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 392 THE DECLINE AND FALL alternately oppressed by its formidable protectors ; and, in the course of this History, several events, which inclined the balance of peace and war, have been already related. A disgraceful treaty had resigned Armenia to the ambition of Sapor ; and the scale of Persia appeared to pre})onderate. But the royal race of Arsaces impatiently submitted to the house of Sassaji ; the tur- bulent nobles asserted or betrayed their hereditary independ- ence ; and the nation was still attached to the Christian princes of Constantinople. In the beginning of the fifth century, Ar- menia was divided by the progress of war and faction ; ^^ and the unnatural division precipitated the downfall of that ancient monarchy. Chosroes, the Persian vassal, reigned over the Eastern and most extensive portion of the country ; while the [son of Pap] Western province acknowledged the jurisdiction of Arsaces and the supremacy of the emperor Arcadius. After the death of Arsaces, the Romans suppressed the i*egal government and im- posed on their allies the condition of subjects. The military command was delegated to the count of the Armenian frontier ; the city of Theodosiopolis '^^ was built and fortified in a strong situation, on a fertile and lofty ground near the sources of the Euphrates ; and the dependent territories were ruled by five satraps, whose dignity was marked by a peculiar habit of gold and purple. The less fortunate nobles, who lamented the loss of their king and envied the honours of their equals, were pro- voked to negotiate their peace and pardon at the Persian court ; and, returning, Avith their followers, to the palace of Artaxata, acknowledged Chosroes for their lawful sovereign. About thirty years afterwards, Artasires, the nephew and successor of Chos- roes, fell under the displeasure of the haughty and capricious nobles of Armenia ; and they unanimously desired a Persian governor in the room of an unworthy king. The answer of the he is of every qualification of a good historian, his local information, his passions, and his prejudices are strongly expressive of a native and contemporary. Procopius (de Edificiis, 1. xiii. c. i. 5) relates the same facts in a very different manner ; but I have extracted the circumstances the most probable in themselves and the least inconsistent with Moses of Chorene. [For the division of Armenia see Appendix 25.] ^'■^ The western Armenians used the Greek language and characters in their religious offices ; but the use of that hostile tongue was prohibited by the Persians in the eastern provinces, which were obliged to use the Syriac, till the invention of the Armenian letters by Mesrobes in the begiiming of the fifth century and the subsequent version of the Bible into the Armenian language, an event which re- laxed the connexion of the church and nation with Constantinople. 8-1 Moses Choren. 1. iii. c. 59, p. 309, and p. 358. Procopius, de Aedificiis, 1. iii. c. 5. Theodosiopolis stands, or rather stood, about thirty-five miles to the east of Arzeroum, the modern capital of Turkish Armenia. See d'Anville, Geographic Ancienne, torn. ii. p. 99, 100.