr and the Georg. mamasaxlisi passed from the sense of ‘head of a family/household’ to that of ‘head of a princely dynasty’ and, in the case of the former, also ‘head of the State’; finally, the Arm. azg, meaning originally ‘the entire clan,’ came to signify ‘the body of the nobles’ and even ‘the whole nation’; cf. Manandyan, P'eodal. Hay. 242.Google Scholar
138 Adontz, , Armenija 401–402. 435, 451, 472–476; Aspect 142; Marr, ‘Ětimologija dvux terminov armjanskago feodal'nago stroja,’ Zapiski Vostočnago Otdjelenija Imp. Russk. Arxeol. Običestva 11 (1899) 165–174. Like the vāspuhr of the Sassanian monuments, sepuh is derived from the Old Pers. viθapuθra (‘son of clan’), and its relation to viθapaitiš (‘head of clan,’ supra at n. 38) is perhaps not unlike that of patricii to patres. The meaning of the Armenian term is a combination of the medieval French juoeigneur and the modern German Prinz. Google Scholar
139 Cf. supra at nn. 13–14. Google Scholar
140 Adontz, , Armenija 450–454. 458, 467, 489–491; Aspect 142; Javaxišvili, Gos. stroj 129; Marr, Ĕtimologija; cf. Karst, Corpus juris I/2/1.204 (but cf. I/2/2.68, where the naxarark’ are said to stand for the dynastic aspect of the Armenian princes !); supra at nn. 104–108. The etymology of this term is still far from being definitively settled. For one thing, its proposed Iranian (Old Pers.) prototypes are not known to have existed. It has, thus, been derived either from ∗naxadāra and, consequently, from nax (= ἀϱχή), as by Benveniste, Titres 7; Justi, Namenbuch 514–515; and, as a possibility, by Meillet, ‘De quelques mots parthes en arménien,’ Revue des Études Arméniennes 2/1 (1922); — or from ∗nājadāra (‘holder of the family’), as by Adontz, Aspect 142; Manandyan, O torgovle 90; and Meillet, Quelques mots. The only Iranian example is a name (epithet?), Nahodares, in Ammianus Marcellinus 14.3. Hübschmann, Grammatik 200, though deriving it from nax, like the supporters of the above first etymology, seems to consider naxarar an Armenian formation along with a large number of other nax- words. Marr, in Ĕtimologija 170–173, regarded the first element of the term to have originally been nah- as in nahapet and nahang. Safrastian would link this term, and also nahapet, with an Urarṭian word; supra n. 137. Unlike išxan, which abounds in the Bible (both O.T. and N.T.), naxarar is seldom found in it. Išxan, it has been seen supra n. 136, is the basic word for ‘prince,’ ‘ruler’; on the other hand, naxarar denotes an official: e.g., in Mark 15.43 and Luke 23.50, where it corresponds to βουλευτής, of Esth. 1.3; 8.9; 9.3. It is interesting that it does not render στϱατηγός, like the Georgian erist'av (supra n. 104). That is the function also of išxan. The latter term, accordingly, corresponds at once to ἄϱχων and, thus, to the Georgian mt'avar (for which, see supra n. 93), as, e.g., in Luke 24.20; Acts 23.5, and to στϱατηγός and, thus, to the Georgian erist'av, as, e.g., in Ezech. 23.12, 23; Luke 22.52. This ambivalence of išxan is significant. On the other hand, στρατηγός is also found to correspond to zöraglux (‘general’), in Acts 16.20, 22, 35, 38, but still to the Geogian erist'av. It is difficult to agree with Adontz, Armenija 450, that naxarar is the sociological equivalent of the Iranian (Pehl.) šahrdār or vassal dynast (cf. Christensen, Iran Sass. 101–103). Like erist'av, it is rather an equivalent of the satrap or the latter's successor the strategus (supra at nn. 59–63; infra at nn. 207–208), for all the biblical uses mentioned above. By the time of the translation of the Bible into Armenian (following the invention of the alphabet at the beginning of the fifth century), ducal and princely functions had been sufficiently fused for išxan to acquire the ambivalence just noted. The introduction of the Iranoid term naxarar, at all events, must evidently, have coincided with the passing of the Hellenistic into the Parthian phase. The Roman Empire, it will be seen (at nn. 181, 201–202), exercised for some three centuries suzerain rights over some of the Armenian princely States, and the term by which it designated the rulers of these States was precisely ‘satrap,’ which stressed the feudal-administrative, i.e., the naxarar, aspect of the princes; supra n. 118. From the official language of the Roman Empire the term ‘satrap’ has passed into the vocabulary of modern historians, who delight in using it and its derivative ‘satrapal’ when speaking of the Armenian princes, without realizing that this manifests their utter unawareness of the double, feudal and dynasticist, character of these princes and, moreover, disregards the dynasticist aspect of it.Google Scholar
141 Adontz, , Armenija 452 464–466; J̌avaxišvili, Gos. stroj 115–117. — For the ‘elemental fief,’ see Coulborn, , Comp. Study of Feud. 190–197.Google Scholar
142 Adontz, , Armenija 451–452, 492. A few examples taken at random from ancient historians must suffice as illustrations. Faustus, 4.3 (77), speaks pleonastically of naxarark῾ ew azatkpetk῾ ew išxank῾, the two middle terms being synonyms designating the lesser noblesse (on which presently) and the two outer terms synonymous designations of the higher nobility. Lazarus, 13 (46, 47), 14 (47, 52) 16 (55), 25 (96, 98), 26 (98), 27 (103, 106) refers to the same group of representatives of the high nobility by the terms awag, awag tanutēr, naxarar, išxan, tanutēr, awag sepuh, mecamec (cf. also supra n. 133).Google Scholar
143 Adontz, , Armenija 459–460 and notes. Cf. supra n. 11 for ‘fathership’ and ‘sonship’ as expressions of dynasticist subordination.Google Scholar
144 Adontz, , Armenija 469–470 and notes. The oath was taken over salt; cf. the oath of the Great King Pērōz as referred to by Procopius, Bell. pers. 1.4.9. The concept of homage as a separate act from the oath of fealty does not appear to have existed in Armenia.Google Scholar
145 Adontz, , Armenija 465–466 and notes. The insignia included a diadem (patiw, literally, ‘honor’), a signet ring, and possibly a banner. At the Court of Ctesiphon, the Armenian princes were greeted with branches or wreaths. The princely banners bore what appears to have been inchoately heraldic designs; cf. Faustus 4.2 (77). For the insignia cf. also infra nn. 202–203.Google Scholar
146 Supra at n. 133; Toumanoff, Lists III, IV.Google Scholar
147 Adontz, , Armenija 470–471 and notes.Google Scholar
148 Adontz, , Armenija 444–448, 467–468, 471 and notes; Manandyan, P'eodal. Hay. 60–61; my Lists I, II. In Armenia, as in Iran, ‘la noblesse féodale … est en même temps la noblesse de robe’; Christensen, Iran Sass. 25, 258–260, also 107–110. As is clear from the basically fifth-century documents of the Gregorian cycle, princes formed on solemn occasions the entourage of the king; and Chosroes II of Armenia (c. 337–342) even decreed, according to Faustus, 3.8, that the more important among them should remain at Court and abstain from taking part in the activity of the royal army, where their contingents were commanded by the High Constable. This was a dead letter, apparently; and Arsaces II (350–367) accepted the presence of the princes with their contingents in the royal army; Faustus 4.2. For an earlier instance, the four kings of Tigranes the Great may be recalled; supra at n. 54.Google Scholar
