Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot (20 page)

Zenobia was an Arab. That is to say, inscriptions give her the full names of Septimia Zenobia in Latin or Bat Zabbai in Aramaic. Her father may have been called Zabbai (although ‘Bat Zabbai’ can also mean ‘daughter of a merchant’ in Aramaic). At all events this father was probably a native of Palmyra or Tadmor, to give the city its historic name (the exact etymology of these two names, respectively Greek and Aramaic, remains obscure). He would have been part of the proud, cultured and wealthy
Arab merchant-aristocracy who inhabited this splendid city, half religious monument, half commercial centre, situated at a vital confluence of caravan routes in the Syrian desert.
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If Zenobia’s descent was predominantly Palmyrene Arab, she may well have had dashes of many other bloods including Aramaean. She flourished after all in that interesting Middle Eastern area, the world’s ancient crucible, where the three languages Greek, Latin and Aramaic, in which Palmyrene inscriptions are expressed, stand for a confluence of cultures and races as well as trade routes. Some Jewish blood has been suggested on the ground that she treated the Jews of Alexandria sympathetically; but this was in fact a comprehensible political move, the Jews always forming a potential anti-Roman force since Titus’ destruction of all Jerusalem in
AD
70. (Individuals who treat a given Jewish community with sympathy are often supposed to be of Jewish descent: a commentary on the long history of the Jews as a persecuted people.) But it is significant that Zenobia, who made much of historic bonds, never claimed one with Solomon, which in view of his mythic connection to the fortress of Tadmor would seem to dispose of a real Jewish link.
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The great Cleopatra (herself predominantly Greek but acting out the Egyptian with verve) was as it were the role model to which Zenobia aspired. Moreover the Palmyrene Queen claimed very firmly to be descended from her; there was a certain history of Alexandria, dedicated ‘to Cleopatra’, of which Zenobia must have been the actual dedicatee. The claim is generally thought to be false, although Zenobia’s knowledge of the Egyptian language and her predisposition towards Egyptian culture may conceivably indicate that her mother was Egyptian.
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The real significance of the claim is as a proof of Zenobia’s intelligence: she quickly appreciated the self-aggrandizement to be derived from a glamorous historic connection. As Cleopatra used the image of the goddess Isis, the Queen of War, to lend exciting credence to her own dreams of empire, so Zenobia drew Cleopatra’s own image to her. She also incidentally associated herself with Semiramis, and loved to dress up ‘in the robes of Dido’:
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one
has the impression that no queen, however unfortunate her history, was left unturned in Zenobia’s relentless (but practical) evocation of female majesty.

