This passage from Justin's Historiarum Philippicarum is to me the perfect counter of anyone who seeks to deliberately downplay the macro-historical significance, influence and importance of Armenia in the alleged shade of Graeco-Roman or even Persianate cultures:

"...Sed quoniam in Armeniam transitum facimus, origo eius paulo altius repetenda est. Neque enim silentio tantum regnum praeteriri fas est, cum fines eius post Parthiam omnium regnorum magnitudinem superent..."
"...But since we here make a transition to Armenia, we must look a little farther back into its origin; for it is not right that so great a kingdom should be passed in silence, since its territory, next to that of Parthia, is of greater extent than any other kingdom..." Liber XLII, Vol.2

Marcus Junianius Justinus, a Roman of his time, acknowledges the greatness of this sacred land of Ararat. The bosom of Armenia, including her famed foothills, was a land harboured between the rivers Halys, Kura and Araxes, the plains of Albania, the mountains of Iberia, the forests of Hyrcania and Colchis, the deserts of Assyria and the steppes of Cappadocia. A vast stretch extending their culture well into the cultures of the Black and Caspian seas.

Two of the dynasties of this land were of Iranian descent. The Achaemenid high nobility. The Iranians would call them the kings of "Arvand". The Greeks would call them the kings of "Orontes". The Armenians call them the Yervanduni. The other Iranic dynasty, the successors of the famed Artaxiads, the Arsacid cadet branch, Arshakuni, have an even more lasting influence. It was through an Arsacid that Armenia would become the first nation to institutionalize Christianity as her state religion. Some say it is an irony. Others maintain that it set Armenia culturally more apart from her Persianate cousins, previously the Arsacid and Sassanid dynasties of the Greater Iran. From the Iranian perspective, the Armenian history is an absolutely crucial component.

The mob has never been an adequately objective "instrument" of measurement of historical or cultural impact as some of you would like to suggest. It only measures popular appeal, and hardly serves as a reflection of facts. I can certainly understand Artavazd might be disgruntled by someone like Mr. Aemilius "Politically Incorrect" Paulus, who is already infamous for making rash entries on arbitrating cultural significance of other nations. The culture of Armenia does not need to gratuitously flaunt its greatness just to satisfy popular curricula; it is survived by its own beautiful script, institutionalized by the eminent Mashtots, and a respectable collection of historiography written by Vartapet Yeghishe, and Sebeos. To Iranian history, these works are invaluable treasures.

Last but not least, one of the greatest Armenian rulers, Tigranes carved for himself an empire from absolutely nothing. He was a key-personality during the first Parthian civil war and that of the Mithridatic wars, and was the last of several persons to have sank the Seleucid hegemony into final decline.

Who cares about the mob? Ask a teenager about Marc Anthony and Cleopatra and he or she will probably answer "the most romantic couple of Antiquity" or "Romeo and Juliet of the ancient era". A historian schooled in Armenian history will however answer "The political Bonnie and Clyde of their time", or even go as far as to say that they were the grotesque result of Ptolemaïc incest and Roman egomania. Which really isn't that far from the truth. It's a refreshingly sobering read to be made aware of their strangulation of Armenia. Not quite like Liz Taylor, eh? Sounds like a lot of Rome-bashing, but the bizarre fact is that the likes of Cassius Dio, Plutarch and Justin passed down this information for our reading. Either the Romans weren't all "The world is Rome" as much as Hollywood would like to orgasm to, or the mob needs to shape up. My money's on the latter.

The world is Rome. If the world was no greater than the stupidity of the common man, that is. Armenia needs no justification to satisfy the common sensibilities. She doesn't need the historical size of her Graeco-Roman and Iranian cousins to have a comparable beauty.

And to top it off, "Western Civilization", a phrase that I do not personally accept, needs to get a clue as far as the Graeco-Roman civilization is concerned. There was more to Europe, but it wasn't this perverted, skewed perception on a homogeneous commonwealth European identity standing opposite to their Oriental rivals. I hear most of this cacophony from Scandinavians, Western-Europeans and the Americans. This sort of inspiration, which is far much more apt as far as designations are concerned are not limited to nor the property of Europe, but stretches far into the depths of Asia, with the Sassanian city of Bîshâpûr being far more ample than some occasional potsherd in Britain.

I do not condone or propose the down-playing of any significant cosmopolitan culture; the inflation of Graeco-Roman culture by Eurocentric "scholarship" is a perversion of facts more serious than the contemporary sensationalism in the primary sources. They come at the expense of other cultures, and to point out these discrepancies is only fair and a standard in the protocal of scholarly peer-review. I constantly remind my Arab friends about the rich heritage of the pre-Islamic Arabian cultures, which were left in the shadows of Islam as an "age of ignorance" in spite of the fact that they had their own highly developed script and left behind themselves a significant number of written works. That the "idols" that Mohammed Ibn Abd'allah denoted as "false", were in fact elaborate statues and highly developed works of art. That the backwardness and poverty of the Arabs before Islam is in fact contrasted by the lush landscapes of the Mar'ib.

The mob means nothing to me. If they haven't at least bothered to have read A.E. Redgate's "The Armenians", let alone taken a glimpse of the exquisite works of Mark Chahin and Cyril Toumanoff, then I will not even pay heed to their valueless impressions of historical Armenia.