149 Manandyan, , Probl. ob. stroja 24.Google Scholar
150 Adontz, , Armenija 467. 151 Ibid. 460. 152 Ibid. 464–465.Google Scholar
153 Adontz, , Armenija 457–458; Aspect 142–143. — The investiture with the German allodial Sonnenlehen was — as in Armenia, it seems — conferred by a banner (vexillum), hence they came to be known also as Fahnenlehen; Thompson, J. W., Feudal Germany (Chicago 1928) 294 and n. 1.Google Scholar
154 Adontz, , Armenija 457; Aspect 142.Google Scholar
155 Adontz, , Armenija 458; Aspect 142.Google Scholar
156 Adontz, , Armenija 464 and note.Google Scholar
157 Adontz, , Aspect 143; cf. J̌avaxišvili, Gos. stroj 115–117.Google Scholar
158 Adontz, , Armenija 179–198; cf. Stein, E. Histoire du Bas-Empire II (Paris/Brussels/Amsterdam 1949) 470–471; Bury, J. B., A History of the Later Roman Empire II (London 1923) 345. It was this traditional Armenian system of agnatic succession that Justinian I proclaimed abrogated in Roman Armenia by his Edict 3 of 23 July 535, Novel 21 of 18 March 536, and Novel 118 of 543, and replaced by that of cognatic succession. On the other hand, feminine succession was admitted in Caucasia, upon the extinction of the male line, as witness the changes on the Iberian throne, mentioned supra at nn. 68–69, or the passing, in Armenia, of the Gregorid inheritance to the Mamikonids, c. 440; cf. infra at n. 188.Google Scholar
159 See infra, Supplementary Note C. Google Scholar
160 Adontz, , Armenija 195 455–456; Aspect 143; Manandyan P'eodal. Hay. 196–197; Probl. ob. stroja 21. In Georgia this system of aristocratic landownership was retained to the end of the kingdom; supra n. 89. — Because the private aspects of the princes’ existence were endowed with a public character (supra at n. 6), the inheritance of princely property, not only the succession to princely power, was achieved without recourse to testamentary dispositions; Adontz, Armenija 193–194.Google Scholar
161 Justinian I's legal acts make a distinction between the Armenian princes (under the Imperial aegis) as holders of public power and as holders of their private domains. Sometime between 528 and 536, Justinian abolished the autonomous sovereign rights of these princes. The princely States ceased to exist as civitates stipendiariae and were converted into integral provinces of the Roman Empire. This concerned the public aspect of the Armenian princely dynasties involved. Then, by legal acts of 535, 536, and 543, the Emperor proceeded to interfere with the manner of succession to the ‘genearchic’ lands (supra n. 158), i.e., to the domains that the princes, now ‘mediatized,’ held independently of their own sovereign status, in a private capacity. Cf. also Manandyan, P'eodal. Hay. 90, for the distinction between the prince as a great landowner and the prince as a seignior of great territories, i.e., holder of political power. Strabo, too, may be presumed to have made the distinction between the public and the private, when he describes — in reverse order here — (a) the administration of private property as carried out by the πϱεσβύτατος of the family and (b) the succession to the throne of Iberia as going to the πϱεσβύτατος ‘according to kinship and age’ (supra n. 88). The Greek word is, clearly, used here in two different senses: ‘superior in age’ in case (a), ‘superior in standing’ in case (b), the latter superiority being precisely due to genealogical, and not just chronological, considerations. Perhaps, owing to this terminological ambivalence, Strabo found himself, under the influence of sense (a), adding τε ϰαὶ ᾑλιϰίαν to the ‘senior’ of sense (b). Needless to add, this distinction of public and private is a concomitant of civilized existence, though, in the ruling group, the two aspects may meet; supra at n. 6. Google Scholar
162 Supra at nn. 133, 146; Toumanoff, Lists III, IV.Google Scholar
163 Toumanoff, , Vitaxae. Google Scholar
164 Ibid. For the High Constable, see infra at n. 188.Google Scholar
165 Adontz, , Armenija 472–476; Aspect 142; supra n. 138, cf. Laurent, Arménie 63–64.Google Scholar
166 Supra nn. 133, 142.Google Scholar
167 Manandyan, , O torgovle 91–92. 263; P'eodal. Hay. 93; Adontz, Aspect 143, 144–145; Grousset, Histoire 294; Laurent, Arménie 60–61; Kherumian, R., ‘Esquisse d'une féodalité oubliée,’ Vostan 1 (1948–1949) 11–12; supra at nn. 97–99; infra Supplementary Note D.Google Scholar
168 It is clear, for instance, from Canon 16 of the local council of Šahapivan (A.D. 444) that azatk’ acted as judges; Akinean, N. (Akinian), ed., Šahapiuani žoḷouin kanonerë (Texte und Untersuchungen zur altarmenischen Literatur I/2; Vienna 1953) 89: . Since princes were supreme seigneurs justiciers in their States, without any interference from the Crown (Adontz, Armenija 467; supra at nn. 129–130), the judiciary position of their noble vassals must obviously have been a matter of princely appointment, exactly as the princes themselves held office-fiefs of the king.Google Scholar
169 Manandyan, , O torgovle 91–92; Nyut'er hin Hayastani tntesakan kyank'i patmut'yan II (Erivan 1928) 43–52, 73–74; cf. Kherumian, Féodalité 12–14.Google Scholar
170 Akinean, , Šahapivani kanon. 74: … Cf. Manandyan, O torgovle 92; Kherumian, Féodalité 20.Google Scholar
171 Manandyan, , O torgovle 92; Kherumian, Féodalité 52. — The loci classici for what seems to have been a difference in physical appearance are Lazarus 77 (312) and Eliseus 3 (86).Google Scholar
172 As an instance, Lazarus refers as amenayn azatagundk῾ ašxarhis Hayoc῾ (13[42]) and yazatanwoyn (14[48]) to the group which is elsewhere referred to by him as awaganin Hayoc῾ (13[46]), amenayn awagac῾ tanuteranc῾ ašxarhis Hayoc῾ (13[47]), nazararsn Hayoc῾ (14[47]), yawaganwoyn Hayoc῾ (14[48]), nazarark῾d Hayoc῾ (14[48]), nazararsn Hayoc῾, išxanac῾n Hayoc῾ (14[51]), išzanac῾n Hayoc῾ (14[52]), etc. Faustus, 4.55; 5.1, seems to be using azatagund in the same sense; this term was used to designate the noble cavalry of Armenia (including, no doubt, the princes who commanded it); Grousset, Histoire 294. For the Armenian nobility in general, see Kherumian, , Féodalité 7–22.Google Scholar
173 Cf. Laurent, , Arménie 60–61.Google Scholar
