In the turbulent days of the late third century CE, in the year 268, a frontier region of the Roman empire, Palmyra, crucial in the titanic Romano-Sassanid conflicts but otherwise mostly overlooked by the imperial centre, rose to prominence under the rule of a local noblewoman, Bat-Zabbai, or, more commonly known as Septimia Zenobia. In a matter of years, the female ruler of Palmyra led her modest kingdom, hitherto a mere client-state of Rome, in a lightning conquest of the Roman East. Syria, Egypt, half of Anatolia, and parts of Arabia all fell under her sway whilst the rest of the empire was in disarray following the deaths of Gallienus and Claudius II, divided between rival pretender-generals, such as Tetricus in Gaul and Aurelian in Pannonia. However, a mere four years later, Zenobia, who had declared herself augusta, was decisively defeated by the latter, and her erstwhile empire returned to imperial control.
Her rise and fall, so unprecedented, so spectacular and so controversial, have ensured that, though she ruled for a very short period, she was a much discussed figure and symbol, not least during her rule, but certainly for many centuries afterwards. The intentions behind her entry into the chaotic fray of the ongoing Roman civil war, her ambitions, feature as the cornerstone of the interpretations of Zenobia the queen by both her contemporaries and later observers and historians. Even within the Historia Augusta, for example, our main, though rather problematic, as we will see, source on the Queen, there exist several Zenobias: a brave and manly ruler meant to highlight the faults of the disgraced Gallienus, and, at the same time, a cowardly, conniving, seductive, oriental but otherwise able woman tyrant, meant to emphasise both the ascendant Aurelian’s achievement of defeating her, and the absolute necessity for doing so. Thus, while the Historia Augusta (c. 395), is a useful document for understanding imperial attitudes towards Zenobia (and others) and how these attitudes manifested themselves in court propaganda, the distance between ourselves and the real Zenobia is further increased. Other histories, such as those of Zosimus (c. 500), Syncellus (c. 800) and Zonaras (12th century), also mention Zenobia but are fraught with their own issues, being several centuries removed from the events and the woman in question.[1]
Therefore, who the real Zenobia was and the reasons behind her defiance of imperial authority, lie wreathed in the shadows of antiquity, further clouded by the passage of time, the fading of historical memory, the political machinations of her contemporary rivals, and the biases of historians. There exist several Zenobias, like a heap of eroded, bronze masks, half-covered by the desert sands of Syria, and in this article, I will attempt to visit them one by one, and, through alternative interpretations of the sources at hand, recover the real Zenobia and the ambitions which underpinned her rise and led to her fall. In the end, if one is to disregard the mythical, legendary and political dimensions of Zenobia, one key question emerges: was Zenobia yet another ambitious pretender at the fringes of the Empire, making a bid for the imperial throne, for herself and for her son, Wahballath, as so many had done before and would do so afterwards? Or were there deeper reasons behind her defiance of the imperial centre?
Part I: Zenobia in the Historia Augusta
At first sight, events and appearances, do not favour an alternative explanation and the prevailing is certainly the one sponsored by the royal court of Aurelian, leading up to and after the defeat and capture of the Queen, passed down to us through the Historia Augusta. Zenobia was wife to Odainath (Odaenathus), who, as king of Palmyra and client of the Romans, had achieved many victories against the encroaching Persians to the East, even marching as far as their capital of Ctesiphon[2], a loyal and dependable asset of the empire in the East. As the author of the Historia Augusta assures us, Odainath, cum uxore Zenobia, would have restored non solum orientem, but indeed the world entire[3]; great things awaited the couple. However, in typical fashion, reminiscent of Philip II’s demise seemingly on the eve of his own long-awaited campaign against Persia, tragedy struck and Odainath was assassinated by his cousin Maeonius, who, himself was killed shortly after by Odainath’s enraged soldiers, before being able to testify to the conspiracy behind the murder.[4] The Historia itself first ascribes his motivations to simple envy, before moving on to claim that, ‘it is said’, Zenobia had conspired with him in order to assassinate her husband and his firstborn heir from a previous marriage, a certain Herodes, so that her own son(s), Herennianus (and Timolaus) would inherit the throne instead[5], once again reminiscent of Queen Olympias of Macedon and her desire to see Alexander III on the throne...
