ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA
The Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother were murdered in the year
235. We may convey a just impression of the period that followed this
odious crime by the brief observation that in forty years nearly forty
Emperors appeared on the darkened stage of the Roman Empire, and that
nearly every one of them perished at the hands of Roman soldiers. The
anarchy was arrested for a time when, in the year 270, the energetic
Aurelian came to the throne. People and Senate greeted the strong
man with genuine enthusiasm, and among the cries of joy or hope with
which the Senators hailed him we find this singular aspiration: “Thou
wilt deliver us from Zenobia and Vitruvia.” It is a piquant contrast
with the disdain that their fathers had had for women--a confession
that their vast Empire was now dominated by two women, without male
consorts. But for the timely appearance of Aurelian there was a
prospect that they would divide the rule of the world between them.
One was a Syrian, the other a Gallic, queen; but each of them bore the
title of Augusta, and they are the next commanding personalities to
engage our interest.
Many years were to elapse between the death of Mamæa and the appearance
of these two remarkable women, but we need do no more than glance at
the many Empresses of an hour whose names are hardly discernible in
that turbulent era. The huge barbarian who had purchased the throne by
a brutal murder did not long enjoy it. The Empire heard with horror
and disdain that this Thracian shepherd had seized the mantle of
Antoninus and Marcus. The people of Rome, in particular, recollected
with alarm the contempt they had shown him in his earlier years, and
offered prayer in the temples that the gods might divert his steps
from the south of Italy. He met their disdain with vindictiveness,
and ruthlessly executed those who remembered his humble origin, or
whose wealth could add to his revenue. His Empress, Paulina, vainly
endeavoured to restrain his bloody hand, and succeeded only in drawing
it upon herself.[18] At length his exactions struck a spark of
rebellion in Africa, and a new Emperor was appointed.
The African Proconsul, Gordianus, was an excellent Epicurean of the
fine old Roman type. He had wealth, culture, character, and taste.
After filling the highest offices at Rome with grace and applause, he
was now quietly discharging the duties of Proconsul, and relieving the
long hours of leisure with a tranquil enjoyment of letters, at the
little town of Thysdrus, about a hundred and fifty miles to the south
of Carthage. With him in Africa was his son Gordianus, an epicure
rather than an Epicurean, who solaced his exile from Rome with the
engaging company of twenty-two ladies. Their respective pleasures were
violently interrupted in the beginning of the year 238. The father, a
white-haired old man, with broad red face, was resting in his house
after his judicial labours, when a band of men, with blood-smeared
swords, burst into the luxurious villa, told him that they had rebelled
against the tyrant, and peremptorily informed him that he was Emperor.
His objections were unheeded, and he set out, with misgiving, for
Carthage. But the pride of the Carthaginians was quickly chilled by the
news that Maximinus’s commander in Africa was advancing against their
city. An armed force was hastily equipped, sent out under the lead of
the younger Gordian, and cut to pieces. The younger Emperor had died
on the field: the white-haired old man hanged himself.
Rome, meantime, had recognized the rule of the Gordians, and was now
throbbing with a just apprehension of the vengeance of Maximinus. The
certainty of punishment inspired it with a measure of courage, and
two new Emperors were created--a vigorous son of the people, Pupienus
Maximus, and a perfumed representative of the nobles, Balbinus. The
choice did not please the people, who beset the Senate with sticks
and stones, so a handsome boy, such as Rome loved, was associated
with them. He was a Gordianus, the fourteen-year-old son of the elder
Gordian’s daughter. The city rang with preparations for war, and in
the early summer Maximus led out his weak and apprehensive force.
The terrible Maximinus and his legions had crossed the Alps, and
were descending on the plains of Italy. Luckily for Rome, they met a
desperate resistance at Aquileia. Protected by strong and well-equipped
fortifications, with ample provisions, the inhabitants repelled the
fiercest attacks of Maximinus, and jeered at him and his dissolute son
from the walls. When the thongs of their slinging-machines wore out,
the women of Aquileia gave their long tresses to the soldiers to weave
into cords. Maximinus vented his temper on his own troops, and one
morning the besieged were delighted to see the soldiers advancing with
the grisly heads of Maximinus and his son on the tips of their spears.
