Chapter IX (4)

After having set forth the new state organisation, with which the sinking Rome was soon to contend, we resume the thread of our narrative. Antoninus, son and successor of Severus, not a warrior and statesman like his father, but a dissolute caricature of both, must have had the design--so far as in the case of such personages we can speak of design at all--to bring the East entirely into the Roman power. It was not difficult to place the princes of Osrhoene and of Armenia, after they had been summoned to the imperial court, under arrest, and to declare their fiefs forfeited. But on the arrival of the news a revolt broke out in Armenia. The Arsacid prince Tiridates was proclaimed king, and invoked the protection of the Parthians. Thereupon Antoninus put himself at the head of a large military force, and appeared in the East in the year 216, to put down the Armenians, and in case of need also the Parthians. Tiridates himself at once gave up the cause as lost, although the division sent to Armenia subsequently encountered vehement resistance there; and he fled to the Parthians. The Romans demanded his surrender. The Parthians were not inclined on his account to enter into a war, the more especially as just then the two sons of king Vologasus V., Vologasus VI. and Artabanus, were in bitter feud over the succession to the throne. The former yielded when the Roman demand was imperiously repeated, and delivered up Tiridates. Thereupon the emperor desired from Artabanus, who had meanwhile obtained recognition, the hand of his daughter for the express object of thus obtaining the kingdom by marriage, and of bringing East and West under one rule. The rejection of this wild proposal[76] was the signal for war; the Romans declared it, and crossed the Tigris. The Parthians were unprepared; without encountering resistance the Romans burnt down the towns and villages in Adiabene, and ruthlessly destroyed even the old royal tombs at Arbela.[77] But Artabanus made the utmost exertions for the next campaign, and put into the field a powerful force in the spring of 217. Antoninus, who had spent the winter in Edessa, was assassinated by his officers just as he was setting out for this second campaign. His successor Macrinus, unconfirmed in the government and held in little repute, at the head, moreover, of an army defective in discipline and tone and shaken by the murder of the emperor, would gladly have rid himself of a war wantonly instigated and assuming very serious proportions. He sent the prisoners back to the Parthian king, and threw the blame of the outrages committed on his predecessor. But Artabanus was not content with this; he demanded compensation for all the devastation committed, and the evacuation of Mesopotamia. Thus matters came to a battle at Nisibis, in which the Romans had the worst. Nevertheless the Parthians, partly because their levy seemed as though it would break up, perhaps also under the influence of Roman money, granted peace (218) on comparatively favourable terms. Rome paid a considerable war compensation (50,000,000 denarii), but retained Mesopotamia. Armenia remained with Tiridates, but the latter took it as in dependency on the Romans. In Osrhoene also the old princely house was reinstated.

[Sidenote: King Ardashir.]

This was the last treaty of peace which the Arsacid dynasty concluded with Rome. Almost immediately afterwards, and perhaps partly in consequence of this bargain, which certainly, as things stood, might be looked upon by the Orientals as an abandonment by their own government of the victories achieved, the insurrection began, which converted the state of the Parthians into a state of the Persians. Its leader, king Ardashir or Artaxares (A.D. 224-241) strove for several years with the adherents of the old dynasty before he attained full success;[78] after three great battles, in the last of which king Artabanus fell, he was master in the Parthian empire proper, and could march into the Mesopotamian desert to subdue the Arabs of Hatra and thence to advance against the Roman Mesopotamia. But the brave and independent Arabs defended themselves now against the Persians as formerly against the Roman invasion, in their huge walls with good success; and Artaxares found himself led to operate in the first instance against Media and Armenia, where the Arsacids still maintained themselves, and the sons of Artabanus had found a refuge. It was not till about the year 230 that he turned against the Romans, and not merely declared war against them, but demanded back all the provinces which had formerly belonged to the kingdom of his predecessors, Darius and Xerxes--in other words, the cession of all Asia. To emphasise his threatening words, he led a mighty army over the Euphrates; Mesopotamia was occupied and Nisibis besieged; the enemy’s cavalry appeared in Cappadocia and in Syria.

[Sidenote: Severus Alexander.]