Zenobia’s fantasies about Egypt should not be allowed to obscure the strong tradition to which she actually belongs. Zenobia is in fact part of a discernible pattern of pre-Islamic Arabian queens with military connections, many of them coming from her own Syrian homeland or areas adjacent. The researches of Nabia Abbott have revealed at least two dozen of these formidable ladies over six centuries, following the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon in the tenth century
BC
. Various origins have been ascribed to this fabulous Queen including south Arabian and Abyssinian: more importantly she exemplifies ‘the exercise of the right of independent queenship among the ancient Arabs’.
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The Assyrian records give glimpses of troublesome Arab queens such as Zabibi, finally subjugated and forced to pay tribute in 738
BC
, and Samsi, who may have been her successor and, after military defeat, underwent the same fate. It was from the royal house of Emesa, annexed to Syria, that the Emperor Septimius Severus in about
AD
185 chose as his wife Martha, the daughter of the priest–king – she who became the powerful Julia Domna and introduced the Semitic goddess Tanit (as Caelestis Dea) to the Roman world. Mamaea, the redoubtable daughter of Julia Domna’s sister, Julia Maesa, ruled for her son the Emperor Alexander, even accompanying him on the German campaign in 234; a generation older than Zenobia, but hailing from the same ‘Syrian’ cradle, she was described by Gibbon as having ‘manly ambition’.
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Nor did this tradition end with Zenobia herself: from about
AD
373 to 380, a hundred years after Zenobia’s disappearance from the scene of history, we encounter another Syrian Arab queen named Mawia, probably a Ghassanid. Mawia too rode in person at the head of her army, made excursions into Phoenicia and Palestine, ravaged the land to the frontiers of Egypt, and defeated the Roman armies; later she sent her fleet of Arab cavalry to the
aid of the Romans when they in their turn were hard-pressed by the Goths. The last ‘queen’ of pre-Islamic Western Arabia was the famous – or infamous – Hind Al-Hunūd about whom many traditions have congregated, some bloodthirsty, but all pointing to her independence. And it is worth recalling too that as late as 656 Aishah, ‘the beloved of Muhammad’ (the Prophet’s last wife), was present at the Battle of the Camels at the heart of the fighting. More than that, Aishah’s role in the internecine strife of which this battle was the culmination showed that at this date men would still follow a woman to war.
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Zenobia may have looked to Cleopatra for inspiration, but Zenobia’s Arab tradition in which, as with the Celts, queens could ride to battle (and to victory) was an important element in her story. And the Holy Figurehead element in a woman’s presence at the scene of battle as an inspiration, even a quasi-goddess, was also common to the Arabs, as to the Celts, in the pre-Islamic tradition of the Lady of Victory. By this tradition, some woman of quality would be placed within the portable
qubbah
or sacred pavilion of the tribal deity and, with her attendants, form a sacred group within sight of the warriors, singing songs of encouragement to them. The Lady of Victory, her hair flowing and her body partly exposed, embodied an appeal to valour and passion. (As late as the nineteenth century, William Palgrave described one particular ‘huge girl’ who encouraged the Amjan Bedouins against the heir to the throne of Nejed in this manner; when she was slain, they were defeated.)
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Another crucial element in Zenobia’s career was the geographical situation of Palmyra itself, halfway between the two mighty and contending empires, one of which was Roman. It would be equally unsuitable to regard Zenobia as some kind of Hollywood ‘Desert Queen’, riding out of a dust storm, with a tent for her court and a palm frond for her sceptre, as it would be to regard Boudica as a woad-stained shrieking Celtic savage. Both women – both leaders – came from complex civilizations; in the case of Zenobia, the civilization from which she sprang had been affected deeply by that of Rome.

Around
AD
114, Palmyra had theoretically become part of the Roman Empire, while the Emperor Hadrian judiciously allowed the city considerable liberty in order to benefit from its celebrated archers as defenders of what was now his own frontier against the Parthians. Moreover the Palmyrenes were allowed to be responsible for their own municipal taxes: another wise move. Palmyra flourished under this loose mutually beneficial tutelage. At the beginning of the third century the Emperor Septimius Severus made Palmyra into a colony and allowed a properly elected senate to manage its affairs; distinguished Palmyrenes began to add Roman names to their Semitic ones.

As Zenobia was not an unsophisticated Bedouin queen, so Palmyra itself was not a remote and ruined city lost in the midst of sands, as some ancient geographers suggested. On the contrary, vital caravan routes linked it to the seaboard cities of Phoenicia, to Emesa, to Damascus and to Egypt itself, Palmyra providing the link between these and Seleucia, and the more distant eastern regions. Foreign armies might not easily penetrate the intervening deserts, but the camel caravans of the merchants had no such problems. So the substantial animals toiled endlessly to and fro – camels in prime condition could carry loads of up to 200 kilos – and thus the Palmyrene merchants emulated Macaulay’s Lars Porsena, who ‘bade his messengers ride forth, east and west and south and north, To summon his array’; except that the camels of the Palmyrenes bore back with them an array of goods, not soldiers: from perfumes and aromatic oils to skins and salt. A tariff of commercial dues dated
AD
137 reveals how far afield the tentacles of Palmyrene trade actually spread: silks and jade from the Chinese frontiers are listed, and from India muslins, spice, ebony, ivory and pearls.
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The merchant–aristocrats lived well: in their day two emperors visited Palmyra. The merchants made great profits and patronized the arts with their money (it is always agreeable to find these two activities considered compatible). A hundred years before Zenobia, a special tax was imposed on imported bronze statues and busts; the wealthy citizens had a special penchant for erecting
columns and colonnades and adorning them with self-congratulatory inscriptions. Jewellery loaded down the women – how Zenobia would one day come to feel the weight of those splendid jewels! If the colonnaded edifices showed the influence of Rome, the shadow of Palmyra’s other great neighbour also fell across her culture: local deities might be given Roman names but wear Parthian dress. Later Persian costume, rugs and jewels mingled with the Roman styles.

