Moses of Chorene, bk. iii. ch. 36 ff., copies, confuses, and adds to Koriun’s account. A little before 370 A.D. the Persians overran Armenia, and Meroujah, their leader, burned all the books he could find in the country, proscribed the study of the Greek language, and enacted penalties against any who should speak it or translate from it. At that time, adds Moses, the offices of the church were performed in Greek, because the Armenian alphabet did not yet exist. On the death of Theodosius (Jan. 395 A.D.) there was a partition of Armenia between his successor Arcadius and the king of Persia, by which the latter took undisputed possession of the eastern provinces, including the basin of Ararat, in which lay the new religious centre Valarshapat or Edschmiadzin, the νέα πόλις of the Romans. The new Mesropic alphabet was at first used only in Persian Armenia; for, says Moses, in the parts dependent on the Greeks, all writing had to be in Greek characters, Syriac being forbidden. As soon as Mesrop had elaborated his alphabet with the aid of Hrophanos, he betook himself to the work of translation; and with the aid of his pupils John and Joseph, translated the entire twenty-two authentic books along with the New Testament, taking care to begin with the Book of Proverbs. About the year 406 he returned to Armenia, and found St. Sahak engaged in translating the Syriac Bible. He hints that Sahak would have preferred a Greek original, if Meroujah had not burned all the Greek books nearly thirty years before. This perhaps implies that the version, on which Mesrop had been engaged in Samosata, was made from Greek. Nor is that unlikely; for Rufinus, who helped him, was a Greek, and we learn from Koriun that there were Armenians in Edessa studying both Greek and Syriac. We read in bk. iii. ch. 60 of the History of Moses, about missions sent to Edessa and Byzantium in order to the translation of the works of the Fathers, but we hear nothing more expressly touching the Version of the Bible, save this, that after the Council of Ephesus, Sahak and Mesrop, then in Ashtishat in Taron, received from Byzantium, as aforesaid, the canons of the council recently held, along with accurate copies of the Greek Bible. On receipt of these, Sahak and Mesrop translated afresh what had already been translated, and were zealous in recasting the text. But they were not, it seems, after all, satisfied with their work, and sent Moses to Alexandria to learn the “beautiful tongue” (i.e. Greek), with a view to a more accurate articulation and division (of the Armenian scriptures).