The Roman throne was then occupied by Severus Alexander, a ruler in whom nothing was warlike but the name, and for whom in reality his mother Mamaea conducted the government. Urgent, almost humble proposals of peace on the part of the Roman government remained without effect; nothing was left but the employment of arms. The masses of the Roman army gathered together from all the empire were divided; the left wing took the direction of Armenia and Media, the right that of Mesene at the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris, perhaps in the calculation that they might in the former as in the latter quarter have the support of the adherents of the Arsacids; the main army went to Mesopotamia. The troops were numerous enough, but without discipline and tone; a Roman officer of high position at this time himself testifies that they were pampered and insubordinate, refused to fight, killed their officers, and deserted in crowds. The main force did not get beyond the Euphrates,[79] for his mother represented to the emperor that it was not his business to fight for his subjects, but theirs to fight for him. The right wing, assailed in the level country by the Persian main force and abandoned by the emperor, was cut up. Thereupon, when the emperor issued orders to the wing which had pushed forward towards Media to draw back, the latter also suffered severely in the winter retreat through Armenia. If the matter went no further than this sorry return of the great Oriental army to Antioch, if no complete disaster occurred, and even Mesopotamia remained in Roman power, this appears due, not to the merit of the Roman troops or their leaders but to the fact that the Persian levy was weary of the conflict and went home.[80] But they went not for long, the more especially as soon after, upon the murder of the last offshoot of the dynasty of Severus, the several army-commanders and the government in Rome began to fight about the occupation of the Roman throne, and consequently were at one in their concern for the affairs of external foes. Under Maximinus (235-238) the Roman Mesopotamia fell into the power of Ardashir, and the Persians once more prepared to cross the Euphrates.[81]

[Sidenote: The Persian war of Gordian.]

After the internal troubles were in some measure pacified, and Gordian III., almost still a boy, under the protection of the commandant of Rome and soon of his father-in-law Furius Timesitheus, bore undisputed sway in the whole empire, war was solemnly declared against the Persians, and in the year 242 a great Roman army advanced under the personal conduct of the emperor, or rather of his father-in-law, into Mesopotamia. It had complete success; Carrhae was recovered, at Resaina between Carrhae and Nisibis the army of the Persian king Shahpuhr or Sapor (reigning 241-272), who shortly before had followed his father Ardashir, was routed, and in consequence of this victory Nisibis was occupied. All Mesopotamia was reconquered; it was resolved to march back to the Euphrates, and thence down the stream against the enemy’s capital Ctesiphon. Unhappily Timesitheus died, and his successor, Marcus Julius Philippus, a native of Arabia from the Trachonitis, used the opportunity to set aside the young ruler. When the army had accomplished the difficult march through the valley of the Chaboras towards the Euphrates, the soldiers in Circesium, at the confluence of the Chaboras with the Euphrates, did not find--in consequence, it is alleged, of arrangements made by Philippus--the provisions and stores which they had expected, and laid the blame of this on the emperor. Nevertheless the march in the direction of Ctesiphon was begun, but at the very first station, near Zaitha (somewhat below Mejadîn), a number of insurgent guards killed the emperor (in the spring or summer of 244), and proclaimed their commandant, Philippus, as Augustus in his stead. The new ruler did what the soldiers or at least the guardsmen desired, and not merely gave up the intended expedition against Ctesiphon, but led the troops at once back to Italy. He purchased the permission to do so from the conquered enemy by the cession of Mesopotamia and Armenia, and so of the Euphrates frontier. But this conclusion of peace excited such indignation that the emperor did not venture to put it in execution, and allowed the garrisons to remain in the ceded provinces.[82] The fact that the Persians, at least provisionally, acquiesced in this, gives the measure of what they were then able to do. It was not the Orientals, but the Goths, the pestilence that raged for fifteen years, and the dissensions of the corps-leaders quarrelling with one another for the crown, that broke the last strength of the empire.

[Sidenote: Palmyra.]

At this point, when the Roman East in its struggle with the Persian is left to its own resources, it will be appropriate to make mention of a remarkable state, which, created by and for the desert-traffic, now for a short time takes up a leading part in political history. The oasis of Palmyra, in the native language Tadmor, lies half-way between Damascus and the Euphrates. It is of importance solely as intermediate station between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean; this significance it was late in acquiring, and early lost again, so that the flourishing time of Palmyra coincides nearly with the period which we are here describing. As to the rise of the town there is an utter absence of tradition.[83] It is mentioned first on occasion of the abode of Antonius in Syria in the year 713 {41 B.C.}, when he made a vain attempt to possess himself of its riches; the documents found there--the oldest dated Palmyrene inscription is of the year 745 {9 B.C.}--hardly reach much further back. It is not improbable that its flourishing was connected with the establishment of the Romans in the Syrian coast-region. So long as the Nabataeans and the towns of Osrhoene were not directly Roman, the Romans had an interest in providing another direct communication with the Euphrates, and this thereupon led necessarily by way of Palmyra. Palmyra was not a Roman foundation; Antonius took as the occasion for that predatory expedition the neutrality of the merchants who were the medium of traffic between the two great states, and the Roman horsemen turned back, without having performed their work, before the chain of archers which the Palmyrenes opposed to the attack. But already in the first imperial period the city must have been reckoned as belonging to the empire, because the tax-ordinances of Germanicus and of Corbulo issued for Syria applied also for Palmyra; in an inscription of the year 80 we meet with a Claudian _phyle_ there; from Hadrian’s time the city calls itself Hadriana Palmyra, and in the third century it even designates itself a colony.