174 For the term ṛamik, as applied to the entire Third Estate, and also for another term, anazat, which was used by way of an epithet and is not to be taken in the sense of ‘unfree,’ but rather in contradistinction to azat, see Manandyan, , P'eodal. Hay. 149, 188–189; Probl. ob. stroja 19; Kherumian, Féodalité 22; and, for the Iberian parallel of anazat, cf. supra n. 101. — For the urban population of chiefly foreign traders and local agriculturalists and artisans, see Manandyan, , P'eodal. Hay. 216–231; O torgovle 82–85, 118–119; Kherumian 27–30. Cities had grown out of fortified settlements that had developed in the protecting shadow of castles. — For the peasantry, which was the economic foundation of the socio-political structure of Armenia, see Manandyan, , Ditoḷut'yunner hin Hayastani šinakanneri drut῾yan masin marzpanut῾yan šržanum (Erivan 1925); P῾eodal. Hay. 160–161, 188–189, 205–210, 304–319; O torgovle 68, 82, 93–94; Probl. ob. stroja 21–23, 27; Adontz, Armenija 479–487; Aspect 150–153; Kherumian 22–26. — Finally, for the slaves, who were used chiefly as domestics and never on a scale comparable to that of the Graeco-Roman world, see Manandyan, , P'eodal. Hay. 237–240; O torgovle 68, 94; Probl. ob. stroja 3–12, 19; Kherumian 30–22. The three sources of slavery were: capture in war, purchase, heredity. — Adontz attempted to interpret ṛamik as referring to the princes’ serfs (and forgot about the nobles’ serfs) and šinakan as denoting free peasants; Aspect 150–151; cf. Grousset, Histoire 294. This, in the light of Manandyan's studies, is incorrect and was no doubt due in part to Adontz's erroneous derivation of the former term; cf. Manandyan, Probl. ob. stroja 19. For the Iberian parallels, see supra at nn. 100–103.Google Scholar
175 Accordingly, Faustus, Lazarus, Eliseus, John Mamikonean, Zenobius of Glak were historians of the Mamikonid dynasty; Sebēos, Sapuh Bagratuni (whose work has been lost), Ps. Moses, Lewond, of the Bagratid; the Arcruni dynasty had a family historiographer in Thomas Arcruni and that of Siunia — posthumously — in Stephen Orbelian; cf. Laurent, Arménie 84, 90, 143; Kherumian, Féodalité 23. Google Scholar
176 Toumanoff, , Lists. Google Scholar
177 Adontz, , Armenija 236–297. has established that, contrary to certain exaggerated notions that were due to a misunderstanding of the sources, the number of the princely houses of Armenia was about fifty. He left out of the count, however, some houses that had passed out of the Armenian sphere in the course of the fourth and fifth centuries. See Toumanoff, . Lists I, V; cf. also Manandyan, P'eodal. Hay. 45–46. For the Urarṭian States, see Adontz, , Hist. d'Arm. 210–213.Google Scholar
178 Adontz, , Armenija 298–321 (the chapter devoted to the ‘territorial analysis of the princedoms’); H. Hübschmann, Die altarmenischen Ortsnamen (Indogermanische Forschungen 16 [Strasbourg 1904]). — It ought to be noted that the differentiation between the terms ‘province’ or ‘land’ (ašzarh) and ‘canton’ (gawaṛ) was not observed by the ancient historians prior to the epoch of Justinian I; ibid. 240–244. There were, in other words, simply different lands, some larger and containing others — these we may call ex post facto ‘provinces’ — and others, smaller.Google Scholar
179 Adontz, , Armenija 299 and, for instances, passim 298–321.Google Scholar
180 The following few instances, culled at random from ancient historians, will illustrate the various forms of the nomenclature. (I) Princes (a) Territorial Names: Andouk Siwni (Faustus 3.16[55]); Andovkay išxanin Siwneac’ (Fau. 3.11[39]); išzann Siwneac’ zVaḷinak (Fau. 3.9[32]); Vorot’ išxann Vananday gawaṛin (Fau. 3.13[40]); zArtawan zišzan Vananday (Fau. 3.14[49]); Gorut’ išxann Joroc’ ašxarhin (Fau. 3.12[40]); tēr Siwneac’ Vasak (Lazarus 23[92]); Artašir tēr Siwneac’ (Bk. Lett. ed. Girk’ t'lḷ'oc’. Metenagrut'iwn naxneac’ [Sahak Mesropean Matenadaran 5, Tiflis 1901] 42). — (b) Gentilitial Names: Vahan yAmatuni (Fau. 3.8[31]); zPargew išxann tann Amatuneac’ (Fau. 4.4[81]); zKarēn zišzann Amatuneac’ tohmin (Fau 3.14[49]); zAba išxann Gnuneac’ (Fau. 3.12[40]); Vardann Mamikonean tohmin tanutēr (Fau. 4.18[136]); Vahan nahapet Amatuneac’ tohmin (Fau. 3.7[28]); tēr Amatuneac’ Vahan (Laz. 23[92]); Mangen Amatuneac’ tēr (Bk. Lett. 42). — (II) Cadets: Hmaekay Mamikonēi (Laz. 41[158]); sepuhn Hmayeak (Laz. 33[134]); sepuhn Mamikonēic’ Vasak (Laz. 68[268]); sepuhk'n Vahewunik’ (Sebēos 7.79); meci sepuhn Mamikonēic’ (Laz. 27[108]); Hamazaspean sepuh m'i Mamikonean tohmēn (Fau. 5.37[246]). — (III) Princesses: ztikinn Rštuneac’ (Fau. 4.59[184]). — Documents of the sixth century (e.g., Acts of the Council of 555; Bk. Lett. 74) indicate that patronymics (in the sense of a name derived from one's father, rather than in that of a nomen gentilicium) tended to be used instead of both surnames and titles. Faustus’ use of tan, tohmi, gawaṛi, ašxarhi (genitives of ‘house,’ ‘family,’ ‘canton,’ ‘land,’ coupled in the above examples with the suffix -n, which is a kind of definite article) may be a stylistic mannerism. Above, the toponym Vanand (gen. Vananday) is singular in form; Siwnik’ (gen. Siwneac’), plural. The surname derived from the latter is Siwni; its plural is identical with the toponym. Thus, ‘Prince of Siunia’ has the same form as, say, ‘Prince of the Amatuni [family/house].’ Some houses had both a dynastic and a territorial name (as, e.g., the Kamsarakans of Aršarunik’, who were also surnamed ‘Aršaruni’); the territorial names of some ended in the suffixes -ac'i or-ec'i (e.g., Akēac'i); while others are not known to have had any surname, territorial or dynastic, but were known as just, let us say, ‘Prince of Vanand.’ Most dynastic patronymics ended in -uni, exactly as most territorial names, so that it is not always possible to tell whether a surname was dynastic or territorial by origin. Some dynastic patronymics ended also in -ean (gen. pl. -eic’), and so dit a few toponyms. For gentilitial titles and hereditary offices, see infra at nn. 187, 188, 191, 195. — Naxarar appears to have been chiefly used by way of a general description, especially in the plural, as applied to groups of princes, rather than as a specific term that formed part of their particular and official nomenclature. The use of this feudal term is, accordingly, similar to that of the Georgian dynasticist term sep'ecul and different to the specific use of the feudal erist'av. Here may well be another indication of the difference of emphasis in the feudal-dynasticist symbiosis in Armenia and in Iberia: the dynasticist elements tending to be more concrete in the former, the feudal in the latter; cf. supra at nn. 136, 140, 168. On the other hand, tanutēr also tended to be used in a generally descriptive rather than precise way, though to a lesser degree than naxarar. Nahapet appears to have been used only with patronymic surnames. Google Scholar
181 Toumanoff, , Vitaxae. Google Scholar
182 Infra at nn. 201–203; Toumanoff, Vitaxae III.Google Scholar
183 Adontz, , Armenija 223–225; 230; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 219–233; Toumanoff, Vitaxae II, IV, V.Google Scholar
184 Adontz, , Armenija 230 299.Google Scholar
185 Ibid. 122–126, 298–321.Google Scholar
186 For the other princes, see Toumanoff, , Lists .Google Scholar
187 Toumanoff, , Orontids II; Early Bagratids; Markwart, Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge (Leipzig 1903) 391–465; ‘Die Genealogie der Bagratiden und das Zeitalter des Mar Abas und Ps. Moses Xorenac'i,’ Caucasica 6/2 (1930); Adontz, Armenija 122, 307–308, 400, 402, 405, 411, 415, 447; Grousset, Histoire 291–292 and passim; Laurent, Arménie 83–86 and passim. The Bagratids play a leading role on the pages of the ancient historians, Agathangelus (and the other parts of the Gregorian cycle), Faustus, Lazarus, Eliseus, Ps. Moses, and (the seventh-century) Sebēos. This note treats of Bagratid history and historiography more briefly than in the case of some other houses, because this matter is treated extensively in Orontids; cf. also Lists. Google Scholar
