Towards the End of the Arsacid Kingdom of Armenia: a Different View

Summary The fall of the Arsacid kingdom of Greater Armenia in 428 is usually seen within a whirl of external geopolitical and internal events of the second half of the 4th–beginning of the 5 th centuries. Initially, the kings of the ruling dynasty, the Armenian Arsacids, tried to find the way between the two great powers of the time, the Roman and Sasanian empires on one side, and the Armenian nobility and Armenian Church on the other. Traditionally, the decline of Arsacid power in Armenia was attributed to the growing rivalry between the Arsacids and Sasanians, which also saw the nobility divided into pro-Roman and pro-Sasanian parties. This culminated in the removal of the last Arsacid king from the throne by the pro-Sasanian party. This paper discusses the factors that led to the weakening of royal power in Armenia and offers a different perspective on the history of the Arsacid kingdom during the later period of its existence. The climate and environmental changes, the so-called “Late Roman mega-drought” in particular, that affected the region during a large period of Late Antiquity, at around 350–450, could have played a significant role in decline processes recorded in Armenia for that period in written and archaeological sources.