Материал: Payaslian S., The History of Armenia From the Origins to the Present

deepening sense of insecurity prevalent in his court, as the internal divisions widened between the various proand anti-Ervanduni noble houses. The monarch refused to transfer some of the leading religious temples to the new capital, fearing that pilgrimages by a large number of people to the holy sites would occasion rebellion against him. The Seleucids, led by Antiochus III the Great (r. 223–187 B.C.), successfully exploited this internal structural loosening and the resultant political instability and supported Artashes (Artaxias) and Zareh (Zariadris), two of the leading anti-Ervanduni figures in Armenia, to rebel against the Ervandunis. The Artashesian-Ervanduni war commenced as the troops under the command of Artashes advanced across the northern shores of Lake Sevan and met Ervand the Last’s army at Ervandavan on the northern banks of the Akhurian River, some distance from the capital. Ervand’s army suffered heavy losses, and the king fled back to Ervandashat, pursued by Smbat, one of Artashes’ loyal generals. The soldiers stormed the capital, and one stabbed Ervand to death. Then Artashes marched on to Bagaran, the last remaining stronghold of the Ervanduni government, and captured and killed Ervand’s brother, Ervaz. Artashes, now in control, granted Bagaran to Smbat as a reward for his loyalty.46 Thus the Ervanduni kingdom came to a tragic end in 200 B.C.

Antiochus III placed Artashes (now Artashes I) and Zareh as his new vassals in Greater Armenia and Dsopk, respectively, while his nephew, Mithradates, ruled as satrap over Lesser Armenia.47 The Seleucid military command, having accomplished one of its geopolitical objectives in neutralizing Armenia, now turned to the grand strategies of conquering the whole of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Egypt. Yet such territorial aspirations proved unrealistic at a time when the empire was in the process of disintegration, as a number of Seleucid satraps (e.g., in Cappadocia and Pontus) secured their independence from the empire. This situation was further complicated by the shifting tides favoring the successor to the Achaemenian empire in the east, the Parthian dynasty. In Armenia, the initial support from Antiochus enabled Artashes to assume the leadership; the death of the Seleucid emperor in 187 B.C. and the decline of his empire strengthened the hand of the Armenian king.

By then a new power had appeared from the west and radically altered the region’s geopolitical power configuration. The Roman empire had conquered most of the territories on the Mediterranean Sea and prepared to advance across the Balkans and throughout Asia Minor. Beginning in 192–191 B.C., the Roman military launched its eastern offensive. In 192 B.C., the Roman navy defeated the Seleucid admiral Polyxenidas and disabled his entire naval fleet, while the Roman army advanced eastward to Asia Minor. In 190 B.C., after destroying the troops of Antiochus III at the Battle of Magnesia, the Romans entered the region for the first time. The Peace of

Apamea in 188 B.C., which concluded the war, forced the Seleucids to withdraw from Europe and Asia Minor. Under the agreement, the Roman Senate also granted Artashes and Zareh sovereignty over Greater and Lesser Armenia, respectively. The military defeat at Magnesia and the internal instability caused by the death of Antiochus III eliminated the Seleucid threat and permitted Artashes, Zareh, and Mithradates to maneuver for autonomy. The Roman victory and recognition of Artashes as the sovereign king of Greater Armenia raised expectations among Armenian leaders that they could rely on Rome to strengthen their position vis-à-vis the rising Parthian power.48