188 Adontz, , Armenija 124–126. 282–283, 299, 308–311, 370, 402–404, 445, 447; Markwart, Südarmenien 67∗-79∗, 290–296; Grousset, Histoire 290–291, 641, and passim (erroneously, he attributes, p. 290, the hereditary High Constableship also to the Kamsarakans); Laurent, Arménie 90–94; Akinean, ‘Eḷišē vardapet ew iwr patmut'iwn Hayoc’ paterazmi: Matenagrakan-patmakan usumnasirut'iwn’ I, Handēs Amsōreay 45 (1931) 427–448; 46 (1932) 784–786; Garitte, G. Documents pour l'ètude du livre d'Agathange (ST 127 [1946]) 223, 235–236; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 276–278, 286, 325–327, 357–361; Scöld, H. ‘L'origine des Mamiconiens,’ Revue des Études Arméniennes 5/1 (1925) 131–136; Mlaker, K., ‘Die Herkunft der Mamikonier und der Titel Čenbakur,’ Wien. Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 39 (1932) 133–145; Justi, Namenbuch 424–425; Manandyan, P'eodal. Hay. 73; my Lists. See infra Supplementary Note E.Google Scholar
189 Faustus 3.11, 16, 21; 4.4, 19; Lazarus 34, 35, 36, 39, 42, 43, 45, 47, 57, 62, 63, 71, 74, 79, 80, 81, 86, 96; Eliseus 3 (98), 5 (129), 6 (151), 8 (250); Ps. Moses 2.27, 28, 42, 71–73, 90; 3.29, 31, 32, 38, 43, 48, 50, 65. — Aršarunik’, formerly Erasxajor = 'Aϱαξηνον πεδίον of Strabo (11.14.4, 6), from which the family's second surname was derived (cf. supra. n. 180), contained also the great castle of Artagerk’ (Artageras: Strabo 11.14.6; cf. RE 2/1 1302); whereas Širak (cf. RE 3 A/1.282–283 [No. 2]) had in it the city of Ani, which at a later period became the capital of the restored — Fourth — Armenian Monarchy of the Bagratids. See Adontz, , Armenija 300–303; Kogean, S. ‘Kamsarakannerĕ « teark Širakay ew Aršaruneač »,’ Azgayin Matenardaran 110 (Vienna 1926); Grousset, Histoire 289–290, 332–333; Laurent, Arménie 96–97; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 363, 364; Garitte, Documents 233–234; Tournebize, F., ‘Arscharouniq,’ DHGE 4.745. In Ps. Moses, the Kamsarakan cousinship with the Kings of Armenia of the Arsacid line is stressed; cf. 2.72 (208), 2.90 (242). — The princely houses of Abelean, Gabelean, and Hawenuni, of the cantons of the same name, between Aršaruni and Basean, along the Araxes, appear to have been branches of the House of Kamsarakan, as do the Princes Spanduni; Adontz, op. cit. 301, 305; cf. my Lists,Google Scholar
190 Faustus 3.8, 14; 4.4; Lazarus 23, 25, 31, 33, 37, 42, 47, 63, 67; Eliseus 2 (55), 4 (119). 5 (129, 137), 8 (250); Ps. Moses 2.57, 77, 84, 85; 3.6, 9, 43, 50, 65; Sebēos 6 (78), 11 (90), 30 (175). — Like the princely houses of the Mardpets, Mandakuni, and Murac'an, the Amatunis must be of Median, i.e., of Caspio-Median or Ma(n)tianian-Mandnaean, origin; Adontz, Armenija 303–304, 321, 418–419; Lap'anc'yan, Xajasa 140, 136; cf. also, for the largely pre-Iranian Mannaeans, Aliev, I., ‘Midija — Drevnejšee gosudarstvo na territorii Azerbejdžana,’ Očerki po Drevnej Istorii Azerbajdžana (Baku 1956) 60 -123; Markwart, Südarmenien 430–434; Herzfeld, Arch. Hist. Iran 11–12. It is interesting that Ps. Moses, 2.57 (184–185), while announcing the Iranian origin of the Amatunis, asserts at the same time that they were of Jewish origin. One may wonder what influence the Bagratid tradition of the same origin (supra at n. 187), so dear to him, may have had on this. As is known, the memory of the Urarṭian kings was fresh in the historical tradition of Arsacid Armenia (supra n. 51), and so also could easily have been the memory of some of the neighboring and contemporaneous Median-Mannaean dynasts (for these dynasts, see, e.g., Aliev, op. cit., 91, 94: the Assyrians styled them ‘kings’ = šarrāni or ‘toparchs’ = bēl-āli). Of these, none was perhaps more entitled to be remembered than the ally of Urarṭu, Bagdatti, dynast of Uišdiš, who paid for this alliance by being skinned alive by Sargon II of Assyria in 715/4 B.C. (Annals 1.64–65; Fasti 1.55–56, in Winckler, H., Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons [Leipzig 1889]; cf. Adontz, Hist. d'Arm. 97–99, 301; Aliev, op. cit. 102–103) and who may be supposed to have indeed been remembered in the region where he had ruled. Now Uišdiš, for all the uncertainty about its precise location (see Manandyan, O nek. sporn. probl. 39–47, on this problem and for a critique of Thureau-Dangin and Adontz), was — and this is certain — in the region of lake Urmia-Mantiane, precisely the area where the House of Amatuni originated. Assuming that Ps. Moses had somehow heard of Bagdatti, it could be explained that to his mind at least the combined notion of the proximity between the Amatuni allod and Bagdatti's land and of the affinity between Bagdatti's name and that of the Bagratid eponym (both indeed derived from the Old Pers. bagadata) suggested that the two houses, of Amatuni and of Bagratuni, were, if not of the same ancestry — and he must have been aware of the fact that they did not consider themselves related, — at least of the same ethnic origin. Given Ps. Moses’ theory of the Bagratid origin, which included the derivation of ‘Bagarat’ from a Hebrew name (cf. Orontids II), that ethnic origin could only have been Jewish. For the House of Amatuni, see also Grousset, Histoire 293; Laurent, Arménie 116; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 252, 410; Tournebize, ‘Amatouniq,’ DHGE 2.990–993; my Lists. Google Scholar
191 Arm. Agath. 112/795 (404), 126/873 (440): išxann Malxazut'ean tann; Gk. Agath. 135, 164: ἄϱχων, ὁ τῶν Μαλχασιῶν οἴϰου; ἄρχοντα τῶν Μα<λ>ϰ<αζ>ιτῶν; Gk. Life of St. Gregory 98: γενεάϱχης ὁ τῶν χονϱχόϱων ὡς ᾑγούμενος ἔχων τῂν ἀϱχῂν τῂν ϰαλoνμένην Μαλχαζόβη; cf. 172: τῂν Μαλχαζὰν; Faustus 3.12; 4.11; 5.38; 43; Lazarus 25, 34, 35, 36, 39, 64, 65, 68, 69; Eliseus 2 (55), 3 (95), 4 (118), 5 (129), 6 (151, 155); Ps. Moses 1.12; 2.7; 3.9. See also Adontz, Armenija 313, 331–332, 415, 440, 490; Safrastian, Hurri-lands 259–267; Akinean, Elišē 472–479, 789–790; Justi, Namenbuch 188–189; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 330, 435; Garitte, Documents 223, 239. — According to Ps. Moses, 2.7, the Prince-Maḷxaz was enfeoffed of the command of the bodyguard of the Kings of Armenia, which was recruited from his subjects; cf. my Lists. ϰ<αζ>ιτῶν; Gk. Life of St. Gregory 98: γενεάϱχης ὁ τῶν χονϱχόϱων ὡς ᾑγούμενος ἔχων τῂν ἀϱχῂν τῂν ϰαλoνμένην Μαλχαζόβη; cf. 172: τῂν Μαλχαζὰν; Faustus 3.12; 4.11; 5.38; 43; Lazarus 25, 34, 35, 36, 39, 64, 65, 68, 69; Eliseus 2 (55), 3 (95), 4 (118), 5 (129), 6 (151, 155); Ps. Moses 1.12; 2.7; 3.9. See also Adontz, Armenija 313, 331–332, 415, 440, 490; Safrastian, Hurri-lands 259–267; Akinean, Elišē 472–479, 789–790; Justi, Namenbuch 188–189; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 330, 435; Garitte, Documents 223, 239. — According to Ps. Moses, 2.7, the Prince-Maḷxaz was enfeoffed of the command of the bodyguard of the Kings of Armenia, which was recruited from his subjects; cf. my Lists.' