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Zenobia

W >> William Ware >> Zenobia




'It will be long, very long,' Julia has said to me, 'before Zenobia will
recover from this grief--if indeed she ever do. Would that the principles
of that faith, which we have learned to believe and prize, were also hers!
Life would then still place before her a great object, which now she
wants. The past absorbs her wholly--the future is nothing. She dwells upon
glories that are departed forever, and is able to anticipate no other, or
greater, in this world--nor with certainty in any beyond it.'

I said, 'But doubtless she throws herself at this season upon her Jewish
faith and philosophy. She has ever spoken of it with respect at least, if
not with affection.'

'I do not,' Julia replied, 'think that her faith in Judaism is of much
avail to her. She has found pleasure in reading the sacred books of the
Jews, and has often expressed warmly her admiration of the great
principles of moral living and of religious belief found in them; but I do
not think that she has derived from them that which she conceives to be
the sum of all religion and philosophy, a firm belief and hope of
immortality. I am sure she has not. She has sometimes spoken as if such a
belief possessed likelihood, but never as if she entertained it in the way
the Christian does.'

* * * * *

You will rejoice, dear Fausta, to learn that Zenobia no longer opposes
me; but waits with impatience for the day when I shall be an inmate of
her palace.

What think you is the news to-day in Rome? No other and no less than
this--which you may well suppose has for some time been no news to
me--that Livia is to be Empress! It has just been made public by
authority; and I despatch my letter that you may be immediately informed
of it. It has brought another expression upon the countenance of Zenobia.

Curtius and Lucilia have this moment come in, and full of these tidings
interrupt me--they with Portia wish to be remembered to you with
affection. I shall soon write again--telling you then especially of my
interviews with Aurelian, and of Probus. Farewell.




Note.



Piso, it will be observed, makes no mention of, nor allusion to, the story
recorded by the historian Zosimus, of the Queen's public accusation of
Longinus and the other principal persons of Palmyra, as authors of the
rebellion, in order to save her own life. It is well known that Zenobia,
chiefly on the authority of this historian, has been charged with having
laid upon Longinus and her other counsellors, all the blame of the revolt,
as if she had been driven by them against her will into the course she
pursued. The words of Zosimus are as follows:

'Emisam rediit et Zenobiam cum suis complicibus pro tribunali stitit. Illa
causas exponens, et eulpa semet eximens multos alios in medium protulit,
qui cam veluti fæminam seduxissent; quorum in numero et Longinus
erat.--Itidem alii quos Zenobia detulerat suppliciis adficiebatur.'

This is suspicious upon the face of it. As if Aurelian needed a formal
tribunal and the testimony of Zenobia to inform him who the great men of
Palmyra were, and her chief advisers. Longinus, at least, we may suppose,
was as well known as Zenobia. But if there was a formal tribunal, then
evidence was heard--and not upon one side only, but both. If therefore the
statements of Zenobia were false, there were Longinus and the other
accused persons, with their witnesses, to make it appear so. If they were
true--if she had been overruled--led--or driven--by her advisers, then it
was not unreasonable that punishment--if some must suffer--should fall
where it did.

But against Zosimus may be arrayed the words of Aurelian himself, in a
letter addressed to the Roman senate, and preserved by Pollio. He says,

'Nec ego illi (Zenobiæ) vitam conservassem nisi cam scissem multum Rom:
Reip. profuisse, quum sibi vel liberis suis Orientis servaret imperium.'

Aurelian here says that he would not have spared her life but for one
reason, namely, that she had done such signal service to the republic,
when either for herself or for her children she had saved the empire in
the East. Aurelian spared her life, if he himself is to be believed,
_because of services rendered to Rome,_ NOT because by the accusation of
others she had cleared herself of the charge of rebellion. Her life was
never in any danger, if this be true; and unless it were, she of course
had no motive to criminate Longinus in the manner related by Zosimus.

Longinus and his companions suffered therefore, not in consequence of any
special accusation--it was not needed for their condemnation--but as a
matter of course, because they were leaders and directors of the revolt.
It was the usage of war.

Why are Pollio (the biographer of Zenobia) and Vopiscus (the biographer of
Aurelian) and Zonaras all silent respecting so remarkable a point of the
history of Zenobia? Pollio does not hesitate to say that she had been
thought by some to have been partner in the crime of murdering Odenatus
and his son Herod--a charge which never found credit in any quarter. Such
a biographer surely would not have passed over in silence the unutterable
baseness of Zenobia in the accusation of Longinus, if he had ever heard of
it and had esteemed it to have come to him as well vouched at least as the
other story. Omission under such circumstances is good evidence that it
came to him not so well vouched--that is, not vouched at all.

