Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

26 Armenia 185
cut off on this side and that side and only a small part from both countries was
left to the two kings. 54
However the two kings of Armenia, Arsaces and Xusrō, who was Suren, the
districts of the kingdom of Armenia remained on both sides between them. And
the two Arsacid kings, having introduced boundaries between the two parts, were
established in peace, and the land of Armenia was in two parts, with two kings;
they submitted in each portion to their respective king. But the portion of Xusrō
was larger than that of Arsaces. And many districts were separated from both of
them. And the kingdom of Armenia was diminished, divided and scattered. And
from that time on, it declined in importance.
As we do not have any contemporary sources on the so called partition
of Armenia, this late source is our most important testimony. The text
confirms on the one hand the already existing division of Armenia into
two parts, one within the Roman, the other within the Persian sphere of
influence, on the other hand the desire of the great powers to dissolve the
Armenian monarchy and to divide up the country between the Roman
and the Sasanian Empires. Both sides had learnt that tensions repeatedly
flared up because Armenian issues had not been resolved and wanted to
find a mutually acceptable and permanent solution. The contemporary
historian Ammianus Marcellinus confirms this assessment of the situation
by describing how the Sasanian king urged the emperor Valens to
get rid of the notorious trouble spot, Armenia. 55 Initially Valens refused
but eventually gave in to ˇ Sāpūr’s urging. The fact that the Goths were
about to invade Roman territory along the Danube forced the emperor to
retreat from the Eastern theatre of war. In 363 Armenia, which had been
the reason for numerous conflicts between West and East since the beginning
of Roman–Iranian relations, was factually divided into two spheres
of influence: the Sasanians took possession of Greater Armenia, and Rome
was assigned Lesser Armenia, which comprised only a fifth of the size of
Greater Armenia. Soon after, this partition of Armenia was officially confirmed
during the reign of ˇ Sāpūr III (383–8). 56 During the following years
the situation stabilised. Whereas in c. 390 the Romans replaced Arsaces with
a comes in charge of the administration of the areas under Roman rule while
preserving a considerable degree of autonomy for this part of Armenia, the
Sasanians left the monarchy intact and as a subject of the Sasanian king
54 This alludes to the Armenian territorial losses in the South and East, where land was ceded to the
Albanians and Sasanians; cf. Toumanoff 1963: 132.
55 Amm. iii.2.2.
56 About this treaty on the partition of Armenia see Doise 1945: 274–7; Stock 1978a: 165–82;
Blockley 1987: 222–34; Gutmann 1991: 230–2 and 260 with further references; Greatrex 2000:
35–48.