Maximus returned to gladden Rome with the news, but it was decreed that
six Emperors were to die that year. The soldiers, who had had another
fight with the Romans during the war, were sullen and treacherous.
Balbinus they hated for his effeminacy, Maximus for his rigour. The
returning troops brought grievances of their own, and it was only the
loyalty of the German soldiers that held the guards off the palace.
Then there came a day when the delight of the games drew most of
the soldiers away, and the guards marched upon the palace. Maximus
hastily ordered the loyal troops to be summoned: Balbinus cancelled
the order. Their relations had been strained for some time, and each
looked upon this sudden onslaught as a device of the other. The German
troops arrived at last, to find the palace empty, and learn that the
three Emperors were in the hands of the guards. They started at once
for the camp, and found the bleeding remains of Maximus and Balbinus
on the street. With them another ephemeral Empress passes dimly before
us. The coins seem to indicate that Maximus was the husband of Quintia
Crispilla at the time of his death.
The youthful Gordian had been taken to the camp, and Rome was forced to
acknowledge him as sole Emperor. Intoxicated, as so many had been, by
the sudden obtaining of so vast a power, he seemed at first inclined
to the model of Caligula. His uncle’s concubines and his mother’s
eunuchs were in a fair way to rule the ruler. But a wise tutor,
Timesitheus, obtained a better influence over him, and he soberly chose
his daughter, Furia Sabina Tranquillina, as his Empress. The whole
prospect of the Empire changed with his marriage, in 241 or 242, but
the evil genius of Rome intervened once more. The Persians had again
crossed the eastern frontier, and the Emperor and his father-in-law
went to Asia to take command. The war was proceeding with success, when
Timesitheus contracted a mysterious illness and died. Gordian gave his
command to a dashing cavalry leader named Philip--the man who, we have
strong reason to think, had poisoned Timesitheus. Philip was a handsome
Arab, whose father had led a band of robbers in the desert. But the
son was astute, and Gordian suspected nothing. Before many months the
camps were simmering with discontent. Pay was reduced, and the troops
were reluctantly informed by Philip that it was the command of the
Emperor. Regiments found themselves quartered in districts where it was
impossible to obtain sufficient food, and Philip begged them to regard
the youth and military inexperience of Gordian. The plot culminated in
the early spring of 244. Gordian was slain, and the son of the Arab
pillager of caravans received the purple from the soldiers.
[Illustration: MARCIA OTACILIA SEVERA]
The new Empress of Rome, Marcia Otacilia Severa, attracts our attention
for a moment on account of the claim of the early Christian writers
that she belonged to the new religion. The claim must have had some
foundation, but the story on which it is generally based is regarded
with reserve by historians. St. Chrysostom and others declare that,
when Philip and Otacilia passed from the Euphrates, where Gordian
had been murdered, to Antioch, they went to the Christian church for
service on Easter-eve; and that the bishop refused to admit them in
any other character than that of penitents expiating a foul crime.
Duruy ridicules the idea that a bishop would have dared so to address
an Emperor in public before the middle of the third century, and it is
certainly difficult to believe. Indeed, historians generally suspect
that, as the story itself implies, Otacilia supported her husband in
his criminal ambition, and are reluctant to regard her as a Christian.
Her nationality is unknown, and she hardly emerges from the obscurity
in which the scanty chronicles have left the reign of her husband.
Let us hasten through the pages of ghastly adventure, and come to more
interesting women. In the year 249 the troops in Mœsia pressed the
purple on one of the ablest Roman generals, Decius, and Philip was
slain in the contest that followed. Otacilia fled with her son to the
Prætorian camp, but the guards killed the boy in her arms, and sent
her back sadly into the common ranks from which she had so unhappily
risen. The wife of Decius, Herennia Etruscilla, who is known to us
only from coins and an inscription, had little better fortune, since
Decius perished in a war with the Goths two years later (251). His son
and successor, Hostilianus, died in the following year, not without a
suspicion of crime. The colleague of Decius and successor of his son,
Gallus, was murdered in 253, together with his son Volusianus, with
whom he had shared the Empire; and the rival and successor of Gallus
was assassinated within four months. Then Valerianus, an aged and
distinguished Senator, came to the throne, and we begin to have less
fleeting glimpses of the ladies of the court, and to make acquaintance
with the two remarkable women who will especially occupy us.