Supposing Zenobia to have been guilty of the crime laid to her charge,
could Aurelian have treated her afterwards in the way he did? He not only
took her to Rome and gave her a palace at Tibur, and the state of a Queen,
but according to some, [Footnote: Filiam (Zenobiæ) unam uxorem duxisse
Aurellanum; cæteras nobilibus Romanis despondisee.--Zonoras, lib. xii.
p. 480.] married one of her daughters. Could he have done all this had
she been the mean, base and wicked woman Zosimus makes her out to be? The
history of this same eastern expedition furnishes a case somewhat in point,
and which may serve to show in what light he would probably have regarded
Zenobia. Tyana, a city of Asia Minor, for a long time resisted all his
attempts to reduce it. At length it was betrayed into his hands by one of
its chief citizens, Heraclammon. How did Aurelian receive and treat him
after entering the city? Let Vopiscus reply: 'Nam et Heraclammon
proditorem patriæ suse sapiens victor occidit.'--'Heraclammon who
betrayed his country the conqueror wisely slew.' But this historian has
preserved a letter of Aurelian, in which he speaks of this same traitor:

'Aurelianus Aug: Mallio Chiloni. Occidi passus sum cujus quasi beneficio
Tyanam recepi. Ego vero proditorem amare non potui; et libenter tuli quod
eum milites occiderunt: neque enim mihi fidem servare potuisset qui patriæ
non pepercit,' etc. He permits Heraclammon to be slain _because he could
not love a traitor_, and _because one who had betrayed his country could
not be trusted_--while Zenobia, if Zosimus is to be believed, whose act
was of the same kind--only infinitely more base--he receives and crowns
with distinguished honor, and marries her daughter!

'Zosime pretend,' says Tillemont, 'que ce fut Zenobie mesme qui se
déchargea sur eux des choses don't on l'accusoit, (ce qui répondroit
bien mal a cette grandeur d'ame qu'on lay attribue.')--Hist, des Emp.
t. II. p. _212_.

The evidence of Zosimus is not of so high a character as justly to weigh
against a strong internal improbability, or the silence of other
historians. Gibbon says of him, 'In good policy we must use the service of
Zosimus without esteeming him or trusting him,' and repeatedly designates
him as 'credulous,' 'partial,' 'disingenuous.' By Tillemont he is called a
'bad authority.'

Nothing would seem to be plainer, than that Aurelian spared Zenobia
because she was a woman; because she was a beautiful and every way
remarkable woman; and as he himself says, because she had protected and
saved the empire in the East; and that he sacrificed Longinus and the
other chief men of Palmyra, because such was the usage of war.

Page 122. Piso speaks of the prowess of Aurelian, and of the songs sung
in the camp in honor of him. Vopiscus has preserved one of these.

'Mille mille, mille, decollavimus,
Unus homo mille decollavimus,
Mille vivat qui mille occidit.
Tantum vini habet nemo
Quantum fudit sanguinis.

'Mille Sarmatas, mille Francos
Semel et semel occidimus
Mille Persas quærimus.'

The two letters on pages 135 and 137, it will be observed, are nearly the
same as those found in Vopiscus.

On page 172, Aurelian is designated by a soldier under the nick-name of
'Hand-to-his-Sword.' Vopiscus also mentions this as a name by which he was
known in the army. 'Nam quum essent in exercitu duo Aureliani tribuni,
hic, et alius qui cum Valeriano captus est, huic signum (cognomen)
exercitus apposuerat "Mannus ad ferrum,"' &c.

Page 280. Piso represents Aurelian as wearing a crown. He was the first
since the Tarquins who had dared to invest his brow with that symbol of
tyranny. So says Aurelius Victor. 'Iste primus apud Romanos Diadema capiti
innexuit; gemmisque et aurata omni veste, quod adhuc fere incognitum
Romanis moribus videbatur, usus est.'

On the same page, in the account of the triumph, a chariot of Zenobia is
stated to have been exhibited, in which it was her belief that she should
enter Rome in triumph, which indeed had been made for that very purpose.
This singular fact is confirmed by Vopiscus--'tertius, (currus) quem sibi
Zenobia composuerat sperans se urbem Romanam cum eo visuram; quod eam non
fefellit, nam cum eo urbem ingressa est victa et triumphata.'

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