57 Facts About Zenobia

Septimia Zenobia was a third-century queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria.

Zenobia's husband became king in 260, elevating Palmyra to supreme power in the Near East by defeating the Sasanian Empire of Persia and stabilizing the Roman East.

In 270, Zenobia launched an invasion that brought most of the Roman East under her sway and culminated with the annexation of Egypt.

However, in reaction to the campaign of the Roman emperor Aurelian in 272, Zenobia declared her son emperor and assumed the title of empress.

Zenobia was a cultured monarch and fostered an intellectual environment in her court, which was open to scholars and philosophers.

Zenobia was tolerant toward her subjects and protected religious minorities.

Zenobia died after 274, and many tales have been recorded about her fate.

Zenobia's rise and fall have inspired historians, artists and novelists, and she is a patriotic symbol in Syria.

Apparently not a commoner, Zenobia would have received an education appropriate for a noble Palmyrene girl.

However, the linguist Jean-Baptiste Chabot pointed out that Zenobius' statue stood opposite to that of Odaenathus not Zenobia and rejected Waddington's hypothesis.

The only gentilicium; a hereditary name borne by people that was originally the name of one's gens by patrilineal descent; appearing on Zenobia's inscriptions was "Septimia", and it cannot be proven that the queen changed her gentilicium to Septimia after her marriage.

One of Zenobia's inscriptions recorded her as "Septimia Bat-Zabbai, daughter of Antiochus".

Zenobia's alleged claim of a connection to Cleopatra seems to have been politically motivated, since it would have given her a connection with Egypt and made her a legitimate successor to the Ptolemies' throne.

In 267, when Zenobia was in her late twenties or early thirties, Odaenathus and his eldest son were assassinated while returning from a campaign.

At the time of Odaenathus' assassination, Zenobia might have been with her husband; according to chronicler George Syncellus, he was killed near Heraclea Pontica in Bithynia.

The transfer of power seems to have been smooth, since Syncellus reports that the time from the assassination to the army handing the crown to Zenobia was one day.

The historical records are unanimous that Zenobia did not fight for supremacy and there is no evidence of delay in the transfer of the throne to Odaenathus and Zenobia's son, the ten-year-old Vaballathus.

Zenobia, left to secure the Palmyrene succession and retain the loyalty of its subjects, emphasized the continuity between her late husband and his successor.

Zenobia's self-created status was formalized by Emperor Gallienus, who had little choice but to acquiesce.

Zenobia's assassination meant that the Palmyrene rulers' authority and position had to be clarified, which led to a conflict over their interpretation.

In 269, while Claudius Gothicus was defending the borders of Italy and the Balkans against Germanic invasions, Zenobia was cementing her authority; Roman officials in the East were caught between loyalty to the emperor and Zenobia's increasing demands for allegiance.

The timing and rationale of the queen's decision to use military force to strengthen her authority in the East is unclear; scholar Gary K Young suggested that Roman officials refused to recognize Palmyrene authority, and Zenobia's expeditions were intended to maintain Palmyrene dominance.

Syrian subjugation required less effort because Zenobia had substantial support there, particularly in Antioch, Syria's traditional capital.

The invasion of Arabia coincided with the cessation of coin production in Claudius' name by the Antiochean mint, indicating that Zenobia had begun tightening her grip on Syria.

Zenobia was declared Queen of Egypt after Palmyrene invasion of Egypt.

The appearance of the Palmyrenes on Egypt's eastern frontier would have contributed to unrest in the province, whose society was fractured; Zenobia had supporters and opponents among local Egyptians.

Zenobia ruled an empire of different peoples; as a Palmyrene, she was accustomed to dealing with multilingual and multicultural diversity since she hailed from a city which embraced many cults.

The queen's realm was culturally divided into eastern-Semitic and Hellenistic zones; Zenobia tried to appease both, and seems to have successfully appealed to the region's ethnic, cultural and political groups.

