Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

armenia in the fifth and sixth century 677
excellence. And the images of those events as expressed in the classic histories
gave meaning to succeeding generations who sought to understand the
role and fate of Armenia in an unfriendly world.
Armenia may have played a larger role in the politics of the near east in
the time of Tigran the Great, as Moses Khorenatsi rightly stated: ‘He
extended the borders of our territory, and established them at their
extreme limits in antiquity. He was envied by all who lived in his time, while
he and his epoch were admired by posterity.’ 41 Yet Tigran and military
success were not the typical models in terms of which Armenians thought
of their present and their future. Imagery of a ‘golden age’ described the
harmony of king Tiridates and St Gregory the Illuminator, while wishful
prophecies foresaw the eradication of present woes by the restoration of
the descendants of the one to the Arsacid throne and of the descendants
of the other to the patriarchate. More powerful than the memory of the
heroic Tigran was the model of the Maccabees, whose defence of ancestral
customs and an individual religious culture evoked a strong response in
Armenian minds. 42 So in the fifth and sixth centuries the image of an
Armenian ‘classical’ age was created. Perhaps exaggerated in retrospect, it
none the less depicted a people who could not be assimilated into either of
the imperial powers.
41 Moses i.24 – though he has dated this Tigran far too early.
42 See the introduction to Thomson (1982) for the details. Such imagery was applied by the tenthcentury
Thomas Artsruni to the Muslim rulers, and is frequently found in later Armenian writers.
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