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 mam?a 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 enjoy234 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 cut235 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.236 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,237 and the son of the arab pillager of caravans received the purple from the soldiers.
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 m?sia 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 pr?torian 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 was238 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,239 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.
240 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 endeavour241 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 m?onius, 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 and242 herodes. m?onius 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 m?onius 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 c?sars. 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 postumus243 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.
244 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 army245 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 that246 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 assuredly247 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,”248 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.
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 rare249 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.