[Sidenote: Military independence of Palmyra.]

The subjection of the Palmyrenes to the empire was, however, of a different nature to the ordinary one, and similar in some measure to the client-relation of the dependent kingdoms. Even in Vespasian’s time Palmyra is called an intermediate region between the two great powers, and in every collision between the Romans and Parthians the question was asked, what policy the Palmyrenes would pursue. We must seek the key to its distinctive position in the relations of the frontier and the arrangements made for frontier-protection. The Syrian troops, so far as they were stationed on the Euphrates itself, had their chief position at Zeugma, opposite to Biredjik, at the great passage of the Euphrates. Further down the stream, between the immediately Roman and the Parthian territory was interposed that of Palmyra, which reached to the Euphrates and included the next important place of crossing at Sura opposite to the Mesopotamian town Nicephorium (later Callinicon, now er-Ragga). It is more than probable that the guarding of this important border-fortress as well as the securing of the desert-road between the Euphrates and Palmyra, and also perhaps of a portion of the road from Palmyra to Damascus, was committed to the community of Palmyra, and that it was thus entitled and bound to make the military arrangements necessary for this far from slight task.[84] Subsequently doubtless the imperial troops were brought up closer to Palmyra, and one of the Syrian legions was moved to Danava between Palmyra and Damascus, and the Arabian legion to Bostra; after Severus united Mesopotamia with the empire, even here both banks of the Euphrates were in the Roman power, and the Roman territory on the Euphrates ended no longer at Sura but at Circesium, at the confluence of the Chaboras with the Euphrates above Mejadîn. Then Mesopotamia also was strongly occupied with imperial troops. But the Mesopotamian legions lay on the great road in the north near Resaina and Nisibis, and even the Syrian and Arabian troops did not supersede the need for the co-operation of the Palmyrenes. Even the protection of Circesium and of this part of the bank of the Euphrates may have been entrusted to the Palmyrenes. It was not till after the decline of Palmyra, and perhaps in compensation for it, that Circesium[85] was made by Diocletian a strong fortress, which thenceforth was here the basis of frontier-defence.

[Sidenote: Administrative independence of Palmyra.]

The traces of this distinctive position of Palmyra are demonstrable also in its institutions. The absence of the emperor’s name on the Palmyrene coins is probably to be explained not from it, but from the fact that the community issued almost nothing but small money. But the treatment of the language speaks clearly. From the rule elsewhere followed almost without exception by the Romans--of allowing in their immediate territory only the use of the two imperial languages--Palmyra was excepted. Here that language, which in the rest of Syria and not less after the exile in Judaea was the usual medium of private intercourse, but was restricted to the latter, maintained its ground in public use, so long as the city existed at all. Essential differences cannot be shown between the Palmyrene Syriac and that of the other regions just named; the proper names, having not seldom an Arabic or Jewish, or even Persian form, show the striking mixture of peoples, and numerous words borrowed from Greek or Latin show the influence of the Occidentals. It becomes subsequently a rule to append to the Syrian text a Greek one, which in a decree of the Palmyrene common-council of the year 137 is placed after the Palmyrene, but afterwards usually precedes it; but mere Greek inscriptions of native Palmyrenes are rare exceptions. Even in votive inscriptions which Palmyrenes set up to their native gods in Rome,[86] and in tombs of Palmyrene soldiers that died in Africa or Britain, the Palmyrene rendering is added. So too in Palmyra--while the Roman year was made the basis of dating as in the rest of the empire--the names of the months were not the Macedonian officially received in Roman Syria, but those which were current in it in common intercourse at least among the Jews, and were in use, moreover, among the Aramaean tribes living under Assyrian and subsequently Persian rule.[87]

[Sidenote: Palmyrene magistrates.]

