Ервандидская Армения

During the two centuries of Seleucid presence, Greek, now the language of commerce and the arts in the Middle East periodically replaced Aramaic as the administrative language of Armenia and was frequently spoken by the upper classes. In Armenia, Greek-style temples to Apollo and Artemis were built. Coins with Greek inscriptions appeared there, as they did all over Asia. International commerce passed through Armenia, bringing with it both Eastern and Western culture and science.
Despite the fact that the Greek calendar, law, and religious beliefs, as well as theater, philosophy, art and architecture, made inroads, Greater Armenia became only partially influenced by Hellenism. Persian (Iranian) culture, as well as the Armenian language and customs remained a dominant force. The most important change was the rise of cities, such as Yervandashat, Yervandakert, and Arshamashat (Arsamosata), which, later, facilitated the unification of Greater Armenia.

During the Eruandid period, one can assume that the unwritten vernacular was (proto-)Armenian.

By the third century BC three Armenias had emerged: Lesser Armenia or Armenia Minor, northwest of the Euphrates; Greater Armenia or Armenian Major; and Sophene or Tsopk, in the southwest (see map 6). Lesser Armenia came under Hellenistic influence and occasionally under the political control of either the Seleucids, the rulers of Pontus, or Cappadocia. Greater Armenia, encompassing most of historic Armenia, maintained much of its political autonomy due to its relative geographical isolation, the wars between the Seleucids and their rivals, and the removal of the Seleucid seat of government to Antioch in distant Syria. Sophene, located along the royal road, was at different times, depending on political circumstances, either independent or part of Greater Armenia. The Yervandunis continued to govern Greater Armenia and Sophene, and although a number of Seleucid kings, among them Seleucus I, tried to subdue these areas, they soon accepted the independent status of the Yervandunis.

The formidable thrust of Alexander the Great through most of Western Asia and the lengthy struggle of his successors to dominate the Near East had relatively little direct influence on the Armenian plateau, although with the removal of the semblance of unity provided by the overall Persian administration, the Armenian lands began to fragment into new units. Greater Armenia east of the Euphrates River preserved its identity in the northeast, but west of the river, the lands of Armenia Minor gradually united into a separate kingdom associated with Pontus in the north and Cappadocia to the west.

During the Seleucid period, Armenia became divided into several virtually independent kingdoms and principalities. The classification adopted at this epoch persisted, with certain changes, well into the Byzantine era. The most important region, of course, was Greater Armenia, situated east of the upper Euphrates, and including vast areas all round Lake Van, along the Araxes valley, and northwards to take in Lake Sevan, the Karabagh, and even the southern marches of Georgia.

But it was left to the late Professor Manandyan to rediscover an entire period of Armenian History, which he showed to have been marked by the dominance of the Orontid, or — as he prefers to call it — Eruandid (Eruanduni) dynasty. This period, as will be seen from the forthcoming remarks, was indeed the period of the Orontid Monarchy — the 'First Armenian Monarchy' — which spanned what was hitherto been deemed a lacuna separating the Urartian monarchy and the Second Armenian Monarchy of the Artaxiads and which guaranteed the social and historical continuity of Armenia as it evolved from its proto-Armenian phase and passed into the Hellenistic age.

Араратская долина делит землю армян на две части - восточную и западную. Она же является центром армянской культуры и государственности. Процесс формирования армянской народности в основном завершился в VII-VI вв. до н.э., когда на территории Армянского нагорья возникло первое армянское рабовладельческое государство (Государство Ервандуни), объединившее местные кавказкоязычные и пришлые индоевропейские племена.

There are many problems over the boundaries of Seleucid Armenia, which have not be studied, but could be illuminated by the accounts of the expansion of the Armenian Kingdom beyond the limits of Armenia after Antiochus III's defeat by the Romans in 189. Rougly, the frontiers on the south and south-west are the Seleucid satrapies of Seleucid Cappadocia, Mesopotamia and Syria, and of Commagene; in the north, Iberia in the Lower Caucasus, north of the river Araxes and Lake Sevan, and western Media Atropatene — roughly equivalent to modern Azerbaijan; in the north-west, separating Armenia from the Black Sea, were independent tribes

After the death of Alexander, the Armenians maintained this stance towards the governors imposed by the Seleucids. The Yervandunis gained control of the Arax Valley, reached Lake Sevan, and constructed a new capital at Yervandashat.

