The Provinces of the Roman Empire 15

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 15

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.