The municipal organisation was moulded in the main after the pattern of the Greek municipality of the Roman empire; the designations for magistrates and council[88] and even those of the colony are in the Palmyrene texts retained for the most part from the imperial languages. But in administration the district retained a greater independence than is elsewhere assigned to urban communities. Alongside of the civic officials we find, at least in the third century, the city of Palmyra with its territory under a separate “headman” of senatorial rank and Roman appointment, but chosen from the family of most repute in the place; Septimius Hairanes, son of Odaenathus, is substantially a prince of the Palmyrenes,[89] who was doubtless not otherwise dependent on the legate of Syria than were the client-princes on the neighbouring imperial governors generally. A few years later we meet with his son,[90] Septimius Odaenathus, in the like position--indeed even raised in rank--of hereditary prince.[91] Similarly, Palmyra formed a customs-district apart, in which the customs were leased on account, not of the state, but of the community.[92]

[Sidenote: Commercial position of Palmyra.]

The importance of Palmyra depended on the caravan-traffic. The heads of the caravans (συνοδιάρχαι), which went from Palmyra to the great entrepôts on the Euphrates, to Vologasias, the already mentioned Parthian foundation not far from the site of the ancient Babylon, and to Forath or Charax Spasinu, twin towns at its mouth, close on the Persian Gulf, appear in the inscriptions as the most respected city-burgesses,[93] and fill not merely the magistracies of their home, but in part also imperial offices; the great traders (ἀρχέμποροι) and the guild of workers in gold and silver testify to the importance of the city for trade and manufactures, and not less is its prosperity attested by the still standing temples of the city and the long colonnades of the city halls, as well as the massy and richly decorated tombs. The climate is little favourable to agriculture--the place lies near to the northern limit of the date palm, and does not derive its Greek name from it--but there are found in the environs the remains of great subterranean aqueducts and huge water-reservoirs artificially constructed of square blocks, with the help of which the ground, now destitute of all vegetation, must once upon a time have artificially developed a rich culture. This riches, this national idiosyncrasy not quite set aside even under Roman rule, and this administrative independence, explain in some measure the part of Palmyra about the middle of the third century in the great crisis, to the presentation of which we now return.

[Sidenote: Capture of the emperor Valerian.]

After the emperor Decius had fallen in the year 251 when fighting against the Goths in Europe, the government of the empire, if at that time there was still an empire and a government at all, left the East entirely to its fate. While the pirates from the Black Sea ravaged the coasts far and wide and even the interior, the Persian king Sapor again assumed the aggressive. While his father had been content with calling himself lord of Iran, he first designated himself--as did the succeeding rulers after his example--the great-king of Iran and non-Iran (p. 83, note), and thereby laid down, as it were, the programme of his policy of conquest. In the year 252 or 253 he occupied Armenia, or it submitted to him voluntarily, beyond doubt carried likewise away by that resuscitation of the old Persian faith and Persian habits; the legitimate king Tiridates sought shelter with the Romans, the other members of the royal house placed themselves under the banners of the Persian.[94] After Armenia thus had become Persian, the hosts of the Orientals overran Mesopotamia, Syria, and Cappadocia; they laid waste the level country far and wide, but the inhabitants of the larger towns, first of all the brave Edessenes, repelled the attack of enemies little equipped for besieging. In the West, meanwhile at least, a recognised government had been set up. The emperor Publius Licinius Valerianus, an honest and well-disposed ruler, but not resolute in character or equal to dealing with difficulties, appeared at length in the East and resorted to Antioch. Thence he went to Cappadocia, which the Persian roving hordes evacuated. But the plague decimated his army, and he delayed long to take up the decisive struggle in Mesopotamia. At length he resolved to bring help to the sorely pressed Edessa, and crossed the Euphrates with his forces. There, not far from Edessa, occurred the disaster which had nearly the same significance for the Roman East as the victory of the Goths at the mouth of the Danube and the fall of Decius--the capture of the emperor Valerianus by the Persians (end of 259 or beginning of 260).[95] As to the more precise circumstances the accounts are conflicting. According to one version, when he was attempting with a weak band to reach Edessa, he was surrounded and captured by the far superior Persians. According to another, he, although defeated, reached the beleaguered town, but, as he brought no sufficient help and the provisions came to an end only the more rapidly, he dreaded the outbreak of a military insurrection, and therefore delivered himself voluntarily into the hands of the enemy. According to a third, he, reduced to extremities, entered into negotiations with Sapor; when the Persian king declined to treat with envoys, he appeared personally in the enemy’s camp, and was perfidiously made a prisoner.

[Sidenote: The East without an emperor.]