Successful in her deceit, Zenobia seized imperial power, ‘ruling longer than could be endured by one of the female sex’, and proceeded to present her sons in imperial paraphernalia, the purple robes of Roman emperors, including them in public gatherings.[6] Meanwhile, she crushed a Roman army meant to be marching against Persia[7], and then expanded her realm to include almost the entirety of the Roman East, stopping just short of Asia Minor, at the westernmost point of her expansion[8]. When Aurelian, finally having consolidated the situation in the Roman West, prepared to march against her, she replied to his demand for her surrender, arrogantly and defiantly, claiming, in her supposed hubris, that she wielded the entire power of the East, expecting reinforcements from Persia and Armenia alongside her own ‘brigands of Syria’ and Arab nomads.[9] This was an oriental queen, another Cleopatra, purportedly by her own admission[10], a figure familiar to Roman audiences: a deceitful, power-mad, temptress from the East.
As a woman, she had risen too much above her perceived station in society, and needed to be soundly defeated by a Roman emperor who would remedy the outrageous imbalance of power, much like Augustus himself had, a few centuries earlier with Cleopatra. Aurelian was the one to fill those shoes and, after the tide of war shifted and Zenobia was on the retreat, he made his feelings clear, according to the Historia Augusta: ‘she is fearful like a woman’.[11] Worse still, this oriental pretender was not simply a coward, but a treacherous coward. Zenobia, after having been defeated on the field, attempted to flee to none other than the Sassanid Persians, seemingly disregarding that her late husband and to an extent she, herself, had been sworn enemies of Persia up until this point, if we are to believe the author of the Historia Augusta.[12] She was, however, captured, marched in the streets of Rome in golden chains, and allowed to live ‘in the manner of a Roman matron’ close to Rome, with her children until the end of her days.[13]
This version of events, however, is not one that even the Historia Augusta itself agrees with, ultimately. For, this is mostly the Zenobia who appears in the section of the text devoted to Aurelian, presented thus expressly for the glorification of the emperor himself, the man who restored the integrity of the empire after the death of Claudius II. She was meant to be a vile, power-hungry, tyrannical easterner whose defeat was imperative for the survival of the empire, as she sought not only to carve out a realm of her own in the East, but to usurp the imperial throne itself (!) aided by hordes of oriental barbarians and brigands as well as the Roman nemesis, Persia. Aurelian could not have faced a more suitable foe if he was looking for one. Even here, interestingly, the author of the Historia Augusta, still unknown to us, reins himself in so as not to present Zenobia as too easy an enemy and thus diminish Aurelian’s triumph. Instead, he has Aurelian clarify, in his purported letter to his praetorian notarius, Mucapor, that he is not ‘merely waging a war with a woman, as if only Zenobia and with her own forces were fighting against me and not just as many enemies as if I was making war against a man.[14] He then goes on to explain that he is essentially outnumbered and underequipped, the implication being that in this manner, even a woman could prove a worthy adversary.[15]
In the Odainath chapter, Zenobia, briefly appears as not only a loyal but also a supportive wife who accompanied her husband in his campaigns often enough that she came to be accustomed to the hardships of the march, the harsh desert conditions and the unrelenting sun, and ‘in the opinion of many was held to be more brave than her husband’.[16] If this is not enough of a deviation from the accusations the author of the Historia Augusta would level against Zenobia in the later Aurelian chapters, he goes on to write that she was considered ‘indeed, the noblest of all the women of the East, and […] the most beautiful.’.[17] This more favourable characterisation of Zenobia arguably seems to be a by-product of the fascination and boundless admiration the historian felt towards her husband, Odainath, and the truth yet eludes us.
