History of Aristakes Lastivertts'i

so far. But it is time for us to proceed to the main body of the history, and from here take a beginning, so that the words and the narrative of the actual history may be easy for us: 'And it happened after the death of David of Tao...' etc."

In general, it was possible to start the chapter from those very words, considering the previous part a prologue, but in such a case we would have to completely ignore the data of the manuscripts — even codex G, where the heading is placed right there, has the heading "Events throughout the land of Armenia" after the general title as well, which thus refers to the whole chapter. On the other hand, the sentence "Events throughout the land of Armenia" does not connect in any way only to the second part of Chapter I. The headings of Aristakes Lastiverttsʻi are very concrete, and he would not have entitled the chapter dedicated only to the arrival of Emperor Basil in such a general form as "Events throughout the land of Armenia." The title refers to the first, generalizing part of Chapter I and is thus entirely justified. Regarding the heading of manuscript H, "On the arrival of Emperor Basil in Armenia," it is simply a later innovation. We know that manuscript H has numerous corrections, but that title differs in its script from both the script of the text and the corrections; it is written by a careless hand and does not manifest its old origin in any way.

Thus, Aristakes Lastiverttsʻi’s History has 25 chapters and the appendix "Word of the colophon of the same book."¹

When grouping the used manuscripts, we see that a clear connection exists only between two volumes: D and L. The Leningrad manuscript is transcribed from the current Matenadaran manuscript No. 3070, which, as was said, belonged at one time to Karapet Bagratuni. The note written by the hand of Brosset refers to that very Karapet. The scribe of manuscript L, when copying, had in mind the corrected text of D (which we have marked with the lowercase d), therefore d = L.

In the present publication, up to page 58, we have noted the variants of the manuscript, which leave no doubt regarding the original of that codex. The few deviations that distinguish manuscript L from d are simply mistakes left by Hovhannes Nazarov.

Regarding the other manuscripts, it can be said that in general they are divided into the following subgroups: ABC, BCDI, EF, GH (the latter are close to the printed text), whereby such a division is of a conditional nature.

The goal of the present publication is to present a collective critical text of Aristakes Lastiverttsʻi’s History. It is reconstructed according to the possibilities offered by the manuscript variants. Each variant has undergone scientific examination, and on that basis, an attempt has been made to restore the one belonging to the author.

¹ The first part of Chapter I is a lamentation song, written in a special meter. In the present publication, the line division made follows mainly Manuk Abeghyan (see "History of Ancient Armenian Literature," book two, Yerevan, 1946, pp. 41—42).