Whichever of these narratives may come nearest to the truth, the emperor died in the captivity of the enemy,[96] and the consequence of this disaster was the forfeiture of the East to the Persians. Above all Antioch, the largest and richest city of the East, fell for the first time since it was Roman into the power of the public foe, and in good part through the fault of its own citizens. Mareades, an Antiochene of rank, whom the council had expelled for the embezzlement of public monies, brought the Persian army to his native town; whether it be a fable that the citizens were surprised in the theatre itself by the advancing foes, there is no doubt that they not merely offered no resistance, but that a great part of the lower population, partly in consideration of Mareades, partly in the hope of anarchy and pillage, saw with pleasure the entrance of the Persians. Thus the city with all its treasures became the prey of the enemy, and fearful ravages were committed in it; Mareades indeed also was--we know not why--condemned by king Sapor to perish by fire.[97] Besides numerous smaller places, the capitals of Cilicia and Cappadocia--Tarsus and Caesarea, the latter, it is stated, a town of 400,000 inhabitants--suffered the same fate. Endless trains of captives, who were led like cattle once a day to the watering, covered the desert-routes of the East. On the return home the Persians, it is alleged, in order the more rapidly to cross a ravine, filled it up with the bodies of the captives whom they brought with them. It is more credible that the great “imperial dam” (Bend-i-Kaiser) at Sostra (Shuster) in Susiana, by which still at the present day the water of the Pasitigris is conveyed to the higher-lying regions, was built by these captives; as indeed the emperor Nero’s architects had helped to build the capital of Armenia, and generally in this domain the Occidentals always maintained their superiority. The Persians nowhere encountered resistance from the empire; but Edessa still held out, and Caesarea had bravely defended itself, and had only fallen by treachery. The local resistance gradually passed beyond a mere defensive behind the walls of towns, and the breaking up of the Persian hosts, brought about by the wide extent of the conquered territory, was favourable to the bold partisan. A self-appointed Roman leader, Callistus,[98] succeeded in a happy _coup de main_; with the vessels which he had brought together in the ports of Cilicia he sailed for Pompeiopolis--which the Persians were just besieging, while they at the same time laid waste Lycaonia,--killed several thousand men, and possessed himself of the royal harem. This induced the king, under pretext of celebrating a festival that might not be put off, to go home at once in such haste that, in order not to be detained, he purchased from the Edessenes free passage through their territory in return for all the Roman gold money which he had captured as booty. Odaenathus, prince of Palmyra, inflicted considerable losses on the bands returning home from Antioch before they crossed the Euphrates. But hardly was the most urgent danger from the Persians obviated, when two of the most noted among the army leaders of the East, left to themselves, Fulvius Macrianus, the officer who administered the chest and the depot of the army in Samosata,[99] and the Callistus just mentioned, renounced allegiance to the son and co-regent and now sole ruler Gallienus--for whom, it is true, the East and the Persians were non-existent--and, themselves refusing to accept the purple, proclaimed the two sons of the former, Fulvius Macrianus and Fulvius Quietus, emperors (261). This step taken by the two distinguished generals had the effect of obtaining recognition for the two young emperors in Egypt and in all the East, with the exception of Palmyra, the prince of which took the side of Gallienus. One of them, Macrianus, went off with his father to the West, in order to install this new government also there. But soon fortune turned; in Illyricum Macrianus lost a battle and his life, not against Gallienus, but against another pretender. Odaenathus turned against the brother who remained behind in Syria; at Hemesa, where the armies met, the soldiers of Quietus replied to the summons to surrender that they would rather submit to anything than deliver themselves into the hands of a barbarian. Nevertheless Callistus, the general of Quietus, betrayed his master to the Palmyrene,[100] and thus ended also his short government.

[Sidenote: Government of Odaenathus in the East.]

