cause; and all his noble works. But this is not the place. THE PAKRADOONIAN DYNASTY. For a century after the Mohammedan conquest of Persia, the fortunes of Armenia were apparently at their lowest ebb, and as a country it almost disappears from history; but by one of the compensations of nature, which provides that human force, like other force, cannot be extinguished, but if suppressed will find an outlet elsewhere, its people began a career of brilliancy and power unequaled in its history, and broadened from the rule of a tormented buffer-state to that of the great Byzantine Empire itself. The Saracen torrent flowed over Armenia's lowlands and up to the base of its mountain fortresses, but never overcame them; generation after generation the contending forces battled together, surging back and forth, and filling the beautiful valleys with fire and blood, but Armenia proper was never added to the list of Saracen conquests, never made a part of the Mohammedan Empire or strengthened Mohammedanism till four centuries later through Byzantine greed and folly. Internally it was all in feudal anarchy again so far as concerned any one central focus of government. Even the Persian satraps had gone from the Persian side, and with them the half-control they had kept over the turbulent baronage; on the Roman side from early in the seventh century to early in the eighth, the throne of Constantinople was filled with weak and unstable monarchs, fighting for Anatolia against the Saracens, and unable to exercise any effective control over Armenia, to which indeed they looked as a frontier defense against those very foes.