THE ARTASHESIAN KINGDOM

Artashes I (r. ca. 189–160 B.C.) hoped to cultivate amicable relations with Rome and Antioch. Yet the geopolitical competition between the Roman empire from the west and the Persian empire from the east, on one hand, and internal factionalism as witnessed under Ervand the Last, on the other, had greatly impressed on the king the necessity of military strengthen. This machtpolitik reality of strengthening Armenia and the Armenian monarchy shaped his policies. As the Ervandunis had inherited the Urartian and Achaemenian sociopolitical structures, so did the Artashesians inherit and maintain those structures and traditions. The monarchy was essentially absolutist in orientation. The office of the king was hereditary, a tradition continued since the Ervanduni dynasty, which in turn was shaped during the Achaemenian period and Persian tutelage. In matters of domestic policy, the king served as the source of legal and political legitimacy. All laws and policies were instituted in the name of the king, who held ultimate authority in the implementation and review of laws for repeal and amendments.49 The king was the commander in chief of the armed forces. In foreign affairs, he and the royal court (arkunik), which consisted of a close circle of advisers, including the king’s relatives and loyal members of the nobility, were the principal policymakers, especially in issues involving declaration of wars, signing of treaties, and alliances. As the country expanded and the economy became more prosperous, the role of the royal court increased and further contributed to the centralization of power.50

Below the king were the royal functionaries, appointed by the royal court. They supervised the administrative bureaucracies, fiscal policy, transportation, commerce and customs, agriculture, and public works. These high offices were monopolized by or closely associated with individual nakharar tuns (noble houses) and eventually emerged as the nakharar hereditary offices. The monarch granted ministerial offices as

patronage to members of noble houses representing important sectors of economy, as determined by their loyalty to him, landownership, and location of land (access to rivers, irrigation networks, mountains). Whether the nakharar structure developed under the Artashesians or the next dynasty, the Arshakunis, has been the subject of much debate, but suffice it to note here that some of the nobles and the offices they held were clearly in place during the Artashesian period. The father of Armenian historiography, Movses Khorenatsi, for example, referred to the office of the coronant (tagakap or tagadir), which was perhaps established even before the Artashesians.51 Although the nakharar houses exercised enormous power in their loyalty or opposition to the monarchy, the nakharar structure formed the foundation of the Armenian political system, providing the prerequisite institutional strength for stability. The Armenian elite, however, was not monolithic and was rarely unified. The geography of Greater Armenia rendered members of the aristocracy highly divided along lines of local interests, converging and colliding with the priorities of the monarchy depending on political circumstances. Leadership required enormous balancing skills on the part of the Armenian monarch.

Urban social and economic structures represented above all else the interests of the prominent nakharar houses, whose commercial and agricultural interests constituted an essential component of the economy. They consisted of economically and politically powerful groups with their own individual and collective (commune-style) sectors, the “free” or halffree (kisakakhial) individuals, and slaves with minimum rights.52 The king maintained close economic relations among the cities and granted certain rights and privileges to city administrators. It was inevitable that cities, as they became more populous and prosperous, would seek greater local autonomy from the central government.

The construction of new cities—at least ten were built during the Artashesian period—had both positive and negative consequences for the monarchy. As Artashes I sponsored the construction of new cities, the interests of the predominantly agricultural sectors in remote and isolated rural areas sharply diverged from the growing power of the urban centers. The nakharar houses were often divided due to familial ties (khnamiutiun) and regional and commercial interests. Cities became centers of foreign merchants and dissemination of Greek cultural values; they extended Hellenistic cultural influences to Greater Armenia, with enormous domestic and geopolitical implications for the nation. As cities became centers of Hellenistic culture, factional divisions appeared between pro-West (proRome) and pro-East (pro-Persia) nakharars and between urban and rural interests.53 The capital city of Artashat (Artaxata) built by Artashes I symbolized his sovereign status as the king of Armenia and became one of the principal political, administrative, economic, and cultural centers in

Greater Armenia. Its geographical location made it easily accessible to international trade, linking commercial routes with neighboring empires.54 Landownership, of course, represented the most important source of wealth and hence of economic and political power. It was divided into two separate categories: royal lands and landowning elites. The king used the royal lands for the accumulation of wealth and revenues for the royal treasury and for the distribution of patronage to military generals, religious leaders, and heads of administrative offices.55 Loyal servants of the monarchy received personal and hereditary lands as rewards, which led to the solidification of the nakharar system under powerful noble houses. The landowning elites included the relatives of the king, the temples, the noble families, principal administrators in state agencies, and private landowners. As patriarchal values and customs dominated prefeudal and feudal Armenian society, the head of the nakharar house and his sons governed the affairs of their estates with minimum input by women, who possessed no rights in public life. Except in rare cases among the noble families, women lacked the legal right to inheritance and the means to secure financial independence. To be sure, they were not totally powerless, but their influence remained confined to matters of domestic respon-

