Thus ended the campaign of A.D. 481.  In A.D. 482 the Persians made a vigorous attempt to recover their lost ground by sending two armies, one under Ader-Nerseh against Armenia, and the other under Mihran into Iberia.  Vahan met the army of Ader-Nerseh in the plain of Ardaz, engaged it, and defeated it after a sharp struggle, in which the king, Sahag, particularly distinguished himself.  Mihran was opposed by Vakhtang, the Iberian king, who, however, soon found himself overmatched, and was forced to apply to Armenia for assistance.  The Armenians came to his aid in full force; but their generosity was ill rewarded.  Vakhtang plotted to make his peace with Persia by treacherously betraying his allies into their enemies’ hands; and the Armenians, forced to fight at tremendous disadvantage, suffered a severe defeat.  Sahag, the king, and Vasag, one of the brothers of Vahan, were slain; Vahan himself escaped, but at the head of only a few followers, with whom he fled to the highland district of Daik, on the borders of Home and Iberia.  Here he was “hunted upon the mountains” by Mihran, and would probably have been forced to succumb before the year was out, had not the Persian general suddenly received a summons from his sovereign, who needed his aid against the Roushans of the low Caspian region.  Mihran, compelled to obey this call, had to evacuate Armenia, and Vahan in a few weeks recovered possession of the whole country.

The year A.D. 483 now arrived, and another desperate attempt was made to crush the Armenian revolt.  Early in the spring a Persian army invaded Armenia, under a general called Hazaravougd.  Vahan allowed himself to be surprised, to be shut up in the city of Dovin, and to be there besieged.  After a while he made his escape, and renewed the guerilla warfare in which he was an adept; but the Persians recovered most of the country, and he was himself, on more than one occasion, driven across the border and obliged to seek refuge in Roman Armenia, whither his adversary had no right to follow him.  Even here, however, he was not safe.  Hazaravougd, at the risk of a rupture with Rome, pursued his flying foe across the frontier; and Vahan was for some time in the greatest danger.  But the Persian system of constantly changing the commands of their chief officers saved him.  Hazaravougd received orders from the court to deliver up Armenia to a newly appointed governor, named Sapor, and to direct his own efforts to the recovery of Iberia, which was still in insurrection.  In this latter enterprise he was successful; Iberia submitted to him; and Vakhtang fled to Colchis.  But in Armenia the substitution of Sapor for Hazaravougd led to disaster.  After a vain attempt to procure the assassination of Vahan by two of his officers, whose wives were Roman prisoners, Sapor moved against him with a strong body of troops; but the brave Mamigonian, falling upon his assailant unawares, defeated him with great loss, and dispersed his army.  A second