Therewith Palmyra stepped into the first place in the East. Gallienus, more than sufficiently occupied by the barbarians of the West and the military insurrections everywhere breaking out there, gave to the prince of Palmyra, who alone had preserved fidelity to him in the crisis just mentioned, an exceptional position without a parallel, but under the prevailing circumstances readily intelligible; he, as hereditary prince, or, as he was now called, king of Palmyra, became, not indeed joint ruler, but independent lieutenant of the emperor for the East.[101] The local administration of Palmyra was conducted under him by another Palmyrene, at the same time as imperial procurator and as his deputy.[102] Therewith the whole imperial power, so far as it still subsisted at all in the East, lay in the hand of the “barbarian,” and the latter with his Palmyrenes, who were strengthened by the remains of the Roman army corps and the levy of the land, re-established the sway of Rome alike rapidly and brilliantly. Asia and Syria were already evacuated by the enemy. Odaenathus crossed the Euphrates, relieved at length the brave Edessenes, and retook from the Persians the conquered towns Nisibis and Carrhae (264). Probably Armenia also was at that time brought back under Roman allegiance.[103] Then he took--for the first time since Gordianus--the offensive against the Persians, and marched on Ctesiphon. In two different campaigns the capital of the Persian kingdom was invested by him, and the neighbouring region laid waste, and there was a successful battle with the Persians under its walls.[104] Even the Goths, whose predatory raids extended into the interior, retired when he set out for Cappadocia. A development of power of this sort was a blessing for the hard-pressed empire, and at the same time a serious danger. Odaenathus no doubt observed all due formalities towards his Roman lord-paramount, and sent the captured officers of the enemy and the articles of booty to Rome for the emperor, who did not disdain to triumph over them; but in fact the East under Odaenathus was not much less independent than the West under Postumus, and we can easily understand how the officers favourably disposed towards Rome made opposition to the Palmyrene vice-emperor,[105] and on the one hand there was talk of attempts of Odaenathus to attach himself to the Persians, which were alleged to have broken down only through Sapor’s arrogance,[106] while on the other hand the assassination of Odaenathus at Hemesa in 266-7 was referred to instigation of the Roman government.[107] The real murderer was a brother’s son of Odaenathus, and there are no proofs of the participation of the government. At any rate the crime made no change in the position of affairs.

[Sidenote: Government of Zenobia.]

The wife of the deceased, the queen Bat Zabbai, or in Greek, Zenobia, a beautiful and sagacious woman of masculine energy,[108] in virtue of the hereditary right to the principate claimed for the son of herself and Odaenathus, still in boyhood, Vaballathus or Athenodorus[109]--the elder, Herodes, had perished with his father--the position of the deceased, and in fact carried her point as well in Rome as in the East: the regnal years of the son are reckoned from the death of the father. For the son, not capable of government, the mother took part in counsel and action,[110] and she did not restrict herself to preserving the state of possession, but on the contrary her courage or her arrogance aspired to mastery over the whole imperial domain of the Greek tongue. In the command over the East, which was committed to Odaenathus and inherited from him by his son, the supreme authority over Asia Minor and Egypt may doubtless have been included; but _de facto_ Odaenathus had in his power only Syria and Arabia, and possibly Armenia, Cilicia, and Cappadocia. Now an influential Egyptian, Timagenes, summoned the queen to occupy Egypt; accordingly she despatched her chief general Zabdas with an army of, it is alleged, 70,000 men to the Nile. The land resisted with energy; but the Palmyrenes defeated the Egyptian levy and possessed themselves of Egypt. A Roman admiral Probus attempted to dislodge them again, and even vanquished them, so that they set out for Syria; but, when he attempted to bar their way at the Egyptian Babylon not far from Memphis, he was defeated by the better local knowledge of the Palmyrene general Timagenes, and he put himself to death.[111] When about the beginning of the year 270, after the death of the emperor Claudius, Aurelian came in his stead, the Palmyrenes bore sway over Alexandria. In Asia Minor too they made preparations to establish themselves; their garrisons were pushed forward as far as Ancyra in Galatia, and even in Chalcedon opposite Byzantium they had attempted to assert the rule of their queen. All this happened without the Palmyrenes renouncing the Roman government, nay probably on the footing that the control of the East committed by the Roman government to the prince of Palmyra was realised in this way, and they taxed the Roman officers, who resisted the extension of the Palmyrene rule, with rebellion against the imperial orders; the coins struck in Alexandria name Aurelianus and Vaballathus side by side, and give the title of Augustus only to the former. In substance, no doubt, the East here detached itself from the empire, and the latter was divided into two in the execution of an ordinance wrung from the wretched Gallienus by necessity.

[Sidenote: Aurelian against the Palmyrenes.]

