What a fascinating thread.

My impression of the Armenians is of a mountain culture emerging in the late bronze age, strongly influenced by the dazzling cultures and polities of Mesopotamia as they rose in turn (Assyria, Babylon, Media and Persia), and responding to western influences (Lydians/Phrygians, Hellenes and Romans) but retaining a discrete identity between these (more or less) powerful cultural tides.

I feel they were not just a backwater of the Persian empire, or a cultural dependancy of Mesopotamia. Is this fair to say, or were there times when Armenia really was quite immeresed in "Greater Persia"?