The History of Lazar P'arpec'i.

• Author: Cowe, S. Peter

This is a welcome addition to Thomson's series of translations of Armenian historical sources, bringing them into the wider scholarly domain - the more so because of the importance of the events it records. Composed at the end of the fifth century C.E., Lazar's tripartite account charts a hundred-year span from the division of Armenia between Byzantium and Iran in 387 through the dissolution of the monarchy in 428 and Yazdgard II's devastating campaign of mid-century to re-impose Mazdeism as state cult, which led to the Armenian defeat at the Battle of Avarayr. It culminates in the successful revolt mounted by the author's patron Vahan Mamikonean which restored religious toleration by the treaty of Nuarsak in 484.

As he informs us in the preface, Thomson published an earlier draft of the central portion of the History as an appendix to his translation of the parallel narrative of Elise encompassing the years 449-464. Carefully negotiating the discontinuities of Armenian and English idiom, it provides a smooth, felicitous rendering of Lazar's text. In addition, the translator renders a letter ascribed to the author and directed to his patron (pp. 247-66), as well as one of the earliest fragments of the history (pp. 274-75), palaeographically dated to the tenth to eleventh centuries, which differs in certain respects from the form preserved in the full manuscripts copied some six hundred years later. The translation is accompanied by brief exegetical footnotes and further clarified by a useful index of technical terms (pp. 297-99).

The concise introduction touches lightly on the work's dating and transmission history before contextualizing the author's project within the unfolding tradition of Armenian historiography. Here Thomson offers an illuminating overview of the values and priorities of the aristocratic class whose outlook the work reflects. It is a pity, however, that he does not allow himself the opportunity to elaborate on a number of the critical issues the book raises, which he had broached in earlier studies.

Lazar's first section focusing on Catholicos Sahak (d. 438), whose national importance was compounded by marital ties to the Mamikonean house, has had its integrity queried by Akinean and other critics. Thomson adopts this approach with regard to a vision (pp. 5, 26) vouchsafed to the hierarch concerning the future of both Armenia's royal and primatial lines (previously the catholicate had also been hereditary). The...