The elder Valerian does not long remain on the stage. The weakness
into which the Empire had fallen was soon observed by its enemies
on every side, and the frontier provinces were being devastated.
Investing his elder son, Gallienus, with the purple, Valerian went
to the East to oppose the Persian monarch, Sapor, who threatened the
whole of Roman Asia, and after a time fell, with his army, into the
hands of the enemy. Whether or no it be true that the proud Persian
used to step on the person of the aged Emperor to mount his horse, it
is at least certain that Valerian died among the Persians after some
years of ignominious captivity, and his skin, stuffed and padded to
the proportions of a man, was long exhibited as the most glorious of
Sapor’s many trophies. There are later writers who assert that his
second wife, the Empress Mariniana, was captured with him, and brutally
treated until she died, but the authority is slender. Cohen, the great
authority on Roman coins, warns us that, though there are coins of a
certain Mariniana, who seems to have been a lady of Valerian’s court,
it is not certain that she was his wife.
So feeble did the Empire now become that its enemies made the most
extensive and destructive inroads. The Persians advanced so far as
to sack Antioch, the Franks overran Spain and reached Africa, the
Alemanni spread terror in the north of Italy and even threatened Rome,
and the Goths poured over Greece and Asia Minor. Gallienus received
the news of each successive disaster with an insipid joke. Glittering
with the jewels which encrusted his belt, his dress, and even his
shoes, his hair powdered with gold dust, he dined from dishes of solid
gold, in the company of his concubines, while his father suffered in
captivity, and his subjects groaned under the hardship of invasion,
famine, pestilence, and earthquake. His Empress, Cornelia Salonina,
seems to have disdained his cowardly luxury, and she was replaced in
his affection, though not in her position, by a charming barbarian.
Attalus, King of the Marcomanni, had a beautiful daughter named Pipa or
Pipara, whose attractiveness was brought to the notice of Gallienus.
He frivolously submitted to the Senate that, since Rome had so many
enemies, it were wise to disarm some of them; and he asked Attalus
for the hand of his daughter. The shrewd barbarian stipulated for a
large part of Pannonia, and in return for that valuable slice of the
Empire permitted his pretty daughter to be the concubine of the Roman
Emperor. She never appears on the coinage, while Salonina--whose grave,
intellectual features suggest that she found solace in culture--remains
Augusta to the end. Serviez finds an admirable trait of Salonina’s
character in the punishment of a man who had sold her some false
jewels. He was sentenced to the lions; but when the terrible gates were
opened, a harmless fowl flew out upon him, and he was discharged with
the fright. The Roman historian, however, ascribes the trick expressly
to Gallienus.[19]
In the eight years of Gallienus’s complete control of the Empire
(260–268) it was distracted and worn with misery and anarchy. The
“Historia Augusta” estimates that “thirty tyrants” arose in that short
period to dispute the power of the corrupt Gallienus; Gibbon reduces
the number to nineteen; Duruy counts twenty-eight claimants to the
throne. There was, in any case, a period of profound demoralization,
and as nearly all these generals met with a violent death, involved
many others in their fall, and very frequently led their troops in
civil warfare, the drain on the impoverished system was disastrous. It
is amongst these “thirty tyrants” that we find Zenobia and Victoria.
Zenobia was the wife of Odenathus, the ruling man in the independent
town of Palmyra. The town, which had become an important commercial
centre, lay on the edge of the Syrian desert, and had long maintained a
position of neutrality between the Romans on the west and the Parthians
to the east. It had the title of a Roman colony, and Odenathus cannot
have been more than its leading citizen and, perhaps, head of its
Senate. To this little State came the news that the Roman Emperor was
detained in ignominy by the King of Persia. Odenathus sent to Sapor
a most polite suggestion that his conduct was improper, and gilded
his remonstrance with a caravan of valuable presents. The presents
were disdainfully thrown into the Euphrates, and the blustering Sapor
threatened to punish his insolence. With great boldness the leading
citizen of Palmyra formed an irregular army out of the neighbouring
villages and the Arabs, with a few Roman troops, and inflicted a
substantial reverse on the Persian troops. Gallienus gracefully
acknowledged his service, and extended the Imperial title to him and
his wife Zenobia, who became the representatives of Roman power in the
East.