Central to Palmyra was the great Temple of the Sun.
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Yet by the third century the official sun worship of the Palmyrene state was being supplemented by an alternative religion: a vague yet spiritual kind of monotheism – the worship of the unknown god, to whom those inferior categories of women and servants also made offerings. Here, where the unknown god and the celestial pantheon of other gods were content to receive harmless sacrifices of incense and wine, a generally liberal atmosphere prevailed, in which, according to inscriptions, the Jews also found their place (and adapted to Palmyrene customs).

The collapse of the Parthian Empire and the arrival of the Sassanids to the newly imperial throne of Persia in
AD
227 put an end to a status quo which had been prosperous and far from disagreeable for Palmyra. At the same time the worldwide vigour of imperial Rome was declining – or to be more specific the emperors were obsessed by the Gothic threat on their northern frontiers. Obviously new perils threatened what was, to outsiders, essentially the buffer state of Palmyra. It was against this background of transitional turmoil that Odainat (otherwise Septimius Odenaethus), husband of Zenobia and self-styled King of Palmyra, decided like Shakespeare’s Henry V to pluck the flower of opportunity.

Zosimus, a fifth-century Greek whose history of the Roman Empire up till 410 casts an interesting light on Zenobia, refers to Odainat as a ‘person whose ancestors had always been highly respected by the emperors’. Certainly Odainat came of an illustrious family. His grandfather – or possibly great-grandfather,
at any rate another Odainat – had become a Roman senator in about
AD
230, eighteen years after all free men within the Empire were made Roman citizens. The son or grandson of this first Odainat, Hairan (Herodianus), was the first to bear the equivocal title of chief of Palmyra – or in Aramaic Ras Tadmor.
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Odainat, son of Hairan and husband of Zenobia, was made a Roman consul in
AD
258. Two years later the Roman Emperor Valerian was defeated by Sapor I of Persia, held captive in disgusting conditions and finally killed. It was under these circumstances that Odainat took to the field with the archers and spearmen of Palmyra on the one hand, the cavalry of the desert Arabs on the other; remnants of the tattered Roman legions may also have assisted him. Palmyra might have preferred to lean towards Persia rather than towards Rome, in view of the latter’s debilitated state. It was the Persian Emperor who declined to lean towards Palmyra. Under the circumstances Odainat had little choice but to sally forth against him.

As it was, Odainat’s forces swept all before them, and according to one chronicler they finally captured the magnificent treasure of the Persian Emperor. In 261 Odainat secured another victory at Emesa (now Homs) in western Syria, where a Roman general had taken advantage of the fluid times to set himself up as a usurper. Very likely, Odainat had been given some general title of command by Rome before he sallied forth. But in 262 the incoming Roman Emperor Gallienus – himself capable of avenging the murdered Valerian – made Odainat, the man who could actually do so, officially
dux romanorum
and later
imperator
.

There is some understandable confusion over what these titles actually meant. For one thing, they must have meant different things to the Romans, who were particular about the niceties of such things but absent, and to the Palmyrenes themselves, not so particular but on the spot. There is no evidence that Odainat was granted the distinctive title of Augustus by Gallienus or, more to the point, claimed it. He did have himself inscribed as ‘King of kings’ at Palmyra – but then Palmyra was a long way from Rome.
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Odainat was a realist: he showed himself content with
the substance of his power, the fact that he had saved the fortunes of the Roman Empire in the east and shored up those of Palmyra.

It was however not Odainat himself but Zenobia who mesmerized ancient historians. The so-called
Scriptores Historiae Augustae
– a collection of biographies, probably written in the fourth century, dealing with the Roman emperors from
AD
117 to 284 – are full of her praises. Of the six authors to whom the
Scriptores
are attributed, ‘Trebellius Pollio’ and ‘Flavius Vopiscus’ are responsible for the period in which Zenobia flourished.
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‘The noblest of all the women of the East’, wrote Trebellius Pollio, dilating also on her personal charms: she was also
speciosissima
– ‘the most beautiful’ – and elsewhere
venustatis incredibilis
– ‘of an incredible attraction’. His description of Zenobia – eyes black and powerful beyond the usual wont, teeth so white that many believed she wore pearls in her mouth, complexion wonderfully dark – suggests that we may look for her type among the surviving portraiture of Palmyrene art, where the impressive women with their strong noses and enormous almond-shaped eyes look out with baleful dignity; a type indeed not far from that of Zenobia’s proclaimed ancestress Cleopatra.
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