The sympathetic descriptions of Zenobia continue and are elaborated upon in the chapter devoted to her, the one devoted to Emperor Gallienus and finally, to Claudius II. Immediately at the outset of the Zenobia chapter of the Thirty Pretenders, the Historia Augusta spells out one of or even the main reason behind this more positive approach to the Queen, and that is ‘while Gallienus conducted himself in the most evil fashion, even women ruled most excellently.’.[18]Indeed, the author of the Historia, reiterates this idea on several occasions, such as in the Gallieni chapter where he decries the weakness and debauchery of Gallienus ‘so that even women ruled better than he.’[19], and nowhere more clearly than in Divus Claudius where he laments that ‘things had come to such a point that, for the sake of comparison with Gallienus, I was forced to write even the lives of women.’.[20] When compared to a ruler as vile and as impotent as Gallienus, whom the writer of the Historia Augusta, particularly despises, even a woman, like Zenobia, could emerge as a positive ruler… In order to underline Gallienus’ incapacity as emperor, the Historia Augusta brings itself to recognise the positive elements of Zenobia as woman and as queen, before discarding them when it is time for Aurelian to shine as the better ruler.
Regardless, here many lines are drawn between Zenobia and other great women of antiquity, such as Cleopatra and Dido[21], more female ‘Others’ of Roman imagination, foreign queens with whom Rome – and its men – had become embroiled. She is described as proud and as an able stateswoman who managed to keep the East together in the tumultuous time of Gallienus and Claudius’ emperorships.[22] Aurelian echoes this sentiment in a supposed letter of his own to the senate, after having defeated and captured her, when he tries to justify granting the ‘honour’ of leading her in a triumph, as if she was one of the great barbarian warlords of old, like Vercingetorix. In this letter, were we to accept its authenticity, he describes her as ‘wise in counsels’, ‘steadfast in plans’, ‘firm toward the soldiers’, ‘generous when necessity calls’ and ‘stern when discipline demands’.[23] Furthermore, he, too, recognises the service Odainath and Zenobia, and then the latter alone, performed for the empire in defending it from the ever-present dangers of Persia and nomadic Arab – Saracen – invasions and raids, particularly when Claudius himself was fighting against the Goths.[24]Whether this was a begrudging recognition of a worthy foe by a plainspoken military man or another attempt to build Zenobia up so that her defeat would be all the more glorious, we cannot know for certain.
Her appearance is commented upon, with great emphasis on her beauty, but this is beyond the scope of this article – as well as the knowledge of the author of the Historia Augusta – and it is not relevant to her personality or her aspirations. Similarly to Cleopatra and other larger than life women in Roman history, Zenobia, by frequent implication, is often reduced to her external beauty. The Palmyrene Queen, however, was much more than her looks, by the Historia Augusta’s own admission. She was stern but also forgiving, depending on the occasion, and was careful with how she managed her financial affairs.[25] She was chaste, faithful to her husband, and also very educated, well-versed in Greek and Egyptian, and adequate with Latin, as well as knowledgeable in Greek and Roman history.[26] In private audiences, she was purported to present herself in demonstrably eastern, Persian(-ising) ways, receiving worship and deference, but in public assemblies would present herself in imperial, Roman terms.[27]
More interesting than these details, though, are the ways in which the author of the Historia Augusta attempts to ‘de-feminise’ Zenobia, ascribing her good traits as ruler to her more manly characteristics. She possessed a vox clara et virilis, a clear and virile voice, he writes, and while she used a pilentum, a luxurious coach, usually for noblewomen, she also often used a horse or even walked on foot alongside her soldiers for several miles.[28] She participated in hunts, ‘with the eagerness of a Spaniard’, and drank with her generals as well as with Persian and Armenian emissaries, ‘only for the purpose of getting the better of them’.[29] Was this last practice, Zenobia engaging in military camaraderie or a calculated move to demonstrate her authority to her subordinates by outdoing them in traditionally male (symposiac) activities?
In the Gallieni chapter of the Historia Augusta, it is unequivocally stated that Zenobia did not rule ‘in a feminine fashion’ but rather ‘with the firmness of a man’.[30] Once again, one could argue that it is written thus with a dual purpose: to show that Zenobia’s achievements were not those of any woman but rather a very manly woman, and to demonstrate Gallienus’ own lack of virility in allowing himself, in his decadence, to be bested by a woman in the art of rulership. In success and victory, Zenobia was treated more like a man, whereas in defeat, at the hands of Aurelian, she was safely returned to her traditional role as a woman: deceitful, weak and cowardly.
