HISTORY OF THE ARMENIANS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1500, 22 January 1916, Page 2

HISTORY OF THE ARMENIANS.

Thk Armenians are a very ancient people, says a writer in the Contemporary Review; indeed, their history extends back tor 3000 years. They are. it would seem, of the Aryan stock ; at any rate their language is one of the Aryan family of languages, belonging to the same branch of that family as Persian, or occupying a place intermediate between it and the European languages. There was a time when they had a kingdom with wide borders, with an art, a literature, an architecture, a civilisation of its own. It fought against the descendants of Alexander the Great, and supported Mlthridates in his struggle with Rome ; but the time of its greatest prosperity was a little later, from the first to the fourth century of the Christian era. Sixteen hundred years ago Armenia adopted Christianity as the national religion, being the first nation to do so. It Is from that time that its surviving literature, rich and still flourishing, dates ; though it had au earlier literature, only fragments of it have come down to us. As a Christian nation it excited the hatred and attacks of many enemies ; of the fireworshippers, who then inhabited Persia ; later of the Saracens ; and later still of the Turks. Armenia proper, or greater Armenia, a vast mountainous plateau to the south and west of the Caucasus, lay directly on the route of many barbarous peoples making their way to the West; and after suffering much, it finally lost its independence in the year 1080. There was, however, and is, a smaller Armenia, in the province known as Cilica, between the Taurus mountains and the point where Asia Minor and Syria joins. Here, after the fall of the greater Armenia, an Armenian Kingdom maintained itself for three centuries, and carried on a long struggle as the ally of the Crusaders. Finally it, too, fell under the dominion of the Turks, and under their dominion its history, as that of greater Armenia and of every other subject land, has been a long tale ot mlsgovernment, of outrage, of decay and desolation.