a bold, reckless fellow, with a
rollicking sense of humor, which, in truth, sits but awkwardly upon the
intense devotion to the Cross and its demands with which Moses or some
later redactor has seen fit to burden this purely pagan hero. David is
very human in spite of his blood-stained club and combative instincts,
and his kindliness and bonhomie awake in us a passing disappointment at
his untimely demise.

If we except some ecclesiastical writings, these fragments preserved by
Moses of Chorene and others comprehend all that is left to us of the
literature of Armenia antedating the Persian invasion. After the Persian
flood of fire and sword had rolled over this Asiatic Poland, the
stricken Christian Church revived. A monk named Mesrob set to work to
revive the spirit of literature. His difficulties were great. It was not
alone the resuscitating of a dead literary desire, but it entailed also
the providing of a vehicle of expression, namely an alphabet, so deeply
had the Persian domination imprinted itself upon the land. As might be
expected, the primary results of the revival were didactic, speculative,
or religious in character. Mysticism at that time flourished in the
monasteries, and the national spirit--the customs, habits, joys, and
emotions of the people--had not yet found re-expression in script. The
Church became the dominant power in literature, and if it is true on the
one hand that the Armenian people lost intellectual independence, it is
also true on the other that they gained that religious zeal and strength
which enabled them as an entity--a united race--to survive the fatal day
of Avarair, where, under the shadow of hoary Ararat, the Armenian
Marathon was fought and lost, and Vartan, their national hero, died. All
sorts of traditions cluster still around the battlefield of Avarair. A
species of red flower grows there that is nowhere else to be found, and
it is commonly believed that this red blossom sprang originally from the
blood of the slain Armenian warriors. On the plain of Avarair is also
found a small antelope with a pouch upon its breast secreting musk--a
peculiarity gained, they say, from feeding on grass soaked with the
blood of Armenia's sons. And at Avarair, too, it is said that the lament
of the nightingales is ever, "Vartan, Vartan." The story of these times
is preserved in fragments in the religious chronicles of Lazarus of
Pharb and of Eliseus. When, during the Persian domination, Armenia