The vigorous and prudent emperor, to whom the dominion now had fallen, broke at once with the Palmyrene co-ordinate government, which then could not but have and had as its consequence, that Vaballathus himself was proclaimed by his people as emperor. Egypt was already, at the close of the year 270, brought back to the empire after hard struggles by the brave general Probus, afterwards the successor of Aurelian.[112] It is true that the second city of the empire, Alexandria, paid for this victory almost with its existence, as will be set forth in the following section. More difficult was the reduction of the remote Syrian oasis. All other Oriental wars of the imperial period had chiefly been waged by imperial troops having their home in the East; here, where the West had once more to subdue the revolted East, there fought once more, as in the time of the free republic, Occidentals against Orientals,[113] the soldiers of the Rhine and of the Danube with those of the Syrian desert. The mighty expedition began, apparently towards the close of the year 271; without encountering resistance the Roman army arrived at the frontier of Cappadocia; here the town of Tyana, which barred the Cilician passes, gave serious opposition. After it had fallen, and Aurelian, by gentle treatment of the inhabitants, had smoothed his way to further successes, he crossed the Taurus, and, passing through Cilicia, arrived in Syria. If Zenobia, as is not to be doubted, had reckoned on active support from the side of the Persian king, she found herself deceived. The aged king Shapur did not interfere in this war, and the mistress of the Roman East continued to be left to her own military resources, of which perhaps even a portion took the side of the legitimate Augustus. At Antioch the Palmyrene chief force under the general Zabdas stopped the emperor’s way; Zenobia herself was present. A successful combat against the superior Palmyrene cavalry on the Orontes delivered into the hands of Aurelian the town, which not less than Tyana received full pardon--he justly recognised that the subjects of the empire were hardly to be blamed, when they had submitted to the Palmyrene prince appointed as commander in chief by the Roman government itself. The Palmyrenes, after having engaged in a conflict on their retreat at Daphne, the suburb of Antioch, marched off, and struck into the great route which leads from the capital of Syria to Hemesa and thence through the desert to Palmyra.

[Sidenote: Battle at Hemesa.]

Aurelian summoned the queen to submit, pointing to the notable losses endured in the conflicts on the Orontes. These were Romans only, answered the queen; the Orientals did not yet admit that they were conquered. At Hemesa[114] she took her stand for the decisive battle. It was long and bloody; the Roman cavalry gave way and broke up in flight; but the legions decided, and victory remained with the Romans. The march was more difficult than the conflict. The distance from Hemesa to Palmyra amounts in a direct line to seventy miles, and, although at that epoch of highly developed Syrian civilisation the region was not waste in the same degree as at present, the march of Aurelian still remains a considerable feat, especially as the light horsemen of the enemy swarmed round the Roman army on all sides. Aurelian, however, reached his goal, and began the siege of the strong and well-provisioned city; more difficult than the siege itself was the bringing up of provisions for the besieging army. At length the courage of the princess sank, and she escaped from the city to seek aid from the Persians. Fortune still further helped the emperor. The pursuing Roman cavalry took her captive with her son, just when she had arrived at the Euphrates and was about to embark in the rescuing boat; and the town, discouraged by her flight, capitulated (272). Aurelian granted here too, as in all this campaign, full pardon to the subdued burgesses. But a stern punishment was decreed over the queen and her functionaries and officers. Zenobia, after she had for years borne rule with masculine energy, did not now disdain to invoke a woman’s privileges, and to throw the responsibility on her advisers, of whom not a few, including the celebrated scholar, Cassius Longinus, perished under the axe of the executioner. She herself might not be wanting from the triumphal procession of the emperor, and she did not take the course of Cleopatra, but marched in golden chains, as a spectacle to the Roman multitude, before the chariot of the victor to the Roman capitol. But before Aurelian could celebrate his victory he had to repeat it.

[Sidenote: Destruction of Palmyra.]

A few months after the surrender the Palmyrenes once more rose, killed the small Roman garrison serving there, and proclaimed one Antiochus[115] as ruler, while they at the same time attempted to induce the governor of Mesopotamia, Marcellinus, to revolt. The news reached the emperor when he had just crossed the Hellespont. He returned at once, and stood, earlier than friend or foe had anticipated, once more before the walls of the insurgent city. The rebels had not been prepared for this; there was this time no resistance, but also no mercy. Palmyra was destroyed, the commonwealth dissolved, the walls razed, the ornaments of the glorious temple of the sun transferred to the temple which, in memory of this victory, the emperor built to the sun-god of the East in Rome; only the forsaken halls and walls remained, as they still stand in part at the present day. This occurred in the year 273.[116] The flourishing of Palmyra was artificial, produced by the routes assigned to traffic and the great public buildings dependent on it. Now the government withdrew its hand from the unhappy city. Traffic sought and found other paths; as Mesopotamia was then viewed as a Roman province and soon came again to the empire, and the territory of the Nabataeans as far as the port of Aelana was in Roman hands, this intermediate station might be dispensed with, and the traffic may have betaken itself instead to Bostra or Beroea (Aleppo). The short meteor-like splendour of Palmyra and its princes was immediately followed by the desolation and silence which, from that time down to the present day, enwrap the miserable desert-village and the ruins of its colonnades.

[Sidenote: Persian war of Carus.]

