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CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF ARMENIA 245
ously warlike people like their Georgian ncighbours after they
settled in Armenia. Their tastes lay more in the direction of
comfort and the pursuits of peace. Xenophon (in 401-400
8.c.) describes them as peaceable, well-to-do, and very hospit
able, whereas his Anabasis and the romance Cyropadia (cf.
p. 235) describe the Khaldians as warlike, poor, and indepen
dent. The latter lived a poverty-stricken life in the mountains,
and were to some extent dependent on what they could get
by looting.
Religion.—The religion of the Armenians has drawn its
inspiration from a variety of sources. Their chief divinity
in early times was apparently Anahit, the goddess of fertility,
who was the mother of the people, the golden mother, or
sometimes the immaculate virgin goddess. Originally she
was evidently the goddess of the fertile soil, who had been
worshipped ever since the third millennium b.c. in Asia
Minor and the countries of the eastern Mediterranean—
equivalent to the Rhea of Greek legend, the serpent-goddess
of Crete, perhaps also called Da (cf. the Greek Da Mater
= Demeter), the Cyrene of the Ægean, the Cybele of the
Moshi and Phrygians, and the Ma of Cappadocia and Pontus.
The Persians also had a goddess Anahita, called in the Avesta
(Yast V) ArdviSura Anahiti, i.e. the " tall, strong, immaculate,"
who is described as a noble young virgin with a golden
crown of stars and a golden robe adorned with thirty otter
skins. She is the goddess of fertile water—of the primal
source up among the stars from which all rivers flow—in
other words, the personification of the fertilizing power of
water ; but also the war-goddess, who drives in a chariot
drawn by four white horses (wind, ram, clouds, and hail—
compare the white horses of Mithras). Possibly she grew
out of a combination of Anahit, whose cult came in from the
west, and a Persian river goddess Ardvi Sura. Anahit
(Anaitis) was also worshipped in Lydia and Pontus, where
according to Strabo (XII, 3, 37) shehada wealthy andesteemed
shrine at Zela. She may be identical with the Semitic
goddess Anat. Under later Hellenic influence she was
sometimes classed with the Greek virgin goddesses Artemis
and Athene. Not impossibly it is the same idea of a pure
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