During the continuance of the dynasty of King Haic or Haicus, the son of Togarmah, the Armenians became a very prosperous and powerful people. They did not seem to be an aggressive or warlike people, although their boundaries were greatly extended, but a thrifty agricultural and industrious people. Breeding and marketing horses seem to have been their leading employments. In the twenty-seventh chapter of the Prophet Ezekiel he gives a catalogue of the different peoples trading with the great Phœnician merchants and the products of their countries, in which they traded. This catalogue was written five hundred and fifty-eight years before the Christian era, and is very remarkable for its extent and completeness. It not only shows what the Phœnicians carried away to the West, in their “Ships of Tarshish,” but also what they brought back for distribution among their customers in Western Asia. I will quote, from the revised version, two or three of the classes of articles enumerated, embracing both import and export trade. Of foreign imports he says: “Tarshish” (Spain and beyond) “was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded for thy wares.” Of articles for export he says: “They of the house of Togarmah traded for thy wares with horses and war-horses and mules.” “Togarmah” here means “Armenia,” and this is the only instance in which horses are mentioned in the catalogue. I will give another quotation, not because it is conclusive in itself, but because it is confirmatory of Strabo’s statement that there were no horses in Arabia in his day. He says: “Arabia and all the princes of Kedar, they were the merchants of thy hand; in lambs, and rams, and goats, in these were they thy merchants.” Other products from more southern portions of Arabia are enumerated, but no horses. This is the initial step toward the general distribution of horses, by the Phœnician merchants, which will be developed in the next chapter.
In speaking of Media (Vol. II., p. 265), Strabo says: “The country is peculiarly adapted, as well as Armenia, to the breeding of horses.” Of one district not far from the Caspian he remarks: “Here, it is said, fifty thousand mares were pastured in the time of the Persians, and were the king’s stud. The Nessæan horses, the best and the largest in the king’s province, were of this breed, according to some writers, but according to others they were from Armenia.” Again he says: “Cappadocia paid to the Persians, yearly, in addition to a tribute in silver, one thousand five hundred horses, two thousand mules, and fifty thousand sheep, and the Medes contributed nearly double this amount.”