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Arm.+Agath.+112/795+(404),+126/873+(440):+išxann+Malxazut'ean+tann;+Gk.+Agath.+135,+164:+ἄϱχων,+ὁ+τῶν+Μαλχασιῶν+οἴϰου;+ἄρχοντα+τῶν+Μα<λ>ϰ<αζ>ιτῶν;+Gk.+Life+of+St.+Gregory+98:+γενεάϱχης+ὁ+τῶν+χονϱχόϱων+ὡς+ᾑγούμενος+ἔχων+τῂν+ἀϱχῂν+τῂν+ϰαλoνμένην+Μαλχαζόβη;+cf.+172:+τῂν+Μαλχαζὰν;+Faustus+3.12;+4.11;+5.38;+43;+Lazarus+25,+34,+35,+36,+39,+64,+65,+68,+69;+Eliseus+2+(55),+3+(95),+4+(118),+5+(129),+6+(151,+155);+Ps.+Moses+1.12;+2.7;+3.9.+See+also+Adontz,+Armenija+313,+331–332,+415,+440,+490;+Safrastian,+Hurri-lands+259–267;+Akinean,+Elišē+472–479,+789–790;+Justi,+Namenbuch+188–189;+Hübschmann,+Ortsnamen+330,+435;+Garitte,+Documents+223,+239.+—+According+to+Ps.+Moses,+2.7,+the+Prince-Maḷxaz+was+enfeoffed+of+the+command+of+the+bodyguard+of+the+Kings+of+Armenia,+which+was+recruited+from+his+subjects;+cf.+my+Lists.>Google Scholar
192 Arm. Agath. 112/795 (404), 126/873 (440): išxann Ṛštuneac’ (ašxarhin); Gk. Agath. 135, 164: ἄϱχων τῇς ‘Ρουστινῶν χώϱας; τòν ἄϱχοντα ‘Ρεστουνιτῶν; Gk. Life of St. Gregory 98; ὁ τῶν ‘Ρουστοννίων τοπάϱχης; Faustus 3.7, 10, 16, 18; 4.4, 11, 59; 5.37; Lazarus 25; Eliseus 2 (55), 8 (251); Ps. Moses 2.8, 85; 3.6, 15; Sebēos 28 (156), 29 (161, 167), 30 (176), 32 (184–188), 33 (194). See also Adontz, Armenija 315, 321; Grousset, Histoire 292, 296–304; Laurent, Arménie 89–90; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 339–340; Garitte, Documents 231–232. According to Ps. Moses, 2.8, the Princes Rštuni, those of Golt'n or Colthene, and those of Siwnik’ belonged to the same line of the Haykid dynasty; cf. my Lists. Google Scholar
193 Also written Anjawac'i. Faustus 2.12; 4.11; 5.6, 32; Lazarus 23, 25, 42, 47, 70; Eliseus 5 (129), 8 (250); Ps. Moses 2.8, 62; 3.39; Zenobius, Hist. Tarawn (ed. Venice 1889) 25. See also Adontz, Armenija 321; Markwart, Südarmenien 359–389, 509–516; Grousset, Histoire 334–336; Laurent, Arménie 97; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 342–343; my Lists and Vitaxae II (for Mahk'ert); Tournebize, ‘Antzevatsiq,’ DHGE 3.884–885. Google Scholar
194 Arm. Agath. 112/795 (404): išxann Arcruneac’; Gk. Agath. 135: ἄϱχων, ὁ 'Aσουϱουνῶν; Gk. Life of St. Gregory 98: ὁ τῶν 'Aϱτζ<ϱ>ουνίων ἐξουσιαστής; Faustus 3.18; 4.14, 58, 59; 5.38, 43; Lazarus 23, 25, 30, 33, 35, 39, 42, 47, 70; Eliseus 2 (55), 5 (129), 6 (151, 156), 8 (250, 251); Ps. Moses 1.23; 2.7, 29, 35; 3.29, 39, 48, 65; Sebēos 11 (90), 18 (104), 23 (121, 124); Zenobius 25, 27, 30. See also Toumanoff, Orontids I. 9, 11–15; Lists; Adontz, Armenija 319–320, 321, 413–415, 490; Justi, Namenbuch 416; Grousset, Histoire 292–293, 643, and (for the subsequent history of the house, passim; Laurent, Arménie 83, 87–89, and passim; Markwart, Eranšahr 175–178; Südarmenien 79∗-96∗, 210 n. 3 (210–212), 390–391 509–516; Tournebize, ‘Ardzrouni,’ DHGE 3.1627–1630; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 344, 338: the medieval Armenian geographers distinguished between two neighboring cantons: Zarehawan and Zarewand, which was always coupled with Her. This distinction appears somewhat artificial in the face of both etymological identity and geographical adjacency. Ps. Moses, 2.7, would ascribe to this house the hereditary office of Eagle-bearer (arciw-uni); but this is only an instance of his fanciful etymologizing. The only authentic reference to the eagle-banners of Armenia is in Faustus 4.2, and it connects them with the Mamikonid High Constables. No doubt the anti-Mamikonid Ps. Moses attempted here, as it were, to kill two birds with one stone: explain the name of Arcruni and deprive the Mamikonids of at least some of their privileges. It is strange that Markwart, Eranšahr 178 n. 4, should have so accepted Ps. Moses as to suggest that possibly the Arcrunis were High Constables before the Mamikonids. There is nothing to support this view. — For the possible Arcrunid origin of the Eastern Emperor Leo V, see Adontz, ‘Sur l'origine de Léon V, empereur de Byzance,’ Armeniaca 2 (1937) 1–10; Markwart, Südarmenien 210 n. 1.ουνίων ἐξουσιαστής; Faustus 3.18; 4.14, 58, 59; 5.38, 43; Lazarus 23, 25, 30, 33, 35, 39, 42, 47, 70; Eliseus 2 (55), 5 (129), 6 (151, 156), 8 (250, 251); Ps. Moses 1.23; 2.7, 29, 35; 3.29, 39, 48, 65; Sebēos 11 (90), 18 (104), 23 (121, 124); Zenobius 25, 27, 30. See also Toumanoff, Orontids I. 9, 11–15; Lists; Adontz, Armenija 319–320, 321, 413–415, 490; Justi, Namenbuch 416; Grousset, Histoire 292–293, 643, and (for the subsequent history of the house, passim; Laurent, Arménie 83, 87–89, and passim; Markwart, Eranšahr 175–178; Südarmenien 79∗-96∗, 210 n. 3 (210–212), 390–391 509–516; Tournebize, ‘Ardzrouni,’ DHGE 3.1627–1630; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 344, 338: the medieval Armenian geographers distinguished between two neighboring cantons: Zarehawan and Zarewand, which was always coupled with Her. This distinction appears somewhat artificial in the face of both etymological identity and geographical adjacency. Ps. Moses, 2.7, would ascribe to this house the hereditary office of Eagle-bearer (arciw-uni); but this is only an instance of his fanciful etymologizing. The only authentic reference to the eagle-banners of Armenia is in Faustus 4.2, and it connects them with the Mamikonid High Constables. No doubt the anti-Mamikonid Ps. Moses attempted here, as it were, to kill two birds with one stone: explain the name of Arcruni and deprive the Mamikonids of at least some of their privileges. It is strange that Markwart, Eranšahr 178 n. 4, should have so accepted Ps. Moses as to suggest that possibly the Arcrunis were High Constables before the Mamikonids. There is nothing to support this view. — For the possible Arcrunid origin of the Eastern Emperor Leo V, see Adontz, ‘Sur l'origine de Léon V, empereur de Byzance,’ Armeniaca 2 (1937) 1–10; Markwart, Südarmenien 210 n. 1.' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Arm.+Agath.+112/795+(404):+išxann+Arcruneac’;+Gk.+Agath.+135:+ἄϱχων,+ὁ+'Aσουϱουνῶν;+Gk.+Life+of+St.+Gregory+98:+ὁ+τῶν+'Aϱτζ<ϱ>ουνίων+ἐξουσιαστής;+Faustus+3.18;+4.14,+58,+59;+5.38,+43;+Lazarus+23,+25,+30,+33,+35,+39,+42,+47,+70;+Eliseus+2+(55),+5+(129),+6+(151,+156),+8+(250,+251);+Ps.+Moses+1.23;+2.7,+29,+35;+3.29,+39,+48,+65;+Sebēos+11+(90),+18+(104),+23+(121,+124);+Zenobius+25,+27,+30.+See+also+Toumanoff,+Orontids+I.+9,+11–15;+Lists;+Adontz,+Armenija+319–320,+321,+413–415,+490;+Justi,+Namenbuch+416;+Grousset,+Histoire+292–293,+643,+and+(for+the+subsequent+history+of+the+house,+passim;+Laurent,+Arménie+83,+87–89,+and+passim;+Markwart,+Eranšahr+175–178;+Südarmenien+79∗-96∗,+210+n.+3+(210–212),+390–391+509–516;+Tournebize,+‘Ardzrouni,’+DHGE+3.1627–1630;+Hübschmann,+Ortsnamen+344,+338:+the+medieval+Armenian+geographers+distinguished+between+two+neighboring+cantons:+Zarehawan+and+Zarewand,+which+was+always+coupled+with+Her.+This+distinction+appears+somewhat+artificial+in+the+face+of+both+etymological+identity+and+geographical+adjacency.+Ps.+Moses,+2.7,+would+ascribe+to+this+house+the+hereditary+office+of+Eagle-bearer+(arciw-uni);+but+this+is+only+an+instance+of+his+fanciful+etymologizing.+The+only+authentic+reference+to+the+eagle-banners+of+Armenia+is+in+Faustus+4.2,+and+it+connects+them+with+the+Mamikonid+High+Constables.+No+doubt+the+anti-Mamikonid+Ps.+Moses+attempted+here,+as+it+were,+to+kill+two+birds+with+one+stone:+explain+the+name+of+Arcruni+and+deprive+the+Mamikonids+of+at+least+some+of+their+privileges.+It+is+strange+that+Markwart,+Eranšahr+178+n.+4,+should+have+so+accepted+Ps.+Moses+as+to+suggest+that+possibly+the+Arcrunis+were+High+Constables+before+the+Mamikonids.+There+is+nothing+to+support+this+view.+—+For+the+possible+Arcrunid+origin+of+the+Eastern+Emperor+Leo+V,+see+Adontz,+‘Sur+l'origine+de+Léon+V,+empereur+de+Byzance,’+Armeniaca+2+(1937)+1–10;+Markwart,+Südarmenien+210+n.+1.>Google Scholar
