Zenobia of Palmyra: History, Myth and the Neo-Classical Imagination

Queen Zenobia of Palmyra in Syria was one of the great women of classical antiquity, a romantic if tragic heroine both to Roman authors and to Chaucer, Gibbon and the neo-classical painters and sculptors of the nineteenth century. in her desperate search for a survival strategy for her wealthy city in the chaotic third century AD Zenobia fell foul of Aurelian, one of the ablest soldier-emperors Rome ever produced, and the image of her paraded in golden chains in Aurelian’s triumphal procession at Rome became the iconic image of her enforced submission - and that of women generally, as she was transformed in modern times into a symbol of women’s struggle for emancipation. Zenobia is encrusted with legends, ancient and modern. Both the romantic image of her as a beautiful, intellectual but chaste Arab queen of the desert, and the political perception of her as a regal woman whose feminine qualities lifted her above her misfortune and her captor, do less than justice to Palmyra’s most controversial ruler. There was a dark side to her - wicked step-mother perhaps, accessory to murder perhaps, traitor to her friends certainly - that translates her from myth into reality, into being a ruler who for better or worse did what real rulers do and should be judged as such. This book constructs a coherent political and military narrative for Zenobia’s life and her bid for empire. It confirms the depth of the ‘third century crisis’ of the Roman empire, chooses between rival versions of what happened to Zenobia, and examines the myths that have surrounded her ever since.