Zenobia's Palmyrene Empire — Queen of the East
Zenobia ruled an empire from Palmyra for five years and was paraded through Rome in gold chains. Palmyra was an oasis city between the Roman and Persian empires that had grown enormously rich on the caravan trade and had been given unusual latitude by Rome. Her husband Odaenathus had been the empire's most useful client during the crisis of the 260s: he beat the Persians after Valerian's capture, was given extraordinary authority over the east, and was murdered with his eldest son in 267 or 268 in circumstances nobody has explained. Zenobia took power as regent for her young son Vaballathus, and then went considerably beyond it. Palmyrene forces took Egypt in 270, which controlled Rome's grain, and most of Anatolia, and she began issuing coinage with her son's image alongside the emperor's and then without it, and took the title Augusta. Her court attracted Greek philosophers, and she is credited with a religious tolerance that included the Jewish community and a bishop of doubtful orthodoxy. Aurelian, having stabilised the west, came east in 271 and beat her armies at Immae and Emesa by using light cavalry to draw the Palmyrene heavy horse into a pursuit and then turning on them exhausted. Palmyra was besieged and taken in 272, and destroyed after a second revolt. Zenobia was captured crossing the Euphrates, appeared in Aurelian's triumph, and by one account was given a villa at Tivoli and married a senator. The ruins were among the best preserved in the Roman world until 2015, when Islamic State destroyed the temples of Bel and Baalshamin and the monumental arch, and murdered the eighty-two-year-old archaeologist who had run the site for forty years.
- Year: 270 CE
- Category: Political