Zenobia turned her court into a center of learning, with many intellectuals and sophists reported in Palmyra during her reign.

Zenobia followed the Palmyrene paganism, where a number of Semitic gods, with Bel at the head of the pantheon, were worshipped.

Zenobia accommodated Christians and Jews, and ancient sources made many claims about the queen's beliefs; Manichaean sources alleged that Zenobia was one of their own; a manuscript dated to 272 mentions that the Queen of Palmyra supported the Manichaeans in establishing a community in Abidar, which was under the rule of a king named Amaro, who could be the Lakhmid king Amr ibn Adi.

Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria wrote that Zenobia did not "hand over churches to the Jews to make them into synagogues"; although the queen was not a Christian, she understood the power of bishops in Christian communities.

In 391, archbishop John Chrysostom wrote that Zenobia was Jewish; so did a Syriac chronicler around 664 and bishop Bar Hebraeus in the thirteenth century.

Teixidor believed that Zenobia became interested in Judaism when Longinus spoke about the philosopher Porphyry and his interest in the Old Testament.

Odaenathus respected the Roman emperor's privilege of appointing provincial governors, and Zenobia continued this policy during her early reign.

Zenobia initially avoided provoking Rome by claiming for herself and her son the titles, inherited from Odaenathus, of subject of Rome and protector of its eastern frontier.

In late 270, Zenobia minted coinage bearing the portraits of Aurelian and Vaballathus; Aurelian was titled "emperor", and Vaballathus "king".

The assumption of imperial titles by Zenobia signaled a usurpation: independence from, and open rebellion against, Aurelian.

The timeline of events and why Zenobia declared herself empress is vague.

Zenobia probably understood the inevitability of open conflict with Aurelian, and decided that feigning subordination would be useless; her assumption of the imperial title was used to rally soldiers to her cause.

The defeated Zenobia headed to her capital on the advice of her war council, leaving her treasury behind.

The generally unreliable chronicler, John Malalas, wrote that Aurelian humiliated Zenobia by parading her through the eastern cities on a dromedary; in Antioch, the emperor had her chained and seated on a dais in the hippodrome for three days before the city's populace.

Malalas concluded his account by writing that Zenobia appeared in Aurelian's triumph and was then beheaded.

Only Malalas describes Zenobia's beheading; according to the other historians, her life was spared after Aurelian's triumph.

Zonaras wrote that Zenobia married a nobleman, and Syncellus wrote that she married a Roman senator.

Zonaras is the only historian to note that Zenobia had daughters; he wrote that one married Aurelian, who married the queen's other daughters to distinguished Romans.

The family extended their roots to Zenobia by claiming that the saint was a descendant of her.

An evaluation of Zenobia is difficult; the queen was courageous when her husband's supremacy was threatened and by seizing the throne, she protected the region from a power vacuum after Odaenathus' death.

Zenobia has inspired scholars, academics, musicians and actors; her fame has lingered in the West, and is supreme in the Middle East.

The queen's legend turned her into an idol, that can be reinterpreted to accommodate the needs of writers and historians; thus, Zenobia has been by turns a freedom fighter, a hero of the oppressed and a national symbol.

Zenobia's most lasting legacy is in Syria, where the queen is a national symbol.

Zenobia became an icon for Syrian nationalists; she had a cult following among Western-educated Syrians, and an 1871 novel by journalist Salim al-Bustani was entitled Zenobia malikat Tadmor.

In modern Syria, Zenobia is regarded as a patriotic symbol; her image appeared on banknotes, and in 1997 she was the subject of the television series Al-Ababeed.

Zenobia was the subject of a biography by Mustafa Tlass, Syria's former minister of defense and one of the country's most prominent figures.

Zenobia has been the subject of romantic and ideologically-driven biographies by ancient and modern writers.

Zenobia's reputed chastity impressed some male historians; Edward Gibbon wrote that Zenobia surpassed Cleopatra in chastity and valor.

William Ware, fascinated by Zenobia, wrote a fanciful account of her life.