Armenia Major, under the rule of the Ervantids consisted of the central area east of the upper Euphrates, around Lake Van and the Araxes as far as Lake Sevan.

Strabo's description of the expansion of Zariadris and Artaxias makes it clear just what lands the Orontids had originally controlled: apparently much of Greater Armenia from the Euphrates to the basin of Lake Sevan and possibly beyond to the juncture of the Kur and Arax Rivers (as Harut'yunyan believes and as depicted here).

... Antiochus III appointed a scion of the Armenian Orontids, Zariadris (Zareh) to be strategos of Sophene in 200 BC. At this time, in Greater Armenia, the power of the main Orontid dynasty was drawing to a close. The last ruler of this line was Orontes IV (212-200 B.C.). Both he and his brother Mithras, High Priest of the Temple of the Sun and Moon at the city of Armavir, are mentioned in Greek inscriptions discovered there in 1927. One inscription contains an address of High Priest Mithras to his brother King Orontes; another evidently alludes to the king's tragic death. This event was the result of the uprising headed by a local dynast called Artaxias, and evidently instigated from Syria by King Antiochus III. Following this coup, Antiochus appointed Artaxias to be the strategos of Greater Armenia in place of the dead Orontes.

The Orontid kingdom was never conquered by Alexander, but was nominally included first in his empire, and then, after a period of complete independence in the years 321-301 B.C., in the empire of his Seleucid successors.

The most important consequence for Armenia of this conquest was a greater degree of independence. Justin, a writer of the third century AD, states that neither Alexander nor his successors conquered Armenia. It was the Orontid dynasty who now really ruled there, in unbroken descent from father to son until the early second century BC.
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It was the son of Orontes who was first to take the title of king, and the most likely time for him to have taken it is the aftermath of 331.
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Alexander’s empire was short-lived. After his death, in 323 в с , Armenia was briefly drawn into the rivalries and wars of his successors, the Diadochi. A certain Neoptolemus, satrap of Armenia, was defeated by another satrap, Eumenes. In 301 в с Armenia passed to Seleucus, former satrap of Babylon, who in 304 had taken the title of king and had then consolidated his position as ruler of the east.
The dynasty of Seleucus was to control Armenia under her Orontid kings only fitfully, and mostly only nominally.

Alexander never conquered Armenia: it was an out-of-the-way, mountainous place one might retreat through if need be, as Xenophon and his army had done a few generations earlier; but retreat was the last thing on the young Macedonian's mind as he passed beneath the ramparts of the Armenian Plateau, over the corpses of shattered Persian armies at Issos and Gaugamela, and down towards Persepolis. The Seleucid successors of Alexander eventually established only nominal rule.

The most likely Orontid to have become the first King of Armenia is Orontes II, the first to be entitled Βασιλεύς in the Nimrud-dag inscriptions; and the most likely date for this is that of the dissolution of the Achaemenid empire, 331 B.C. The end of that empire, sealed by the death of Darius III, when conjoined with Orontes II's own maternal Achaemenid descent and his de facto independence in Armenia, where the memories of the Urartian Monarchy must not have been obliterated, can be easily conceived to have sufficiently prompted and sufficiently justified his taking the royal title.

Following Alexander’s death, his Successors adopted an entirely different attitude towards the local dynasts. In 322 B.C., Cappadocia was occupied and Ariarathes I crucified by Perdiccas (Diodorus, 18.16); and, even a year earlier — immediately after Alexander’s passing —, we hear of Neoptolemus as in control of Armenia. But Neoptolemus, involved as he was in the struggle of the Diodochi, in which he lost his life two years later, can hardly have caused a serious interruption, if any, in the history of Oronid rule in that country. As a matter of fact, in the case of Armenia we observe a development that was diametrically opposite to the aims of the new policy of the Diodochi. After 321 B.C., Armenia was wholly free of even nominal Macedonian control. This fait accompli was tacitly admitted by the Diodochi themselves when, in the Partition of Triparadisus that year, Armenia was not mentioned among the satrapies that they apportioned to themselves. For twenty years to come, the Kingdom, for the first time after the fall of Urartu some three centuries earlier, enjoyed the position of a wholly independent sovereign State.

