Unintended Consequences: Three Ancient Treaties and the Armenians (63, 299 and 387 AD) ©Levon Avdoyan, 2009 Prologue: I recently succumbed to pop culture and bought an MP3 player with the thought of easily carrying my music library wherever I went. I rapidly filled its massive capacity with the complete this or that of various composer, both classical and popular. It was while I was almost to the end of the entire run of Mozart piano concerti that I realized what a boon this little gadget was: after decades of listening to and studying music, thinking mistakenly that I had understood these giants, I began really to comprehend their development (and sometimes, regression), their artistry and their genius as each work built upon the last. And so, I maintain, it is with this conference. I congratulate the conveners and the University of Michigan for gathering us to examine, in stroboscope fashion, the run of international treaties that have exerted influence for good or bad over Armenia through the ages. At the end of the run, we will come away with the same thoughts I had with Mozart. The goal of this paper, however, is rather modest compared with that of those that will come later. The reasons for this are many and varied, and it might