Page:The History of Armenia - Avdall - Volume 1.djvu/251

 208 AlSTO^T OF AftMEiTXA.

surrendered. Every thing in the castle was given up to spoil and plunder. The inhabitants, with Pharanzem the queen, were taken into Assyria, and there, by various species of torture, compelled to abjure their faith. Some were
 * ^ picketted on the sharpened pegs of waggons,

and thus forced to forsake a religion they venerated, and adopt one they abhorred. Those whose firmness was proof against all the wicked ingenuity of their tormentors, expired under torture ; thus sealing with their blood the testi- mony of their attachment to Christianity. Mushel escaped to Constantinople, and there related all these horrors to Nierses. Merujan and Vahan returned from Assyria again into Armenia, like two fiends, spreading destruction wherever they came. All the Jews residing in the kingdom were conveyed by them into Persia. Arsaces, find- ing himself in inextricable bondage, and infonn->> ed of the dreadful events that had lately occurred in Armenia, was driven to despair, and seizing a sWord, which the carelessness ot his guards had permitted him to have, he plunged it into his breast and expired. His reign lasted eighteen years, or, according to other computations, thirty years, including the period of his exile.

Arsaces was a monarch of vitiated principles, and the sole cause of all the misery that visited

�� �