Part II: The ‘Real’ Zenobia
As it has been stated before in this article, the Historia Augusta, beyond the issues with its historical accuracy, is demonstrably self-contradictory on several points regarding Zenobia. In it, we get a very polarised and confused version of the Queen: brave, moderate and wise but also deceitful, fearful, and power-hungry beyond measure. In the second part of this article, a positively critical approach will be assumed to the matter, an attempt will be made to bring the real Zenobia closer, as much as the historical record allows.
All of us are products of the times we inhabit, and Zenobia was no different. She lived in a time (and a place), plagued by constant war, civil strife, disease, and political and social instability. The Sassanid Persians kept launching large-scale invasions of Syria, every time seemingly thwarted by a miracle, especially as emperors were unable to respond effectively, facing other threats in the west and north, as well as constant civil wars. Syria in particular was rocked by numerous uprisings of imperial pretenders such as Iotapianus and Mariades, as did the rest of the empire, in a period lasting from 235 to 285 CE.[31] All Odainath and Zenobia had known was an empire fraught with invasion, civil strife, economic stagnation and political upheaval, in the infamous ‘Crisis of the Third Century’. It would come to inform the policies of both as rulers.
In order to restore some semblance of stability to his own realm, Odainath followed a policy of nigh unwavering loyalty to the imperial centre, moving to fill a power vacuum left behind by the impoverished civic elites of the weakened empire, who would normally assume the governorships of the provinces. By the early 250s, Odainath and his son, Herodian, had been granted the status of senators, either by Gordian III (238-244) or by Philip ‘the Arab’ (244-249), and the former ruled supreme in Palmyra as client king. In 261, Odainath helped defeat the remnants of Macrianus’ uprising in Syria, securing it for emperor Gallienus, who effectively handed him control of the entire province, now as its governor.[32]Cooperation with the imperial centre had benefited Palmyra well and Zenobia would never forget this, especially as its ruler.
By the late 260s this relationship was flourishing, but as a candleflame burning the brightest before dissipating. Emperor Gallienus or a powerful faction in his court, had long regarded Odainath’s growing power with suspicion but were unable to move against him with new threats in western Europe and the Balkans. In 268, they decided to act, possibly collaborating with a faction of Palmyrene elites who resented the ever-increasing power of Odainath[33], and the king along with his son and heir, were assassinated. Members of this anti-Odainathian faction were not only the current emperor, Gallienus, but also his cavalry commander Claudius, his praetorian prefect Heraclianus and another officer, Aurelian.[34] Soon enough, these three murdered the emperor, with Claudius II usurping the imperial throne and appointing Aurelian as his own cavalry commander. [35] The third century bloody wheel of Roman politics kept turning.
Though the Historia Augusta, fiercely devoted to repeating Claudius and Aurelian’s court propaganda, implies that it was during Gallienus’ emperorship that an army was sent against Persia, to be intercepted by Palmyra, in late 268 under Heraclianus, both it and Zosimus mention the latter as being in Milan, at the same time, assassinating emperor Gallienus.[36] Thus, the likeliest scenario is that the assassins Claudius and Aurelian, confident that they had crippled Palmyrene power with Odainath’s death, sent an army under their co-conspirator, Heraclianus, to Syria in order to reclaim it from the distracted Palmyrenes, under the pretence of having dispatched it to march against Sassanid Persia.[37] As the Historia Augusta itself mentions, this army was thoroughly defeated by an ascendant Zenobia[38], who had seen through the ploy. Therefore, it is very likely that at this point, imperial propaganda was mobilised to paint Odainath from a power-hungry would-be eastern dynast, to a loyal son of Rome who was assassinated by a deceitful and ambitious wife in order to place two of her children on the throne, disregarding the fact that Herennianus and Timolaus likely never existed.[39] Marching against her now would be an act of righteous imperial vengeance against an oriental usurper, and the murder of Odainath could never be ascribed to Gallienus and his successors.
Zenobia, however, did have children. One, we know for certain, and this was Wahballath, in whose authority she would assume the reins of power in Palmyra, but there were potentially others. She had seen how ruthless the imperial court could be, murdering her husband and his son, and indeed she would have known that it was likely only because she and her son had not been considered a threat, that assassins had not been dispatched against her as well. Now, after taken on the mantle of Palmyrene leadership, she would have had no doubts that the same fate would await her and her children if she failed to take control of the situation. Zenobia was a mother and it was only through her becoming queen of Palmyra, that she could even hope to protect her children.
