Zenobia and the Roman Empire

Our focus today is on a woman who was actually covered in the podcast several years ago. But she's a figure so mythic and with so many variations to her story that we wanted to give her another look and a little more time.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Frind, I'm Tracy Wilson, and today we're going
all the way back to the third century and to
a city that's said to have been built by Solomon,

(00:22):
who was once called tad Moore and then it became
in as paul Myra and it uh sits on the
northeast edge of the Syrian Desert. And our focus today
is on a woman who was actually covered in the
podcast several years ago, uh, Zenobia of Palmyra. And that
was when the podcast was running much shorter, and uh,
Katie and Sarah did an episode on her. And Zenobia

(00:45):
is a historical figure that has become so mythic and
she's you know, classified as a warrior woman. Uh. And
she there are so many variations to her story and
there's so many layers to the politics that we're going
on at the time with area and specifically Palmyra and Rome,
that I thought maybe it would be nice to give

(01:05):
a more fleshed out version of it. Um And it's
an interesting pronunciation point. I know they say Palmyra in
the original episode. I listened to a bunch of different
pronunciation guides, the overwhelming majority went with Palmyra. So just yes,
we do that. Sometimes we start looking for pronunciations for

(01:25):
things and we will hear it makes it way worse.
We will hear multiple completely different pronunciations from equally trustworthy
sources and like equally native sources to the place that
we're talking about. Yeah, I mean that happens with um.
You know, if you listen to English all over the
United States, certainly, then if you include other countries to

(01:47):
speak English as their first language, you will hear many
different pronunciations of common words and even specific place names.
So it happens. But we're going with Palmyra for this one.
So there was an article on pre Islamic Arab queens
that was written for the American Journal of Semitic Languages
and Literatures way back in and in that article, author

(02:11):
Nabia Abbott opens by noting that the first Arab queen
on record is in the tenth century b C. And
that name will no doubt be familiar to our listeners
because that first queen was the Queen of Sheba. And
while the biblical account of her visit to King Solomon
is a little short on details and specificity about her
uh and even her origins as being from South Arabia

(02:34):
is pretty consistently debated by historians. As a monarch, she
became ingrained in the stories of many different cultures and
many different religions, and she's even referenced casually in conversation
by people like, aren't you just the Queen of Sheba?
Uh just become an idiom? Just really, she's her own
little magical icon. But there have been many, many Arab queens.

(02:56):
And while the Queen of Sheba may have paved the way,
the wh they we're talking about today came to be
known as Palmira's rebel queen in the third century, and
she came into her position through marriage, but she really
proved to be an extremely capable ruler. So to get
into her story, we need a little bit of background
of the relationship between Rome and Palmyra. So in the

(03:18):
year two thirty five, there was a revolt which was
engineered by maxim Inist, who was commander of the Roman army,
and this led to the murders of the ruling duo
of Rome at the time, that was Alexander Severus and
his mother Julia Avita Mamaya and the death of the
two of them kicked off this half century long period

(03:39):
of civil unrest. During the fifty years from two thirty
five to eighty five, there were more than two dozen
emperors as anarchy and revolt just sort of became the
way that things worked. And a lot of these rulers
were not actually Roman. Yes, so you're looking at an
average rain time of two years or us. There were

(04:01):
some that were in longer, which meant others ran shorter.
That's a lot of quick turnover uh. And so for example,
from to forty four to to forty nine, speaking of
rulers that were not actually Roman, UH, Marcus Julius Philippus ruled,
and he had previously been known as Philip the Arab UH.
He had a distinguished military service and that combined with

(04:23):
some wildly moves and getting discontented soldiers to revolt for him,
actually gained him leadership in Rome after outstaying Gordian the
fourth and Marcus Julius Philippus wanted to set up an
Arab dynasty, so he actually promoted members of his own family,
including his seven year old son, into prominent political positions.

(04:44):
But since his rule did fall in that fifty years
of unrest. I don't think it's a huge spoiler to
say that his ambitions of having a dynasty uh were
a little bit dashed. But another family did manage to
create a near dynasty, not in Rome proper, but in
all my Ara. Sometime around two thirty or two thirty one,

(05:04):
Odin Athis became a Roman senator. His son Heron was
the first man to be titled rass Tadmer or raised Tadmore,
making him the chief of Palmyra, which was a city
in central Syria, and palm Ira dates back at least
to the nineteenth century b c e. Though in the
third century a road running through it and its oasis

(05:25):
made it made it an important travel and trade route. Uh.
The pal Irene population was descended from many many tribes
that had blended together, and they actually spoke this dialect
of Aramaic, so it was almost like this really interesting
trade route melting pot um. You know. It became a
really central place for things to come and go, and
even for people to kind of come and go and

(05:47):
add their own cultural flavor, and it's um. It was
very unique in that way. Heron also had a son
named odin Athis after his grandfather, and he was able
not only to inherit the power and standing of his father,
but also to really consolidate and expand it. He managed
to rise to such a big position of prominence that
he eventually became recognized as the king of Palmyra, and

(06:10):
that at that point the city had become a really
significant seat of influence in the region. So if that
sounds a little bit wild, with all of this sudden
gathering of power and then a person being able to say,
by the way, I'm king of this area now, um,
when he had been you know, sort of more of
a a lower level ruler, it is wild. But remember

