Zenobia of Palmyra

Zenobia ruled a breakaway empire from Palmyra and was displayed in a Roman triumph in gold chains. Born around 240 in Palmyra, a wealthy caravan city in the Syrian desert, she claimed descent from Cleopatra and from the Seleucids, spoke Greek, Aramaic and Egyptian, and was described as learned and as a serious huntress. She married Odaenathus, the ruler of Palmyra, who had made himself indispensable to Rome by defeating the Persians after they captured the emperor Valerian in 260, and who held the title corrector of the whole east. Odaenathus and his eldest son were assassinated in 267 or 268, and Zenobia became regent for her young son Vaballathus. She then did what her husband had not. Exploiting the empire's disintegration under Gallienus and Claudius Gothicus, she took Egypt in 270 — cutting Rome's grain supply — and extended control over Syria, Palestine and much of Anatolia, at first in the emperor's name and then in her own. By 272 she and her son were issuing coinage with imperial titles and no reference to Rome. Her court attracted philosophers, including Cassius Longinus, and she was tolerant of the various religions of her territory. Aurelian marched east in 272, defeated her forces at Immae near Antioch and at Emesa, and besieged Palmyra. She fled towards Persia and was caught crossing the Euphrates. Aurelian executed her advisers and spared her. She walked in his triumph in 274, and the accounts of her end differ: a villa at Tivoli, or a hunger strike on the journey.

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