Varazdat

Varazdat
King Varazdat (Artist painting Vahan Gharibyan)
King of Armenia Artist painting Vahan Gharibyan
Reign	374–378
Predecessor	Pap
Successor	Arshak III
House	Arsacid

Varazdat (Armenian: Վարազդատ, Latinized: Varasdates; Greek: Βαρασδάτης; flourished 4th century) was a king of Arsacid Armenia from 374 until 378.

Derived from Middle Persian warāz meaning "boar" combined with Middle Persian dātan "to give", the name Varazdat (Persian: ورازداد‎‎) roughly means "given by boars" or "giver of boars"., boar being a symbol for valor and fierceness.

Varazdat was the nephew and successor of the previous Arsacid Armenian king Papas (Pap) who reigned from 370 until 374. According to Saint Mesrop Mashtots, the priest and historiographer of the Catholicos Nerses the Great, names the father of Varazdat as Anob, while the identity of the mother of Varazdat is unknown. The father of Varazdat, Anob who was an Arsacid prince was the older paternal half-brother of Papas. Also, according to Faustus of Byzantium (Book IV, Chapter 37), Varazdat proclaims himself as the nephew of Papas and the historian reveals Varazdat’s relations to the Armenian Arsacids. Hence the paternal grandfather of Varazdat was the Arsacid monarch Arsaces II (Arshak II), who ruled as Roman client king of Armenia from 350 until 368 as his paternal grandmother was an unnamed woman whom Arsaces II married prior to his Armenian kingship, who died before the year 358. Little is known of his early life.

Sometime before his Armenian kingship, Varazdat participated in the Olympic Games in Greece. He is often regarded as one of the last competitors in the Ancient Olympic Games. Varazdat's victory in the bare-knuckle boxing event (pugilat) is recorded in Moses of Chorene's History of Armenia (3.40). Since he reigned from 374 until 378, conjecture places his victory in the 360s. Varazdat is the second recorded Armenian to participate in the Olympic Games, while the first was his ancestor Tiridates III of Armenia, before he served in his Armenian kingship. Varazdat’s victory is also known from a surviving memorandum which is now kept at the Olympic Museum in Olympia, Greece.