The ephemeral kingdom of Palmyra was in its origin as in its fall closely bound up with the relations of the Romans to the non-Roman East, but not less a part of the general history of the empire. For, like the western empire of Postumus, the eastern empire of Zenobia was one of those masses into which the mighty whole seemed then about to resolve itself. If during its subsistence its leaders endeavoured earnestly to set limits to the onset of the Persians, and indeed the development of its power was dependent on that very fact, not merely did it in its collapse seek deliverance from those same Persians, but probably in consequence of the revolt of Zenobia Armenia and Mesopotamia were lost to the Romans, and after the subjugation of Palmyra the Euphrates again for a time formed the frontier. The queen, when she arrived at it, hoped to find a reception among the Persians; and Aurelian omitted to lead the legions over it, seeing that Gaul, along with Spain and Britain, still at that time refused to recognise the government. He and his successor Probus were not able to take up this struggle. But when in the year 282, after the premature end of the latter, the troops proclaimed the commander next in rank, Marcus Aurelius Carus, as emperor, it was the first saying of the new ruler that the Persians should remember this choice, and he kept it. Immediately he advanced with the army into Armenia and re-established the earlier order there. At the frontier of the land he was met by Persian envoys, who declared themselves ready to grant all that was reasonable;[117] but they were hardly listened to, and the march went on incessantly. Mesopotamia too became once more Roman, and the Parthian residential cities Seleucia and Ctesiphon were again occupied by the Romans without encountering lengthened resistance--to which the war between brothers then raging in the Persian empire contributed its part.[118] The emperor had just crossed the Tigris, and was on the point of penetrating into the heart of the enemy’s country, when he met his death by violence, presumably by the hand of an assassin, and thereby the campaign also met its end. But his successor obtained in peace the cession of Armenia and Mesopotamia;[119] although Carus wore the purple little more than a year, he re-established the imperial frontier of Severus.

[Sidenote: Persian war under Diocletian.]

Some years afterwards (293) a new ruler, Narseh, son of king Shapur, ascended the throne of Ctesiphon, and declared war on the Romans in the year 296 for the possession of Mesopotamia and Armenia.[120] Diocletian, who then had the supreme conduct of the empire generally, and of the East in particular, entrusted the management of the war to his imperial colleague Galerius Maximianus, a rough but brave general. The beginning was unfavourable. The Persians invaded Mesopotamia and reached as far as Carrhae; the Caesar led against them the Syrian legions over the Euphrates at Nicephorium; between these two positions the armies encountered each other, and the far weaker Roman force gave way. It was a hard blow, and the young general had to submit to severe reproaches, but he did not despair. For the next campaign reinforcements were brought up from the whole empire, and both rulers personally took the field; Diocletian took his position in Mesopotamia with the chief force, while Galerius, reinforced by the flower of the Illyrian troops that had in the meantime come up, met, with a force of 25,000 men, the enemy in Armenia, and inflicted on him a decisive defeat. The camp and the treasure, nay, even the harem, of the great-king fell into the hands of the warriors, and with difficulty Narseh himself escaped from capture. In order to recover the women and the children the king declared himself ready to conclude peace on any terms; his envoy Apharban conjured the Romans to spare the Persians, saying that the two empires, the Roman and the Parthian, were, as it were, the two eyes of the world, and neither could dispense with the other. It would have lain in the power of the Romans to add one more to their Oriental provinces; the prudent ruler contented himself with regulating the state of possession in the north-east. Mesopotamia remained, as a matter of course, in the Roman possession; the important commercial intercourse with the neighbouring foreign land was placed under strict state-control and essentially directed to the strong city of Nisibis, the basis of the Roman frontier-guard in eastern Mesopotamia. The Tigris was recognised as boundary of the direct Roman rule, to such an extent, however, that the whole of southern Armenia as far as the lake Thospitis (lake of Van) and the Euphrates, and so the whole upper valley of the Tigris, should belong to the Roman empire. This region lying in front of Mesopotamia did not become a province proper, but was administered after the previous fashion as the Roman satrapy of Sophene. Some decades later the strong fortress of Amida (Diarbekir) was constructed here, thenceforth the chief stronghold of the Romans in the region of the upper Tigris. At the same time the frontier between Armenia and Media was regulated afresh, and the supremacy of Rome over that land, as over Iberia, was once more confirmed. The peace did not impose important cessions of territory on the conquered, but it established a frontier favourable to the Romans, which for a considerable time served in these much contested regions as a demarcation of the two empires.[121] The policy of Trajan thereby obtained its complete accomplishment; at all events the centre of gravity of the Roman rule shifted itself just at this time from the West to the East.