Arsacid dynasty of Armenia
In contrast to the more Hellenic-influenced Artaxiads, the reign of the Arsacids of Armenia was marked by greater Iranian influence in the country.
[1] The first appearance of an Arsacid on the Armenian throne occurred in 12 when the Parthian king Vonones I was exiled from Parthia for his pro-Roman policies and Occidental manners.
Emperor Tiberius had no intention of giving up the buffer states of the eastern frontier and sent his nephew and heir Germanicus to the East.
Tiberius quickly concentrated more forces on the Roman frontier and once again after a decade of peace, Armenia was to become the theater of bitter warfare between the two greatest powers of the known world for the next 25 years.
Mithridates successfully subjugated Armenia to Roman rule and deposed Arsaces, inflicting huge devastation upon the country.
The governor of Cappadocia, Julius Pailinus, decided to conquer Armenia but settled with the crowning of Rhadamistus, who generously rewarded him.
After regaining power, according to Tacitus, the Iberian was so cruel that the Armenians stormed the palace and forced Rhadamistus out of the country, and Vologases I got the opportunity to install his brother Tiridates on the throne.
Vologases I considered this an act of aggression from Rome and restarted a campaign to restore Tiridates I to the Armenian throne.
The encroachment on the traditional sphere of influence of the Roman Empire started a new war between Parthia and Rome and ended the peace that had endured for about half a century since Nero's time.
After a rebellion led by a pretender to the Parthian throne (Sanatruces II, son of Mithridates V), was put down, some sporadic resistance continued, and Vologases III had managed to secure a sizeable amount of Armenia just before Trajan's death in August 117.
Vologases IV, the son of the legitimate Parthian King Mithridates V, dispatched his troops to seize Armenia in 161 and eradicated the Roman legions that had been stationed there under legatus Gaius Severianus.
In 163, Verus dispatched General Statius Priscus, who had been recently transferred from Roman Britain along with several legions, from Syrian Antioch to Armenia.
However, the Armenians themselves revolted against their Roman overlords, and in accordance with a new Roman-Parthian compromise, Khosrov I's son, Tiridates II (217–252), was made king of Armenia.
Rome, nevertheless, defeated Narseh in 298, and Khosrov II's son Tiridates III regained control over Armenia with the support of Roman soldiers.
That work must have been considered imperfect because soon afterward, John of Egheghiatz and Joseph of Baghin, two of Mashtots's students, were sent to Edessa to translate the Biblical scriptures.
Arsacid rulers intermittently (competing with Bagratuni princes) remained in control preserving their power to some extent, as border guardians (marzban) either under Byzantine or as a Sassanian protectorate, until 428.
[13] In Arsacid Armenia, the custom of aristocratic children being raised by foster parents or tutors was widespread, as in the rest of the Iranian commonwealth.
[20][21] They insisted that they carried the xwarrah ("fortune", cognate of Armenian pʿaṙkʿ),[22] which was the divine glory wielded by legitimate Iranian and Iranic kings.
[23] The city of Ani served as the centre of the cult of Aramazd (the Armenian equivalent of Ahura Mazda), as well as the royal necropolis of the Arsacids.
In the same fashion as the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), the Arsacids of Armenia and Iran practiced entombment and burial, probably doing it with great care to avoid contaminating the sacred earth of the Zoroastrian yazata (angelic divinity) Spenta Armaiti.
[25][26] The ancient sanctuary of Bagawan was of high importance to the Arsacids, who celebrated the Iranian New Year's festival (Nowruz) there.
[28] While the culture of Armenia was dominated by Hellenism under the Artaxiads, the reign of the Arsacids marked the predominance of Iranianism in the country, with Parthian replacing Greek as the language of the educated.