Armenia was annexed to Alexander’s empire but not really subdued.
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In reality the Orontids were satraps under Seleucid suzerainty despite their claim to the title "king."

(с. 45) The later Roman historian Appian (“The Syrian Wars,” IX. 55; vol. II, p. 208/9), writing in the second century A.D. claimed that Armenia had become a province belonging to Alexander’s general Seleukos I (who had obtained the eastern share of the conqueror’s empire) and Seleukos probably was in Armenia in the last year of the fourth century, but the information that the ruler of Armenia in alliance with his Cappadocian neighbor had driven out the Macedonian and “recovered his original domain” suggests that Seleukos probably accepted the autonomous status of the region. The royal title attributed by later sources to the ruler of Armenia may well mean that Armenia stepped almost at once out of the hands of Seleukos and his successors.
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(с. 47) Consequently, even though gaps in our knowledge still preclude the establishment of a continuous line down to the last Eruand/Orontes of Movses Xorenac’i and Strabo at the beginning of the second century B.C., it is already evident that the Eruandids were neither chance leaders nor appointed governors. They were powerful dynasts able to raise sizable military contingents who probably achieved royal status at the very end of the fourth century, when both the Greek authors and the Nemrud Dagh inscription begin to style “Orontes” king rather than satrap. At first, these dynasts recognized the overlordship of the Achaemenids with whom they intermarried, and occasionally that of the Seleucids, but after Alexander’s conquests, the replacement of the Persians and Macedonians in 331 B.C. did not break the Eruandid control of their native land.

During the Seleucid period, Armenia became divided into several virtually independent kingdoms and principalities. The classification adopted at this epoch persisted, with certain changes, well into the Byzantine era. The most important region, of course, was Greater Armenia, situated east of the upper Euphrates, and including vast areas all round Lake Van, along the Araxes valley, and northwards to take in Lake Sevan, the Karabagh, and even the southern marches of Georgia. Lesser Armenia, on the other hand, was a smaller and less fertile kingdom, to the west of the upper Euphrates; it included the present-day districts of Sivas and Erzinjan, and bordered on ancient Cappadocia. To the south-west lay the two little kingdoms of Sophene and Commagene, separated from one another by the middle Euphrates, and having the fertile and desirable Melitene (Malatya) plain running between them. Sophene and Commagene often featured as buffer states between Parthia and Armenia on the one hand, and Syria and Rome on the other. Their royal houses had strong dynastic links with the Armenian Orontid house. Through their proximity to such great cities as Antioch and Palmyra, the kingdoms of Sophene and Commagene early became great centres of Hellenistic and then of Roman art and civilization, which they in turn helped to transmit eastwards into Greater Armenia and Transcaucasia.
The Seleucid kings never succeeded in asserting direct rule over Armenia proper. They collected tribute from local Armenian princes, whom they used to confirm in office by granting them the title of "strategos", corresponding to the old Persian viceregal title of satrap. This situation changed somewhat under the Seleucid King Antiochus III, known as the Great (223-187 B.C.), an ambitious monarch who cherished dreams of restoring the empire of Alexander the Great.

(стр. 290) This — tenuous — overlordship of the Seleucids, Xerxes appears to have been the first to attempt to shake off, when he ceased to pay the tribute imposed (so it seems) on Arsames (supra § 3). ... In either case, the refusal of Xerxes was tantamount to an assertion of independence, and invited Seleucid interference. About 212 B.C., Xerxes was murdered, and was followed by Orontes IV, or — if Abdissares be accepted as indeed a King of Armenia (and this seems very likety) then — by Abdissares and Orontes.
(стр. 291) The change from the Orontid Monarchy to the rule of two strategi was, obviously, as favourable to the interests of the Seleucid government as it was disastrous for Armenia. It is legitimate, therefore, to suspect them of playing some part in the event. From what we know of the situation in the Seleucid empire at the time it is quite evident that even so energetic a monarch as Antiochus III cannot be presumed to have effected so radical a change in a vassal but autonomous State by direct action. An internal upheaval, like the revolt of Artaxias against Orimtes IV, was clearly needed. We may still suspect that Antiochus had his hand in it, and for the following reason. It could be supposed that Orontes attempted to follow in the footsteps of Xerxes in refusing to accept Seleucid suzerainty and that the insurrection of Artaxias was, for all its local raison d’etre, instigated, or at least connived at, by Antiochus III.