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CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF ARMENIA 253
among the nobles, who disliked his forcible method of intro
ducing Christianity.
The Last Arsacid Kings.—When King Narseh of Persia
declared war upon the Roman Empire, probably because it
supported Trdat, he was defeated, and had to accept humiliating
terms in a.d. 297, by which he ceded to the Emperor Diocletian
considerable territories south of Armenia, while the latter
country was placed under Roman protection. Subsequently,
however, the kings of Persia made repeated attempts to bring
Armenia under their sphere of influence, and apparently none
of Trdat’s successors on the throne of Armenia was a suf
ficiently strong personality to cope with the difficulties that
arose through the conflicts between the two great neighbouring
empires. Their frequently vacillating policy, due to uncer
tainty as to which of the competing powers could give the
highest rewards and the best guarantees of safety, weakened,
as time went on, both the country and the crown. Internal
dissensions with the Church and the nobles were a further
cause of weakness. Had there been a wise co-operation
between the ecclesiastical power and the crown—as was the
case in Georgia (cf. p. 91)—the latter would have been
materially strengthened, and with it the country as well ;
but unfortunately these disagreements developed into open
quarrels between the kings and the patriarchs, and two of the
latter were murdered by the kings, who nevertheless lost
ground continually, while the influence of the Katholikate was
augmented by several powerful patriarchs.
By these internal feuds, in which the potent Nakharar
families took part, the kingdom was materially weakened
externally. The later ecclesiastical writers, who are our only
sources, naturally praise the representatives of the Church
and lay all the blame on the depravity of the kings ; but it
is not improbable that the Church gradually sought to obtain
more than its share of power in the State, besides appropriating
an unreasonable amount of land. This division of power, in
temporal things, was impracticable and bound to lead sooner or
later to serious friction. The responsibility must be placed at
the door of King Trdat, who made the initial mistake of giving
Gregory’s family and the Church too much temporal power.
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