It is striking, however, that the early tenth-century historian, T‘ovma Artsruni, who quotes extensively from the text, makes no reference to Sebeos or to a history of Heraclius. The editor, T‘adēos Mihrdatean, was responsible for its widely accepted identification with a history of Heraclius written by Sebeos, a text cited in lists of anterior works given by Step‘anos Taronets‘i (early eleventh century) and a number of other, later Armenian historians. A second, older manuscript (dated 1568) was known and used for the first edition published in 1851, but it has since been lost. It was the last in a series of texts, constituting a virtual canon of historical writing, brought together in this famous manuscript. The history attributed to Sebeos has survived in a single late manuscript, Matenadaran 2639 (dated 1672). Their existence consoles latter-day historians for the dearth of reliable indigenous contemporary middle Persian sources. So it is that two fine contemporary histories, both written in Persarmenia, (1) Łazar P‘arpets‘i’s detailed narrative of the two great uprisings of 450-51 and 482-84 and (2) a wide-ranging history composed in the 650s which has been attributed to Sebeos, cast the clearest light of any extant sources on the ceremonial, politics, administration and military affairs of the Sasanian empire. But it was to Iran that most Armenians looked as a social and cultural exemplar, and it was within the larger world of Iran that Armenian historians placed their own regional history. A Mediterranean religion may have infiltrated its ruling classes on either side of the artificial political divide, together with a sedimentary deposit of Greco-Roman culture. SEBEOS, a seventh-century Armenian historian.Īrmenia may have been partitioned between the great powers in late antiquity.
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