of empires, accordinbly, flared up anew. In the years 115-116, Armenia was even annexed to the roman Empire by Trajan. Nevertheless, by 217 Rome had been obliged to return to the principles of Rhandeia; and another Arsacid, Tiridates II, received the crown of Armenia from the Emperor Macrinus. Thereafter, that crown remained the unquestioned possession of the Arsacids, even after the imperial line of that dynasty had been replaced on the Iranian throne by the Sassanids. The Arsacid epoch was marked at first by a definite revival of 'Iranianism' in Armenia and in Caucasia, succeeding the Hellenism of the Artaxiad epoch. This revival, however, was soon counterbalanced by the greatest event of the new epoch, the acceptance of Christianity by Armenia and then the other Caucasian States.
9. The social and political organization of Great Armenia in the Artaxiad epoch was to some extent a replica of that of the Urartian Monarchy. Like it, the monarchy of Tigranes II was a federation of States, great and small, Armenian and foreign, held together by the ties of political subordination. Overlord of numerous kings, Tigranes bore, in imitation of the Iranian Emperors, the title of basileus basileon, which was also the exact equivalent of the Urartian erili erilaue, and, as in the case of his Urartian predecessors, his was a theophnic kingship (86). Moreover, the dynasts who accepted the superior