ovince of his empire, and to place it under the
government of a Persian satrap. The movement was resisted with all his
force by Isaac, the patriarch, who admitted the profligacy of Artaxerxes
and deplored it, but held that the role of a Christian, however lax he
might be, was to be preferred to that of a heathen, however virtuous.
The nobles, however, were determined; and the opposition of Isaac had
no other result than to involve him in the fall of his sovereign. Appeal
was made to the Persian king and Varahran, in solemn state, heard the
charges made against Artaxerxes by his subjects, and listened to
his reply to them. At the end he gave his decision. Artaxerxes was
pronounced to have forfeited his crown, and was deposed; his property
was confiscated, and his person committed to safe custody. The monarchy
was declared to be at an end; and Persarmenia was delivered into the
hands of a Persian governor. The patriarch Isaac was at the same time
degraded from his office and detained in Persia as a prisoner. It was
not till some years later that he was released, allowed to return
into Armenia, and to resume, under certain restrictions, his episcopal
functions.

The remaining circumstances of the reign of Varahran V. come to us
wholly through the Oriental writers, amid whose exaggerations and fables
it is very difficult to discern the truth. There can, however, be little
doubt that it was during the reign of this prince that those terrible
struggles commenced between the Persians and their neighbors upon the
north-east which continued, from the early part of the fifth till the
middle of the sixth century, to endanger the very existence of the
empire. Various names are given to the people with whom Persia waged
her wars during this period. They are called Turks, Huns, sometimes even
Chinese, but these terms seem, to be used in a vague way, as "Scythian"
was by the ancients; and the special ethnic designation of the people
appears to be quite a different name from any of them. It is a name
the Persian form of which is _Haithal_ or _Haiathleh_, the Armenian
Hephthagh, and the Greek "Ephthalites," or sometimes "Nephthalites."
Different conjectures have been formed as to its origin: but none of
them can be regarded as more than an ingenious theory. All that we know
of the Ephthalites is, that they were established in force, during
the fifth and sixth centuries of our era, in the regions east of the
Caspian, especially in those