There are two Armenias: the current Republic of Armenia and historic Armenia. The modern state dates from the early 20th century. Historic Armenia was part of the ancient world and expired in the Middle Ages. Its people, however, survived, and from its residue recreated a new country. The history of the Armenians is the story of how an ancient people endured into modern times and how its culture evolved from one conceived under the influence of Mesopotamia to one redefined by the civilization of Europe. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Armenia relates the turbulent past of this persistent country through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 200 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, events, places, organizations, and other aspects of Armenian history from the earliest times to the present.

A recent surge of interest in network approaches to the study of the ancient world has enabled scholars of the Roman Empire to move beyond traditional narratives of domination, resistance, integration and fragmentation. This relational turn has not only offers tools to identify, map, visualize and, in some cases, even quantify interaction based on a variety of ancient source material, but also provides a terminology to deal with the everyday ties of power, trade, and ideology that operated within, below, and beyond the superstructure of imperial rule. Thirteen contributions employ a range of quantitative, qualitative and descriptive network approaches in order to provide new perspectives on trade, communication, administration, technology, religion and municipal life in the Roman Near East and adjacent regions.