Zenobia was, says Trebellius Pollio in the “Historia Augusta,” “one of
the most noble of all the women of the East, and also one of the most
beautiful.” Her nobility rests upon her claim that she descended from
Cleopatra, a point that we are unable to examine. The portrait-bust
of her in the Vatican does not so much suggest exceptional beauty as
exceptional power. It is a face of extraordinary strength and peculiar
features. We can very well imagine her, as she is described for us,
riding out on horseback before the assembled troops, her piercing black
eyes aflame with spirit, a military helmet on her head, and a purple
robe, embroidered with gems, so attached to her person as to leave
naked the fine arm with which she emphasized her orders. She maintained
a court of Persian magnificence, but was far removed from Persian
insolence. She did not disdain to drink with her officers, and even to
endeavour to surpass them in drinking. Yet it is uniformly stated that
this remarkable independence of Syrian ideas as to a woman’s position
was united with a chastity of the most sensitive and peculiarly
scrupulous character. When we add that she was a woman of exceptional
culture, spoke Latin, Greek, and Egyptian, had so complete a command
of the history of the East that she wrote a book on it, and enjoyed
the daily companionship of the philosopher Longinus, who was tutor to
her sons, we seem to have exhausted possible merit, and ventured into
the province of legend. But we have still to say that her military
and political ability was no less than her beauty, her culture, or
her virtue. We shall see later that the finest Emperor of the age,
Aurelian, spoke with extraordinary appreciation of her skill in warfare
and in polity.
Even as the wife of Odenathus, Zenobia was not inactive. She is said
to have urged his bold attack on Persia, and she shared the longest
marches of the soldiers when the campaign began. But she was soon the
sole ruler of the East, in the interest, at first, of Rome. During
the Persian war Odenathus quarrelled with a relative and officer,
named Mæonius, and was only prevented by the intercession of his son,
Herodes, from putting him to death. Herodes was the son of Odenathus by
a former wife, and would be the natural heir to his dignity. The two
sons whom Zenobia had borne him, Timolaus and Herennianus, were mere
boys, but Zenobia had an older son, Vaballath, by a former husband. We
can understand that there would be some jealousy in the family, now
that the Roman purple and a practical sovereignty of the East were
conferred on the “king of Palmyra.” Zenobia could not but dislike
and despise Herodes. He adopted the voluptuous ways of the East, and
received from his father, as an immediate share of his heritage, the
jewels, silks, and fair ladies which he had detached from the baggage
of Sapor when that monarch retired before him.
Yet there is no ground for the assertion that Zenobia was privy to the
conspiracy which removed Odenathus and Herodes. Mæonius was consulting
his own ambition, as well as appeasing his hatred, in having them
assassinated. For a moment Zenobia was in a position of some anxiety,
but she acted with vigour. She thrust her son Vaballath--the “Historia
Augusta” at first says her two younger sons, but afterwards corrects
this--before the Palmyreans as the most worthy heir of the power of
Odenathus, and Mæonius passes into a significant obscurity. Vaballath
was declared Augustus, and Zenobia became “Queen of the East,” as she
liked to call herself. The two younger boys were entitled Cæsars.
Within a short time it was felt at Rome that a new and rival power had
arisen in the East.
The voluptuous Gallienus could at times start from his rose-strewn
couches and the arms of his mistresses, and conduct an energetic raid
upon the opponents of his Empire. The victories of Odenathus seem to
have inspired one of these fits of vigour. The legions in Gaul had cast
off their allegiance to their degraded ruler, put his son Saloninus
to death, and chosen as Emperor their able and upright commander,
Cassianus Postumus. Gallienus marched against him, pressed him hard for
a time, and then returned to Rome to enjoy a magnificent triumph. One
hundred white oxen, with gilded horns, two hundred white lambs, several
hundred lions, tigers, bears, and other animals, and twelve hundred
gladiators, in superb costumes, preceded his car. The more serious
Romans looked on in disdain. Some of the mimes, or comedians, dressed
as Persians, and went about in the procession, staring in each other’s
faces, and saying that they were “looking for the Emperor’s father.”
Gallienus had them burned alive.