As wife to Odainath and mother of his remaining children, Palmyra swiftly recognised Zenobia’s own authority and she would have likely not wasted any time at all, internally, eliminating the Palmyrene conspirators who had murdered her husband.[40] Abroad, however, besides ceasing the minting of coins with Gallienus’ face in Antioch, she retained all semblances of loyalty to the imperial centre, and months before the emperor himself was murdered by his officers, she sent an embassy, charging a member of his household with Odainath’s murder, without any real effect.[41] Once Claudius was emperor, no more embassies seem to have been sent. Even so, between 268 and 270, Zenobia did not break away from Roman authority, rather content to govern a smaller amount of land than her husband did, likely to not antagonise the imperial centre by reclaiming it, attempting to stabilise the borders with Persia and the nomadic Arabs, and granting her son the same titles his father possessed, ‘King of Kings’ – a common title in the eastern part of the empire – and epanorthotes (Latin: restitutor).[42] Coins began being minted in Antioch once more, now with the likeness of Claudius II, not Zenobia nor Wahballath, whom she endeavoured to present as yet another Roman governor, successor to his father.[43] This, arguably, seems a far cry away from the actions of a power-mad usurper, and more an attempt by a careful and politically astute woman to not provoke powers greater than hers, in order to protect her realm and her children.
Despite her efforts and her displays of loyalty, the imperial court of Claudius II seemed implacable: it would not recognise Wahballath as the inheritor of his father’s powers and authority, and would continue to undermine Palmyra, until such time as a more active, military intervention was possible, given Claudius’ own problems in the West.[44] Predictably, Zenobia could not afford to wait, especially after the potentially near miss of Heraclianus’ expedition against her, sometime in 269 or 270. In spring of 270 CE, she launched a wide-ranging offensive with the goal to seize the wealth of the rest of the Roman East as well as strategic positions against a potential invasion. However, even so, she had not yet given up the possibility of a reconciliation with Rome, for the sake of her people and her children: she minted coins with Wahballath but in a context demonstrably inferior to the emperor, as wearing a laurel wreath crown against the emperor’s sunrays, and avoided assuming the title of augusti for herself and her son.[45]
Indeed, she was trying to force Claudius II into negotiations with her, by creating another front for an emperor already facing trouble elsewhere. In her attempts to do so, she never sought to undermine the Roman state itself, and, after seizing Egypt in 271, she seems to have continued dispatching the regular grain shipments to Rome[46], when a very Machiavellian manoeuvre could have been to starve the capital to create further pressures on the emperor. Regardless, her incursions seemed to have brought about the opposite results, both Claudius and his successor, Aurelian, becoming more entrenched in their opposition to Palmyra. Still, Zenobia persisted for the better part of her reign, and even when she was at the height of her power, with a realm encompassing the majority of the Roman East, she maintained that she was acting on behalf of the emperor and serving the Roman state.[47] She refused to assume any titles for herself or her son that would imply an intention of usurpation of the imperial throne, like so many before her had done, and continued hoping for a diplomatic solution that would return things to the Odainathian status quo. Hardly an ambitious pretender, as the Historia Augusta would have it, but rather one for whom an expanded and richer realm was not the end but the means to protect herself and her family.
By 272, however, Zenobia likely admitted the failure of this approach, as it is then that we begin to see the titles augusti being used by her and her son.[48] The only apparent way to secure her position, was direct confrontation with the imperial centre, now at the hands of Aurelian. Presenting herself as Augusta/Sebaste, Zenobia began minting coins depicting herself as an austere, venerable Roman woman, in the likeness of other imperial women of the time, and her son as Caesar/Kaisar and Augustus/Sebastos, a young emperor, all accompanied with Roman gods such as Jupiter, Venus and Victory on the reverse.[49] Once again, this could not be further than the image of the mystifying Oriental temptress posited by the Historia Augusta; Zenobia was presenting herself as a Roman empress of piety and virtue.