195 Faustus 3.12; 4.2, 11; Lazarus 23, 39, 47, 68, 69, 74; Eliseus 3 (90), 5 (129), 6 (156, 173), 8 (250); Ps. Moses 1.23; 2.7, 19; 3.43; Sebēos 29. See also Adontz, Armenija 304, 321, 445–446, 490; Grousset, Histoire 293, 333; Laurent, Arménie 97; and (for the Orontid origin) my Orontids I.9, 11–15; Lists. The canton of Berkri lay in Vaspurakan; that of Aḷiovit, in Turuberan. The hereditary office-fief of this house was that of hazarapet; Faustus 4.2. This was an office instituted (no doubt in the Parthian period) in imitation of the Iranian office of the same name: hazārbaδ. The name was derived from the Old Pers. hazārapaitiš, which in Achaemenian days denoted the office of Commander of the Great King's bodyguard or Chiliarch (for this is what the Iranian term literally means) of the Greeks; Ehtécham, Iran Achém. 67, 69; Christensen, Iran Sass. 113. In Sassanian Iran, hazārbaδ designated something quite different, however: the office of Prime Minister or Head of civil administration, also known as vuzurg-jramanδār, the prototype of the Grand Vizier; Christensen 113–116 (in the last years of the Sassanid empire the name hazārbaδ denoted once again the head of the bodyguard; 395); Herzfeld, Paikuli 188. According to Theophylactus, 3.18, the competence of this office concerned τὰς πολιτιϰὰς φϱοντίδας. For its Armenian counterpart, see Adontz, , Armenija 445–446. 468, 469. Because of the great independence of the Armenian nobility, princely as well as knightly, the chief concern of this office was with the tiers-état and particularly the peasantry. In biblical texts, hazarapet corresponds to ἐπίτϱοπος (e.g., Luke 8.3; 2 Mac. 11.1; however, the ἐπίτϱοπος of Matt. 20.8 is rendered by gawaṛapet). The first-century Iberian inscriptions from Armazi reveal the existence of the office of ἐπίτϱοπος in the Kingdom of Iberia; cf. my Vitaxae § 19. This Iberian office was called in Georgian ezos-mojğuari or ‘Master of the Court’; cf. A. Šanije in Mitteilungen d. Akademie d. Wiss. d. georgischen S.S.R. 2, 1- 2 (1941) 181–187. A comparison with Iberia will also show that the spaspet (supra at n. 105) combined the powers of the sparapet with some of those of the hazarapet, thus making the Iberian Crown more powerful than the Armenian in relation to the princes. Ps. Moses, 2.7, ascribes to the House of Gnuni the hereditary Butlership of Armenia and — somewhat paronomastically, it would seem — derives its name from giniuni (gini-’wine’); but he does not know of their other office. Possibly the latter office included the functions of the former. (Adontz in one place [Armenija 468] would render hazarapet by ‘Chancellor’ and sparapet by ‘Seneschal.’)Google Scholar
196 Arm. Agath. 112/795 (404): išxann Mokac῾ ašxarhin; cf. 126/873 (440); Gk. Life of St. Gregory 98: ὁ τῶν Μοϰασῶν σατϱάπης; Lazarus 23, 25, 27, 39, 70; Eliseus 2 (55), 6 (151); Ps. Moses 2.8; 3.43, 55; Sebēos 30 (175); Zenobius 26, 30. See also Adontz, Armenija 299; Hübschmann. Ortsnamen 254–255, 330–333; Garitte, Documents 225; Markwart, Südarmenien 495–500 (for the Bagratids of Moxoene); Schachermayer, ‘Moxoene,’ RE 16/1.409; my Lists. Google Scholar
197 Arm. Agath. 112/795 (404): išxann Siwneac῾ ašxarhin; cf. 126/873 (440); Gk. Agath. 135, 164: ἄϱχων τῇς Σννιστῶν χώϱας; τòν ἄϱχοντα Σννιστῶν; Gk. Life of St. Gregory 98: ὁ τῶν Σννίων φύλαϱχος; Faustus 3.9, 11, 16, 21; 4.4, 15, 58; 5.42, 43; Lazarus passim Eliseus 2 (54), 3 (82), 5 (128), 7 (176, 178), 8 (250); Ps. Moses 1.2; 2.63; 3.18, 22, 26, 28, 41, 43, 46, 54; Sebēos 6 (76, 78), 11 (90), 13 (92), 30 (173), 35 (227, 228, 233), 38 (243); Zenobius 26, 27, 29, 35, 43–44, 46, 48. See also Adontz, Armenija 220–221, 274–276, 299, 421–423, 490; Grousset, Histoire 291, 645, and (for the subsequent history of this house) passim; Laurent, Arménie passim; Justi, Namenbuch 426–427; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen; 263–266, 347–349; Markwart, Eranšahr 120–122; Garitte, Documents 235; Ališan, Sisakan (Venice 1893); Brosset, Histoire de la Siounie par Stéphannos Orbélian, traduite de l'arménien, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg 1864, 1866); Toumanoff, Lists. — The name of the province of Siwnik’ may go as far back as the Suini/Šiuni-(i)ni of the Urarṭian records; Adontz, Hist. d'Arm. 225 n. 3. It is called Σαυνία by Eusebius (Praepar. evang. 6.10.31; cf. Adontz, Armenija 421 n. 4; Markwart, Südarmenien 77 n. 1) and ΣαννΙτις by Strabo (11.14.5: ΦαννΙτις, cf. Adontz, loc. cit.; Markwart, op. cit. 78 n. 1 [abandons his earlier identification of Φ. with the canton of Apahunik’, but does not quite accept that with Siwnik’]; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 210, 239); its people, Σουνιταί by Procopius (Bell. pers. 15.1). Its other name is of Iranian origin: Sisakan, which first appears in the work of Zacharias Rhaetor, in the sixth century: the Prim. Hist. Arm., Agath., Faustus, Lazarus, Eliseus do not know it, but Ps. Moses does; cf. Adontz, op. cit. 421 n. 3; Hübschmann 263–266. Google Scholar
198 Toumanoff, , Vitaxae ; Adontz, Armenija 222–230.Google Scholar
199 Ibid. 44–45.Google Scholar
200 Cf. Adontz, , Armenija 277–279. 471; Grousset, Histoire 191, 287–289, 293; Laurent, Arménie 67–70. For the šahrdārān see Christensen, , Iran Sass. 101–103.Google Scholar
201 Adontz, , Armenija 28–45, 91–126; K. Güterbock, Römisch Armenien und die römischen Satrapien im 4–6. Jahrhundert (Königsberg 1900); Lehmann-Haupt, Satrap (XIV: ‘Die römische Satrapen’) 181–186; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 225–228.Google Scholar