But the chief interest of this dash into Gaul is that it first brings
to our notice the famous Gallic princess Vitruvia or Victoria.[20]
We find her supporting Postumus against Gallienus. When he is hard
pressed, she persuades him to associate her son, Victorinus, with him
in the Empire, and presently she herself becomes Augusta and “Mother
of the Camp”--a proof that she accompanied the army. Victorinus is
said by one of the contemporary writers to have been more manly than
Trajan, more clement than Antonine, graver than Nerva, and a better
financier than Vespasian; but this paragon of excellence had the one
serious defect that he could not withhold his covetous eyes from the
prettier wives of his officers. The responsibility of power sobered
him for a time, but before long he led astray the wife of one of his
officers, and was assassinated. At his mother’s suggestion he, with his
dying voice, named his young son his successor, but the angry soldiers
murdered the boy.
Victoria now put forward as candidate one of the soldiers themselves, a
brawny officer named Marius, who had at one time been armourer or smith
to the camp. He was accepted, but a slight that he was imprudent enough
to put upon one of his old associates led to his receiving in his own
breast one of the swords he had himself forged, after enjoying the
delirious dignity of the purple for two days. The “thirty tyrants” were
playing their parts with great rapidity. Tetricus, the commander of the
troops and a Senator, was next put forward by Victoria, and he left her
in control of the affairs of Gaul while he led the army into Spain.
Victoria’s power was not of long duration, and the references to her in
the chronicles are too meagre to enable us to picture her remarkable
personality. For many years her power in Gaul was so great that her
fame ran through the Empire, and Zenobia, as she afterwards told
Aurelian, had the design of communicating with her and proposing to
divide the Roman world between them. Her end is obscure. When Tetricus
returned from Spain, he is said to have resented her domination and put
her to death; though it is elsewhere said that her death was due to
natural causes. She did not live to witness or share the humiliation of
Tetricus a few years later.
We return to Zenobia, who had in the meantime become an independent
sovereign. Gallienus had taken alarm at the growth of her power, and
sent his general Heraclian with secret instructions to dislodge her.
Zenobia divined the real intention of Heraclian and his troops, treated
him as an invader, and destroyed his force. An invitation was then
received, or obtained, from Egypt, and Zenobia sent 70,000 men to expel
the troops of Gallienus from what she regarded as the kingdom of her
fathers. Egypt was added to her dominions. Rome was now fully alarmed
at the success of the two barbaric women, while every other province
of the Empire was overrun by invaders or detached by locally-chosen
Emperors. One of these rivals at length drew Gallienus from his palace
once more, and gave an opportunity to remove his insolent weakness from
the throne. The Emperor was besieging the pretender to the throne in
Milan, when some of the leading officers conspired to assassinate him.
He was drawn from his tent one night in March (268) by a false alarm
that the besieged had made a sally, and, devoid alike of guards and
armour, he was soon stricken with a mortal wound. Salonina is said by
some to have perished with him, but of this there is no evidence.
His successor, Claudius, an experienced soldier of obscure descent
but great personal merit, decided to leave Zenobia and Victoria in
possession of their power until he had rid the Empire of the formidable
Goths. They were said to have an army of 320,000 men, and the whole
of Greece and the north of Asia Minor had been plundered by them. The
instruments of Roman comfort or luxury that they took back into the
bleak forests of the north seemed to be drawing an inexhaustible stream
of marauders upon the debilitated south. Two years were occupied by
Claudius in destroying their power, and he had just cleansed the Roman
territory of their presence when he died of the pestilence, in the
spring of 270. The obscure brother of so virtuous and valorous a ruler
was deemed a worthy successor to the purple, but the army made choice
of a strong and capable commander, Aurelian, and, after two or three
weeks’ timid enjoyment of his power, Quintilius opened his veins and
gracefully yielded the throne.
The new Emperor was the bold and sturdy son of a provincial peasant,
who had cut his way to the position of commander. Marriage with the
daughter of a wealthy noble had further improved his position, and his
temperance, zeal for discipline, skill, and bravery had made him a
most effective leader. His first care was to complete the victory over
the Goths, who were again advancing. After an exhausting struggle he
entered into friendly alliance with them, drove back the other barbaric
tribes who threatened or ignored the northern frontier of the Empire,
and then turned his eyes toward the East. Gibbon makes him first apply
himself to the restoration of Gaul, but the historians Vopiscus and
Zosimus expressly say that he dealt first with the Queen of the East.
