Armenia, that high mountain land
between the Roman and Persian grip,
between Mount Ararat and the Caucasus,
held culturally tight its grip.
The Armenians trace themselves to Hayk,
descendant of Noah through Japheth's son,
who defeated the tyrant Bel of Babylon
and founded the nation under the sun.
(They call themselves Hay, their land Hayastan.
The name "Armenia" is what others call
their land, from Aram another ancestor,
descendant of Hayk through several fall.)
In three-oh-one, King Tiridates III
was converted by Gregory the Illuminator,
whom he had imprisoned in a pit for years.
Gregory survived by a widow's favor.
Tiridates made Christianity the state religion,
the first nation in history to do so,
twelve years before Constantine's Edict of Milan,
a generation before Rome's own show.
The Armenian Apostolic Church
claims descent from the apostles Thaddeus
and Bartholomew, who preached there first
and were martyred for what they taught us.
Mesrop Mashtots in the early fifth century
created the Armenian alphabet,
thirty-six letters designed for the tongue,
enabling scripture and liturgy to be set.
The Bible was translated immediately.
A golden age of Armenian letters began.
History, theology, philosophy flourished
between mountain passes of the clan.
Movses Khorenatsi's History of Armenia
wove together Greek, Persian, Jewish, and Hebrew
sources into a national narrative,
tracing the Haykazuni line as true.
Armenia was trapped between empires.
Persian Sassanid on the east, Byzantine on the west,
the land was divided and partitioned,
and Christian identity became their test.
In four-fifty-one at Avarayr, Vardan Mamikonian
led Christian Armenians against Sassanid forces
demanding they return to Zoroastrianism.
Vardan died, but Armenia preserved its courses.
The Battle of Avarayr is remembered
as the founding martyrdom of the nation,
the moment when Armenian Christianity
chose to fight rather than face forced conversion.
Armenia would never be a great power.
But it would be a persistent one.
The mountains shielded. The alphabet preserved.
The church maintained what had been done.
Centuries later, Armenians would
settle across the Middle East as traders,
builders, craftsmen, architects
of Istanbul, Isfahan, and other Kraiters.
The Kingdom of Cilicia on the Mediterranean
would be a crusader ally's friend.
The genocide of nineteen-fifteen
would be the modern Armenian wound without end.
But the culture endured. The church endured.
The alphabet still writes what Mashtots penned.
A small mountain nation held on through empires.
The deflationary polytheist sees how they fend.
Stand.