We must not judge the ability and reputation of men in their own ages solely by the familiarity of their names to us; those that have come down to us are a mere handful, and not by any means always the greatest of their time. Much depends on chance--the preservation of certain works, and the loss of others, or certain men happening to do something dramatic. Great orators are especially likely to be forgotten; they leave no written works of their own, and not being in political life, the common histories do not mention them. The name of Barouyr is wholly unknown to this age; but we have the testimony of a contemporary writer, Eunapius of Sardis,--not a countryman of his, and therefore free from all suspicion of patriotic brag, and most unlikely to make out an Armenian greater than he was,--that he was the most wonderful orator of his time, famous all over the Roman world, and greatly admired even by the emperors. He was one of those men to whom all languages seem alike to come by nature, and his oratory was as easy and as perfect in one as in the other; in Latin or Greek as in his national Armenian. The only comparison I can give in modern times is Louis Kossuth. That Barouyr has not the fame of Cicero or Demosthenes, Kossuth or Gladstone, is probably because under the circumstances of the time he could not engage in political life; military service or high birth were about the only avenues to that. I will quote in substance what Eunapius says of this brilliant orator, whom he probably knew all about, as our boys know Gladstone,--for he was born in 347, and Barouyr was certainly alive in the time of the Emperor Julian, who came to the throne in 361:--