Zenobia had now, in 272, enjoyed her remarkable power for about
four years, and seemed, owing to the preoccupation of Rome with the
northern barbarians, to have established a solid and durable kingdom.
Parthia and Persia respected her southern boundaries; Egypt peacefully
acknowledged her rule; and even the cities of Asia Minor were beginning
to bow to her title. But Palmyra was not a Rome, and provided too
slender a base for so vast a dominion. As Aurelian and his formidable
legions marched across Asia Minor, the cities returned at once to the
Roman allegiance, and Zenobia prepared for a severe struggle. She led
her army out in person from Antioch, and met the Romans near the river
Orontes. Modern historians usually follow the account of the battle
which describes Aurelian as stealing a victory by stratagem. He is said
to have noticed the weight of Zenobia’s heavily-armoured cavalry, drawn
them into a wild gallop by a feigned retreat, and then wheeled his
troops, when they showed signs of fatigue, and scattered them. But the
“Historia Augusta,” the nearest authority, tells us that Aurelian’s
troops were really routed at first, and then recovered--owing to a
miraculous apparition--and won.
Zenobia retired to Antioch. Her general, Zabda, deluded the inhabitants
with a false report of victory, and trailed through the streets a
captive whom he had dressed as Aurelian. But the Emperor was advancing,
and they fled during the night to Emesa, where they were still able to
put 70,000 men in the path of Aurelian. The second battle proved as
disastrous to Zenobia as the first, and it was decided to retire at
once on Palmyra. For a long time the city held Aurelian at bay, and
he magnanimously allowed that its successful resistance was due to
the sagacity of Zenobia. In the midst of the long siege he wrote to a
friend at Rome:
“I hear that it is said that I do not the work of a man in
triumphing over Zenobia. Those who blame me have no idea what
kind of a woman she is--how prudent in counsel, how assiduous
in arrangement, how severe with the troops, how liberal when it
is expedient, how stern when there is need for sternness. I may
venture to say that it was due to her that Odenathus put Sapor
to flight, and advanced as far as Ctesiphon. I can assure you
that she was held in such terror in the East and in Egypt that
the Arabs, the Saracens, and the Armenians were afraid to move.”
So difficult and protracted did the siege prove that Aurelian at length
wrote to her, offering to spare her life if she would surrender. The
answer seems to have been preserved in one of those libraries of
valuable documents at Rome, from which the writers of the “Historia
Augusta” obtained their material, as they tell us. It ran:
“Zenobia, Queen of the East, to Aurelius Augustus. No one has
ever yet made by letter such a request as you make. In matters
of war you must obtain what you want by deeds. You ask me to
surrender, as if you were unaware that Cleopatra preferred to
die rather than lose her dignity. We are expecting auxiliaries
from Persia, and the Saracens and Armenians are with us. The
robbers of Syria beat your army, Aurelian. What will happen
to you when our reinforcements come? You will assuredly have
to lay aside the pride with which, as if you were a universal
conqueror, you call on me to surrender.”
The expectation of reinforcements was sincere, but was destined to be
disappointed. Day after day Zenobia and her officers looked out over
the desert from their invincible walls, and descried no sign of the
deliverers. Persia was distracted by the death of Sapor; the Armenians
and the Saracens had been seduced from her by Aurelian. Food began to
fail, and the iron legions clung tenaciously to the little strip of
country and intercepted whatever aid came to her. Zenobia resolved to
go to Persia herself in quest of aid. Under cover of the night she
stole out of the town, and fled toward Persia on a dromedary.
Within a few days the anxious Palmyreans again saw their Queen--a
captive in the hands of the Roman soldiers. It is probable that she had
been betrayed. Aurelian, at all events, heard of her flight, and sent
a company of horse in pursuit. They reached the banks of the Euphrates
just as Zenobia and her attendants had entered a boat, and brought
her back to the camp. She was one hour too late to save her liberty,
or sacrifice her life. Palmyra sadly opened its gates, and Aurelian
transferred its priceless treasures and rare curiosities to his wagons.
Its chief officers and Zenobia he led away to Emesa, and put them on
trial for rebellion.