202 De aed. 3.1 : σύμβολα μέντοι αὐτῶν πϱòς τοῦ ‘Ρωμαίων βασιλέως ἐδέχοντο μόνον. ἄξιον δὲ τὰ σύμβολα ταῦτα δηλῶσαι λόγῳ, ἐπεὶ οὐϰέτι ές ἀνθϱώπου ὄψιν ἀφίξεται. χλαμòς ᾑ ἐξ ἐϱίων πεποιημένη, οὐχ oιa τῶν πϱοβατίων ἐϰπέφυϰεν, ἀλλ’ ἐϰ θαλάσσης συνειλεγμένων, πίννους τά ζῷα ϰαλεΙν νενομΙϰασιν, ἐν οἷς ᾑ τῶν ἐϱίων ἒϰφυσις γίνεται, χϱυσῷ δὲ ᾑ τῇς ποϱφύϱας ϰατηλήλειπτο μοΙϱα, ἐφ’ ἧς εἴωθεν ᾑ τῇς ἁλουϱγίδος ἐμβολῂ γίνεσθαι. πεϱόνη χϱυσῇ τᾗ χλαμύδι ἐπέϰειτο, λίθον ἐπὶ μέσης πεϱιφϱάττουσά τινα ἒντιμον, ἀφ’ οὗ δῂ ὑάϰινθοι τϱεΙς χϱυσαΙς τε ϰαὶ χαλαϱαΙς ταΙς ἁλύσεσιν ἀπεϰϱέμαντο. χιτὼν ἐϰ μετάξης ἐγϰαλλωπίσμασι χϱυσαΙς πανταχόθεν ὡϱαϊσμένος ᾃ δῂ νενομίϰασι πλούμια ϰαλεΙν. ὑποδήματα μέχϱι ἐς γόνυ φοινικοῦ χϱώματος, ᾃ δῂ βασιλέα μόνον ‘Ρωμαίων τε ϰαὶ Πεϱσῶν ὑποδεΙσθαι θέμις. Cf. Adontz, Armenija 108–109. — The fabric woven of the silky beard of the mollusc, called pinna or pinnus, was highly prized as material for ceremonial vestments, both lay and ecclesiastical. Thus, in 851, Pope Leo IV wrote to Sardinia asking for lana marina, quod nos usu nostro pinnino dicimus, adding ‘quia nostris pontificalibus vestimentis valde nobis necessaria videtur, eo quod frequenter in festivitatibus sollemnibus eiusmodi coloris aut lanae nos optimatesque nostri induimur vestimentis’; cf. Salmon, P., Étude sur les insignes du Pontife dans le rit romain (Rome 1955) 34. — For the significance of the gold ornaments of the above garments, see the following note.Google Scholar
203 Malalas, , Chron. (CSHB) 413; Chron. Pasch. (PG 92) 861; Theophanes, Chron. (PG 108) 393; Agathias 3.15. These sources amplify the data of Procopius by indicating that the replacement of the purple by the gold on the mantle and the gold πλούμια of the tunic denoted the royal character of these garments. The Kings of Lazica are said additionally to have received a royal crown, a mitre, a belt, and to have borne an imperial effigy on both the mantle and the tunic. But their mantle, instead of being made of pinna, was of (white) silk. — Faustus, 5.38 (248), describes the vestments (and also other gifts, such as a tent, tapestries, and gold vases for the table) sent by the Great King to a Mamikonid prince. They consisted of a royal garment and hermine (garment of hermine ?) (zt'agaworakan patmučann, samoyr …); two diadems (patiwk’), one of gold and silver for the helmet, the other for the head; and ornaments to adorn the chest, such as are worn by kings (= πλούμια?). According to Eliseus, 7 (177), the attire of a Prince of Siwnik῾ included a diadem (patiw), a gold-embroidered tiara (xoyr), a gold belt with precious stones, a collar, pendants, and a fur mantle. The crown of pearls and pendants are mentioned among the princely regalia by Ps. Moses 2.7, 47; and Stephen Orbelian, 4.7, relates that those of the House of Siwnik῾ contained red boots, a collar of pearls, a gold sceptre, and a silver throne. Finally, a diadem, a ring, and a banner were used in the investiture of every Armenian prince by his suzerain the king; supra n. 145.Google Scholar
204 Adontz, , Armenija 286–288.Google Scholar
205 Ibid. 288–289.Google Scholar
206 See Toumanoff, , Lists IV.Google Scholar
207 Supra at n. 65.Google Scholar
208 Supra at nn. 59–65. The complete fusion of ducal and princely functions in Armenian society (supra at nn. 140–142) and the basic character of the latter must account for the fact that to the mind of the Armenians of the Arsacid period the military aspect of the princedukes was an expression only of their dynasticist character. Some five centuries separate the beginnings of the Artaxiad period, when the office of strategus was presumably introduced in Armenia (and some three centuries separate the time when the elder Pliny wrote), from the epoch of the rise of national Armenian literature, following the invention of the alphabet on the threshold of the fifth century. This long span must also be taken into consideration in order to appreciate the fact that the išxan of the Armenian biblical texts (and also another term meaning ‘general’) is made to correspond to the στϱατηγός of the Greek texts, while the naxarar of the Biblical texts, though indeed denoting administrative functions, appears devoid of all military connotation; cf. supra n. 140.Google Scholar
209 To be discussed in a later study. Google Scholar
210 See the excellent summary of the spirit of the Armenian nobility in Kherumian, Féodalité 34–56. Google Scholar
211 Cf. Kherumian, , op. cit. 42–51. Thus, Manuel, Prince of the Mamikonids, defeated King Varazdat of Armenia in the battle of Karin, and in a single combat that followed it, drove him out of the kingdom, and took over the regency, A.D. 377/8. Before relating the armed conflict between them, Faustus records an exchange of messages — Thucydidean, no doubt, yet, in the best tradition of the historian, illustrative of reality — in which Manuel recalls to the King the past services of the Mamikonids to the Arsacid royal house and then adds: ‘we have never been your vassals (caṛayk῾), but your comrades (ĕnkerk῾), and superior to you (i veray k῾am zjez), for our ancestors were Kings of the land of China (čenac῾);’ Faustus 5.37 (244); cf. also Grousset, Histoire 154–156. For a similar attitude of another Mamikonid towards the Great King, see Sebēos 3 (60–68); cf. Grousset, op. cit. 253–255. Ps. Moses, 3.55, gives other instances involving members of the Houses of Moxoene, Arcruni, and Gardman and a Sassanid prince; cf. Grousset, 179–180. — For the position of the King of Georgia as primus inter pares vis-à-vis the Georgian princes, see Gvritišvili, , P'eodal. Sak῾art῾. 310–461, résumé on p. 461.Google Scholar
212 It has already been noted, at n. 175, that the ancient Armenian historians tended to be historians of individual princely houses. In this connexion, too, different families indulged in what Saint-Simon calls, referring to their French equivalents, chimères — claims to splendid, exotic, and fanciful origins: from the Kings of Assyria, the Emperors of China, etc.; cf. Laurent, Arménie 69. It is perhaps in the nature of a predominantly dynasticist society, when it is gradually deprived of the fulness of its ‘polygenetic’ sovereignty, to be haunted by a sense of downfall; quite in contrast to the sense of ascent, enjoyed by a purely feudalist society as its members acquire a greater share in ‘monogenetic’ sovereignty. Ubi lapsus, quid fecit?, the motto of a rare Western family affected by this ‘dynasticist pessimism,’ would well express the Weltanschauung of many a Caucasian one. Google Scholar
213 Adontz, , Armenija 272–277; Toumanoff, Lists. Google Scholar
214 On his death-bed, the High Constable Manuel, Prince of the Mamikonids (supra n. 211), extols dying for ‘the Arsacid natural lords of the land’ (bnak tēranc῾ ašxarhi Aršakunoy; Aršakuneac῾ bnik tēranc῾ ašxarhis), and exhorts his son never to fear it; Faustus 5.44 (259–260). Cf. also Faustus 5.20. Google Scholar
215 Cf. Kherumian, , Féodalité 35–39.Google Scholar
216 Faustus, 5.2, tells of the Mamikonid High Constable Mušel (elder brother and predecessor of Manuel; cf. supra n. 214) capturing, in one of the Iranian wars, the entire enemy camp : he ordered the Iranian ladies fallen into Armenian hands to be treated with respect and then sent them back to the Great King, to the latter's utter amazement. Lazarus, 38, tells in his narrative of the Iranian war of 451 how the Armenian army coming upon the enemy and finding them obviously unprepared, spared them a surprise attack, which would have spelt their utter defeat, and offered instead a one-day truce: — Messieurs les Anglais, tirez les premiers — But there was also much cruelty, quite in the style of the Byzantine and Iranian neighbours, of which it is not pleasant to recall details; cf. infra n. 218. Google Scholar