For all her initial successes, she was defeated quite rapidly, in two pitched battles, which is perhaps an indication to another tragic aspect of her attempts to protect her people and her children: that, even with most of the Roman East under her sway and despite Aurelian’s supposed claims to the opposite, Zenobia was not able to mobilise an army powerful enough to face the concentrated might of the rest of the empire, and, despite knowing this, she attempted it regardless. After being captured, as Andrade very astutely points out, she fed into Roman biases of female frailty and weakness of spirit, and led Aurelian to believe that she had been manipulated herself by certain elements of her court.[50] By giving them up, she convinced the emperor, and managed to save herself and her children, certainly Wahballath. This is likely where the Historia Augusta’s claims of selfishness, cunning, and cowardice are rooted, but, in an era where entire families were put to the sword at the smallest indication that they could prove a threat to the imperial throne, Zenobia made the most pragmatic choice available and ensured an outcome much better than most contemporaries in her position.
Part III: Conclusion
Thus, Zenobia, far from a ruthless and ambitious pretender and a deceitful oriental temptress, was a very complicated woman whose true character and entire breadth of ambition we can never know. At the centre of all her actions, however, was a deep desire to protect her people and her children, and in 270, she came to the conclusion that territorial expansion beyond the traditional confines of Palmyra, was the best way to do this. A faction of murderous usurpers in Rome and an increasingly unstable imperial state, were not able to offer her protection against the Persian threat to the East, and posed increasing danger to her by themselves. Her vulnerable position at the edges, surrounded by enemies, meant that her choice was potentially no choice at all, especially following the army sent after her late husband’s territories. In a wider context, Zenobia’s stance could perhaps be interpreted as an early indication of the later troubles of the empire, especially in the increasingly unstable West. Local elites to whom the administration and protection of the provinces had been entrusted, gradually saw support from the imperial centre dwindling and the emperorship and the man occupying it, less as a guarantor of stability and more as a source for the opposite, as the object of constant civil wars and the draining of resources to protect borders elsewhere. The desire for independence, still within a Roman world, was arguably not so much ambition-driven – though it very well could have, for many – as reality-driven: the centre was no longer able or willing to protect the periphery, and the periphery, risking invasion, impoverishment and the likelihood of ending up a battleground in the endless civil wars of the later empire, chose a different path, either aligning itself with the invading barbarians or that of de facto independence with a nominal recognition of the centre’s authority as centuries’ long interdependence had created bonds that were nigh impossible to break.
Returning to Zenobia, it is preposterous, I would argue, to assume that she ever coveted the imperial throne itself, but rather desired a return to this older understanding between imperial core and periphery, whereby both emperor and elites could prosper and benefit mutually, as her husband had done with Gallienus and his predecessors. She did not desire a complete secession from the empire nor did she envisage Palmyrene rule over the Roman East. Until very late, she recognised where imperial power lay, even as its representatives desired her destruction, and presented herself in distinctly Roman contexts, even as she assumed the title of empress. She was, however, like other powerful women in Roman history, a very easy target for the propaganda machine of her enemies, which sought to portray her as a foreign, oriental, power-mad despot, in league with the hated Persians, who murdered her husband in order to make a bid for the imperial throne.
Who was Zenobia in reality? Zenobia was a loyal wife to her husband who did not shy away from her role as consort, sharing in the same hardships and facing the same challenges. As a very intelligent and politically adept woman, she assumed the mantle of leadership after his assassination and took control of the situation immediately. Pragmatic to the very end, she did not succumb to ambition, even after consecutive victories and the exponential growth of her empire; she was diplomatic and careful, seeking reconciliation instead of more bloodshed. She was a pious, educated, wise, responsible ruler who seemed to genuinely care for the survival and prosperity of her people. She was also a very brave woman, leading her own armies, even as she was likely cognisant of the difficulty of her endeavour against the legitimate emperor Aurelian. Finally, and perhaps above all, she was a mother who sought to protect her children and ensure their survival too in a world which seemed to collapse before her very eyes, and her actions to the very end were to that effect. We will likely never know who the real Zenobia was, relying upon unreliable histories, the accounts of her enemies, and the few shreds of material evidence left to us, such as coinage and inscriptions, but hopefully this article has been able to provide a much clearer picture of what could have lied beneath this heap of bronze masks, buried in Syrian sands.