The reader of Gibbon will expect that we have now reached a point
where the virility of Zenobia faints and the eternal feminine reveals
itself. Gibbon records, indeed, the bold answer which Zenobia made to
Aurelian’s complaint of her infidelity to Rome; but he goes on to say
that, as the fierce demands of the soldiers for her death fell on her
ears, she tremblingly pleaded for life, and, with a cowardice that her
sex only could palliate, insisted that Longinus and the others had
seduced her from her duty. Happily, we have a clear right to quarrel
with the procedure of the great historian at this point. There are two
versions of the behaviour of Zenobia: that of the Latin historians,
Trebellius Pollio and Vopiscus in the “Historia Augusta,” and that of
the Greek historian Zosimus. The Latin writers, who lived at Rome in
the generation after Zenobia, make her reply boldly to Aurelian, and do
not say a word about her casting the blame on others. The Greek writer,
a much later compiler, represents her as, in the words of Gibbon,
“ignominiously purchasing life by the sacrifice of her fame and her
friends.” Gibbon affects to reconcile the two by making the woman’s
weakness follow upon the momentary show of courage.
To this method of reconciling contradictory and unequal authorities we
may justly demur. The much later version of Zosimus is not only less
entitled in itself to acceptance, but it is seriously enfeebled when
he goes on to make the wildly erroneous statement that Zenobia died on
the way to Rome, and her companions were sunk in the Bosphorus. We have
every right to follow the Latin historians. Zenobia was brought before
Aurelian, and the soldiers fiercely demanded that she should be put
to death. Exasperated as the Emperor was, he refused to slay a woman,
and asked her why she had dared to resist the majesty of Rome. “In
you,” she replied, “I recognize an Imperial majesty, because you have
vanquished me, but I saw none in Gallienus.” Her life was spared. What
Roman general could have resisted the wish to grace his triumph at Rome
with a greater than Cleopatra? The troops, with their vast treasures
and their captives, moved slowly homeward, after executing Longinus and
some others.
[Illustration: ZENOBIA
ENLARGED FROM THE COIN IN THE BERLIN MUSEUM]
In the triumph which Aurelian had so splendidly earned, and no less
splendidly celebrated, we catch our last certain glimpse of the Queen
of the East, one of the most notable women of all time. Along the
flower-strewn lane between the dense walls of citizens passes one of
the longest and grandest processions that ever led a victor to the
Capitol. An immense number of tamed elephants, lions, tigers, leopards,
bears, and other beasts move slowly and sullenly along, and eight
hundred pairs of gladiators give promise of the impending spectacles.
Then there are cars heavily laden with the gold, silver, and jewels
of Palmyra, the rare presents of Persia, the purples of India, and
the silks of China. Then there is the long and extraordinary train of
captives, representing the nineteen nations which Aurelian has subdued,
even women who have been taken, in male costume, in the sternest
battles. At last the melancholy line is closed by the lithe bronzed
figure, with brilliant black eyes and teeth like pearls, of the woman
whose beauty, genius, and daring have been on the lips of Rome for
several years. Clothed for the last time in the heavily-jewelled robes
of a queen--she had complained that she was not strong enough to walk
under the load of jewels--she drags along the golden chains which bind
her hands and feet, and a slave sustains the weight of the gold band
round her throat. Beside her, in scarlet cloak and Gallic trousers,
is Tetricus, Victoria’s last Emperor in Gaul. The whole Empire is
again subject to Rome. And before the car of the conqueror three empty
chariots are driven: one is the gold and silver car of Odenathus, one,
of gold studded with gems, is a present from Persia, and the third is
the car which Zenobia had made for her triumphant entry into Rome.
Never had Emperor looked from his car on so superb a triumph. In less
than a year Aurelian would be assassinated.
The last phase of Zenobia’s life is not quite clear. Zosimus is
certainly wrong in his reproduction of a story that she died, or took
her life, before she reached Rome. Still later and equally negligible
writers ventured to say that she became a Christian, and even that
Aurelian married one of her daughters. The “Historia Augusta,” which
we may follow, as it was written in Rome a generation later, tells us
that Aurelian gave her a villa near Hadrian’s palace at Tivoli, where
she spent the rest of her life in the education of her children and the
prosy duties of a Roman matron, and, we may conjecture, in looking back
with sad but proud recollection on the stirring romance of her career.
Bishop Eusebius observes briefly in his “Chronicle” that she lived to a
great age, and was held in the greatest regard at Rome.