217 Cf. Kherumian, , Féodalité 55–56. For the similar development in medieval Georgian society, see Marr, , Kul't ženščiny i rycarstvo v poěmje Šoty iz Rustava (Teksty i Razykanija po armjano-gruzinskoj filologii 12 [St Petersburg 1910]. — In this context must be placed the passing of allods and fiefs through women, in default of heirs male; supra n. 158.Google Scholar
218 The pages of Lazarus and Eliseus bear eloquent witness to this; cf. also Kherumian, Féodalité 39–40. The death-bed discourse of the Mamikonid Manuel (supra n. 214) can be cited once again, where he praises laying down one's life for one's God-worshiping land, and thus for God, for His Church and her ministers, and for the Arsacid natural lords of the land. Before his death, Manuel personally distributed treasures to the poor and left great donatives to the Church; Faustus 5.44. — For the dark side of Armenian society, see Laurent, , Arménie 56–57, 59–60; Kherumian, op. cit. 41–42.Google Scholar
219 Cf. Kherumian, , op. cit. 52–55; Manandyan, O torgovle 95–169; Laurent, Arménie 34–50.Google Scholar
220 Supra at nn. 104–112, also at nn. 136, 140, 168, and nn. 180, 195. Still another instance of the difference was the apparent non-inheritable character of the High Constableship in Iberia and its enfeoffment in the Mamikonid dynasty in Armenia.Google Scholar
221 Allen, , History 238.Google Scholar
222 Toumanoff, , Iberia 23–30. The historian Vaxušt has claimed that originally not only the erist‘ avn, but also the mt‘ avarn were not hereditary and subject to royal appointment, though those dignities might pass to their sons; Geogr. Descr. 29. This cannot be true in the case of the latter, and is obviously a manifestation of the author's étatiste bias. In the case of the former, however, this appears to be true. Yet it is impossible to tell from what evidence we possess whether the ducal succession was actually non-inheritable or was merely subject to royal control, as in Armenia. We do know that, in the sixth century, the Iberian dukes obtained from the Great King and the Emperor the confirmation of their duchies ‘as hereditary patrimonies’ and the assurance of being left ‘undisturbed in their duchies’; uanšer 217; cf. Toumanoff, op. cit. 40–49. This can be interpreted either as making inheritable what had been non-inheritable before (so Allen, History 239) or as merely the freedom from royal sanction.Google Scholar
223 Cf. Leont. Mrov. 28, 29, 31, 33, 55, 57, 62, 63. Google Scholar
224 Leont. Mrov. 24–25; cf. supra at nn. 104–108. Leontius’ text is given below, Supplementary Note F. Google Scholar
225 It is very likely that the dukes, like the High Constable, were at first non-hereditary. Some even appear as not of the princely class; but these must have been exceptions, for, indeed, they are specifically noted, as in Leont. Mrov. 47, 48, where the Dukes of Ojrxe and of Cholarzene are said to have been ‘of the gentry’ (aznaurt'agani); cf. supra n. 112. On the other hand, the Bagratids appear to have branched off to Iberia sometime in the first century and to have held (intermittently perhaps) the Duchy of Ojrxe; my Orontids II. Of the princes, the Georgian monuments reveal only one in that early period: him of Kola (the Kol of the Armenians, in Tao-Tayk῾; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 357, 359; J̌avaxišvili, K῾art῾. er. ist. II. 324–325); cf. supra n. 94. For the other princes, see the following note. Google Scholar
226 For the Vitaxae of Gogarene, see my Vitaxae V. — The remaining Georgian princes of the time are known to us only from Armenian sources. They are all from the Armenian frontier and vassals of the Vitaxae of Gogarene, viz., those of Jor[op῾or] and Koḷb[op῾or] (Faustus 4.50; Ps. Moses 2.8); of Ašoc῾ and Tašir (Lazarus 23, 42, 47; Ps. Moses 2.8); all of them, according to Ps. Moses, were Haykids, i.e., local dynasts. Armenian Ašoc῾ = Georgian Aboc῾i, Tašir = Taširi; with the exception of the former, all the other cantons were, according to the Armenian geographers, in Gogarene; Hübschmann, Ortsnamen 353–354; my Vitaxae § 17–18, n. 145; Lists. Google Scholar
227 Toumanoff, , Vitaxae § 16.Google Scholar
228 The Mart. St. Susan 17 (43) shows the population of Iberia divided into the nobles and the non-nobles (supra n. 101): this can only mean that the dynasts were included among the former. In the same breath, however, a distinction is made between aznaurni and aznaurni did-didni. The latter term is the exact equivalent of the Armenian mecamec (supra n. 133); thus, the ‘great nobles’ signified the dynasts. Later in the Middle Ages, this ambivalent use of aznaur was quite usual. Google Scholar
229 Thus, Faustus 5.15 (215); ‘all the nobles and houses of naxarark’ (zamenayn azats ew zazgs naxararac'n) in Iberia; — ibid.: naxarark’ in Gogarene; — Lazarus 25 (96): tanutērk῾ and sepuhk’ of Armenia, Iberia, and Albania; — 25 (98): Ašuša [of Gogarene] and other tanutērk’ of Iberia; — 26 (98): all these are called mecamecn (‘grandees’); — 27 (103, 106): naxarark῾ of the three nations. Leont. Mrov. 61: mt'avarn of Armenia; — uanšer 159: erist'aun of Armenia; — Juanšer 156: sep'ecul Bagratid. Google Scholar
230 Cf. Adontz, , Armenija xiv, 211–214. — This social structure perished with the brutal Byzantine and Seljuq destruction of the Armenian polity in the eleventh century. Some vestiges of it, however, survived the catastrophe, both in Armenia and, through emigration, elsewhere. In north-eastern Armenia these vestiges continued to the Mongol invasions, according to Adontz, or even to the fifteenth century, according to Manandyan, P'eodal. Hay. 138, 251–260, 304–305. There were a number of great Byzantine houses (like the Tornicii and the Taronitae) that were the result of the removal to the imperial territory of Armenian princely houses; and, especially, a considerable admixture to Georgia's parallel feudal-dynastic society (including the royal family itself) was provided by the princely émigrés from Armenia. Georgian society, as here described, survived down to the Russian annexations of the nineteenth century; cf. my Nobl. géorg. Georgian feudalism was to develop in the Middle Ages (and so beyond the scope of this study) into a phenomenon of great complexity, quite comparable to what can be observed in the medieval West or in Arsacid Armenia. ‘A l'Age d'Or le féodalisme géorgien atteignit donc sa floraison complète. Il montrait toute la complexité qu'on observe en Europe Occidentale: fiefs et arrière-fiefs, dominium directum et dominium utile; alleux, fiefs-seigneuries, fiefs véritables; vasselage, investiture, hommage; service féodal et immunité; … et, dans l'ordre moral, les mœurs chevaleresques et la ‘courtoisie’; ibid. 266; cf. 264–268; Allen, History 250–256; J̌avaxišvili, K῾art῾. samart῾l. ist. 63–107.Google Scholar
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