As with most pieces of writing on ancient Palmyra and Zenobia after 2011, I would like to join in, in bringing the reader’s attention to the horrific cultural crime which took place when, in the midst of the Syrian civil war, ISIS terrorists destroyed large parts of the ancient city of Palmyra and looted its museum. I would also like to bring the reader’s attention to the death and sacrifice for ancient history and culture, of Khaled al-Asaad, the archaeologist who looked after Palmyra for decades, who was tortured and murdered by ISIS terrorists, after refusing to reveal where precious antiquities were hidden.
Xenofon Kalogeropoulos is currently pursuing a DPhil in Ancient History at the University of Oxford (St. Anne's College)
Notes: [1] Nathanael J. Andrade, Zenobia: Shooting Star of Palmyra, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 2. [2] David Magie (trans.), David Rohrbacher (revised by), Historia Augusta, Volume III., Loeb Classical Library 263. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022), p. 105, Odenatus, section 15. [3] Ibid., Odenatus, p. 106. [4] Ibid., Odenatus, p. 109, section 17. [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid., Herennianus, p. 133. [7] Ibid., Gallieni Duo, p. 43, section 13. [8] Andrade, Zenobia, p. 1. [9] Historia Augusta, Divus Aurelianus, p. 245, section 27. [10] Ibid., Zenobia, p. 137. [11] Historia Augusta, Divus Aurelianus, p. 243, section 26. [12] Ibid., p. 247, section 28. [13] Ibid., Zenobia, p. 143. [14] Ibid., Divus Aurelianus, p. 243, section 26. [15] Ibid. [16] Ibid., Odenatus, pp. 105, 107. [17] Ibid., p. 107. [18] Historia Augusta, Zenobia, p. 137. [19] Ibid., Gallieni Duo, p. 51. [20] Ibid., Divus Claudius, p. 155. [21] Ibid., Zenobia, p. 137. [22] Ibid. [23] Ibid., pp. 137, 139. [24] Ibid. [25] Ibid., p. 141. [26] Historia Augusta, Zenobia, pp. 139, 141. [27] Ibid., p. 141. [28] Ibid. [29] Ibid. [30] Ibid, Gallieni Duo, p. 43. [31] Andrade, Zenobia, p. 112. [32] Andrade, Zenobia, pp. 129-133. [33] Ibid., pp. 140-142, 145. [34] Ibid., p. 149. [35] Ibid. [36] Pat Southern, Empress Zenobia: Palmyra’s Rebel Queen, (London: Continuum, 2008), p. 89. [37] Maurice Sartre, ‘The Arabs and the desert peoples’, in A. K. Bowman, P. Garnsey and A. Cameron (eds.), The Crisis of Empire, AD 193–337, Cambridge Ancient History Vol. 12, 2nd edn., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p 514. [38] Historia Augusta, Gallieni Duo, p. 43, section 13. [39] Andrade, Zenobia, p. 119. [40] Ibid., p. 165. [41] Ibid., p. 166. [42] Ibid., p. 172. [43] Hélène Huvelin, “L’atelier d’Antioche sous Claude II,” Numismatica e antichità classiche 19, (Milan: Quaderni Ticinesi, 1990). Roger Bland, “The Coinage of Vabalathus and Zenobia from Antioch and Alexandria,” The Numismatic Chronicle 171, (London: Royal Numismatic Society, 2011), pp. 138-139. [44] Andrade, Zenobia, p. 173. [45] Southern, Rebel Queen, pp. 78, 87. [46] Ibid., p. 115. [47] Annie Sartre, Maurice Sartre, Zénobie: de Palmyre à Rome, (Paris: Perrin, 2014), pp. 91-92. Andrade, Zenobia, p. 178. [48] ILS 8924=Bauzou and IGR 3.1065=CIG 4503b=OGIS 647, in Andrade, Zenobia, p. 191, also Appendix 3, 4f, 4d. [49] Andrade, Zenobia, pp. 195-196. [50] Ibid., p. 207.
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