• Armenia AD 500

Armenia has continued to suffer from its location as a buffer state between Rome and Persia, with periods spent under one rule or another. On the whole she has managed to keep a large measure of autonomy, however, and in 314 she had the distinction of being the first country to adopt Christianity as its official religion. With its mighty Roman neighbour soon also converting, this placed Armenia firmly in the Roman camp for a century or so. Armenia is now an independent country under its own prince, both politically and culturally. The Armenians forcibly asserted their independence from the Persian empire in 484, and in the religious and cultural sphere are drifting away from the Eastern Roman empire, under their own church.

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