sibilities and family affairs.56

An important economic sector, inherited from the Ervandunis, was the temple complex, religious and economic. Armenian kings and elites had promoted ancestor worship, and this practice had led to proliferation of temples with vast properties and wealth. The temples were dedicated to ancestors and pantheons, including, for example, Anahit, Vahagn, Aramazt, and Naneh, all worshiped by the polytheistic Artashesian elite. The religious leaders, the kurms, especially their chief krmapet, usually were members of the king’s dynasty. Although ancestor worship had been central to the Armenian religion, Artashes I was the first to introduce worship of the king’s dynasty, although he did not institute deification of the monarch. Like the urban sectors, the temple economies retained a certain degree of autonomy from the central government and possessed rights and privileges in matters of market relations and ownership and management of property. In fact, some temple complexes were similar to urban centers. Often referred to as tacharayin kaghakner (temple cities), they had their own self-sufficient economic base and commercial networks.57

Among the lower classes, the peasants possessed certain rights on the land they worked, although they did not benefit significantly from the revenues accrued from their physical labor. The peasants were “free” but paid heavy taxes. The slaves were not “free”; their owners included members of the royal court, households, and temples. The state also employed slaves for the construction and maintenance of roads and canals, irrigation systems, cities, and buildings. Slavery thus constituted an essential component of the Artashesian economy.58

Artashes I introduced various reforms and relied on territorial expansion to improve domestic social and economic conditions, which in turn substantially increased the role of the state. The reforms were in response to the centrifugal tendencies of the emerging urban elites and temple economies that could potentially threaten his rule. He codified landholding to better manage relations between the landowning and the administrativemilitary elites. Administrative reforms aimed at improving the royal treasury and accounting, the efficient use of water transportation for trade and economic development, and the centralization of decision-making authority. For military purposes, Artashes I divided the country into four military regions (strategos),59 each with its own administrative subdivisions and governed by governors appointed by the king. These four zones integrated into the nakharar structure the semi-autonomous lords, the bdeshkhs, who received vast lands in return for their loyal service and commission as guardians of the monarchy’s borders. Although at this time the position of border guards had not yet become a hereditary office, nevertheless, along with the ministerial posts, it set the foundations for the nakharar system. Territorial expansion created opportunities for the accumulation of wealth and strengthened the symbiotic ties between the landholding families and the military and administrative agents of the state. However, territorial expansion and centralization of authority also created tensions, as powerful landowners competed for a greater share of the expanding domain.60

In the area of foreign policy, Artashes I launched successive military campaigns into the lands of the Medes, the Caucasian Albanians, and the Georgians (Iberians). He failed, however, to annex Lesser Armenia and Dsopk, then under the control of Pontus and Zareh, respectively. He initially pursued an equidistant policy, balancing relations with the two major powers: Rome from the west and Parthia in the east. But when competition between the two intensified, virtually threatening the survival of Armenia proper, Artashes I sided with Rome.61 In hopes of enlisting Zareh’s cooperation in military matters, he also signed a security treaty with him in about 180 B.C., although the latter’s troops, concerned with their own security, refused to participate in the military campaigns led by Artashes I. Their bilateral cooperation remained limited to immediate interests, particularly as the government of Dsopk preferred to maintain its independence, despite Artashes’s efforts to the contrary.62

Meanwhile, the polarization of Asia Minor between pro-Roman and proSeleucid camps posed a complicated problem. Mithradates III and Parnak I of Pontus pursued close relations with the Seleucids, whose empire had already collapsed, to check Roman geopolitical ambitions, while Cappadocia in turn relied on Rome to defend itself against both Pontus and the Seleucids. Artashes I sought alliances with Pontus in part to maintain access to its port cities on the Black Sea, which were essential for the Armenian economy, and to exert sufficient influence in the region so as to control Lesser Armenia as a