History of Aristakes Lastivertts'i

And our glory turned to corruption.
Breath remained not in us,
And we perished in the cutting off of our hope.
Death grew strong and approached,
5 And the netherworld did not wish to do enough.
Hands were raised against us from all sides,
And in our days, the time was not known
To pay the remainder of the punishment for the past.
Successors replaced successors,
10 And the fruit of the spark of life diminished.
The established ones of the world, in their sojourn,
Sojourned a second time and became fugitives
At the hand of rebellious sojourners.
Those broken by their loved ones, whom the sword did not slay,
15 Were scattered like the stars called wandering.
In our days, wars awakened from the four directions:
Sword from the east, slaughter from the west,
Fire from the north, death from the south.
Joys were removed from the earth,
20 The voices of harps fell silent,
The sounds of drums fell silent,
The cries of mourners rose...

And this is so much. But it is time for us to proceed to the body of the history and take a beginning from here, so that the words may be easy for us. 25 And it happened after the death of David the Kouropalates a high-ranking Byzantine court title, who was a powerful man and a builder of the land, generous and a lover of the poor, who was truly a border of peace; for in his days, every man rested, according to the prophecy, under his vine and under his fig tree. But after his death, the autocrat emperor king of the Romans, Basil, in the twenty-fifth...