(06:32):
that Rome was kind of a train wreck at this point.
It was in a perpetual state of chaos. There was
constant in fighting, you know, one ruler was being overthrown
after another, and Sasanian Persian was a very real threat
to Rome at the time. Uh. And incidentally, Palmira sat
squarely between Persia and Rome. And what that means is

(06:54):
that odin Athis, in the midst of all of this
in fighting and him growing his city and his power,
had actually become the most important politician in what was
then called the Roman East. Very fortunately for the Romans,
odin Athos was a gifted military strategist, so in spite
of Persia being really better positioned in terms of power,

(07:14):
he was able to shut down the Persian advances on
Rome's territory and power via the series of well planned
campaigns and uh. Just as an interesting side note, where
odin ath has kind of put his loyalty at this
point in time was sort of interesting. Many historians will say,
really he was better aligned with Persia, but there were

(07:35):
some other conflicts going on there that kind of made
him throw in his lot with Rome. Uh. And so
that's really why he defended the area against the oncoming Persians. Uh.
And But despite his popularity and his celebrated status for
having basically saved Rome from a much more powerful and
well organized army, odin Athis was assassinated in two sixty six,

(07:56):
and at the same time, his eldest son, who is
yet another Heron because they kept naming one after one,
would named their next son after the father, and so
it goes odan athas hair and oaths Heron Uh was
also killed. So his his heir at the time, was killed.
His obvious air Um and that sort of leads us
to how Zenobia came to power right and about sixteen

(08:20):
years before his death in the year to fifty, odin
Athis married Zenobia, and with his sudden death, she stepped
in to act as regent for their surviving son, Babel Athis.
And uh for a little bit of background on Zenobia,
because she does sort of come into the story and
the politics almost out of nowhere. Uh. There's a book

(08:41):
by Pat Southern called Empress Zenobia, Palmira's Rebel Queen, and
in it the author points out that because we don't
really have a reliable account of Zenobia's life, her story
really has a lot of uh different versions and variations.
Arab sources referenced her as being the daughter of a
chief of the Umlaki or i'm a Laki tribe, which

(09:03):
who was named Nila, and she is in some tellings
labeled as Queen Toddy and is sometimes referenced as Navsha,
although that name is also used in some versions of
the story for a sister that Zenobia may or may
not have even had. Um. Another theory about her origin
actually suggests that she was the daughter of Julius Aurelius

(09:25):
Zenobia's Zabdila, who was an army leader of Palmyra Uh
and some even suggests that she was actually a descendant
of Antiochus. So there is a lot of um questioning
and many question marks surrounding even her parentage. So any
story that you hear about her has likely been colored
by the person who told it a little bit. So

(09:48):
much like when we did the Buddhica story, it was
a very similar situation where it's like, there are lots
of accounts, but they're a little fuzzy and they don't
seem to match up. So just keep that in mind
as we talk about some new be a going forward.
Her name on the coinage of her rule is Septimia
Zenobia sebast So since naming often denoted family lines at

(10:10):
this point, it's led some people to wonder about a
different father than all of those who were listed before.
But it's kind of it's more possible that the name
was actually bestowed upon her by her husband. Yeah, he
when he had risen to a certain level of prominence,
he bestowed that name on people on many people in

(10:30):
his um, his group, his close friends, and family, because
names were very important and considered a big element of
respect and it's also worth noting, and they talk about
it a little bit more in the episode that Katie
and Syrit did that just in making her own coinage,
Zenobia was being a little bit rebellious by a little bit,
I mean a lot um uh, you know, rather than

(10:53):
going with the standard Roman currency and bringing that in
her own. And one interesting point that I found when
looking through Pat Southern's book, she describes the source material
when researching Zenobia as quote irritatingly contradictory. If I just
found that sort of charming, because I think we've all
run up against that when we're doing research, particularly on

(11:15):
really ancient topics. They don't match up all the time,
so we kind of do our best to put the
pieces of the puzzle together, but there's always going to
be a little bit of uncertainty, especially people in antiquity who,
like we're not necessarily born into a really notable family.
They just kind of arrive on the scene. They just
show up, and we're going to kind of guess who

(11:36):
where they came from. According to this sparse information that
we have, Zenobia was born in two forty or two
forty one, But there's really no corroboration on these dates.
Also problematic is the fact that sources list her as
seventeen or eighteen when she married odan Athis in two five.
So we have a lot of numbers that no A'll
really add up. Yeah, the math is not doesn't really

(11:59):
function prop really in that. So, um, she was odin
athis second wife. That son of his named Hyran named
heron that died at the same time he was assassinated
was from his first wife. Zenobia bore him a second son,
Babulthis between roughly two fifty eight and two sixty, so
he would have been uh, somewhere between six and eight

(12:22):
when his father was assassinated, so obviously not old enough
to rule, which is why she took over as regent.
So going back to the Enobia's rule, Uh, it turned
out that she really took to ruling like a duck
to water. She was a really smart woman. She was
well educated, she was multi lingual, and she did not
have any problems stepping up to command forces and make
state decisions. She was not a woman who lacked for

(12:44):
confidence in the least. So this actually brought up kind
of a problem Claudius to who was not at all
fond of Palmyra's independent standing, decided to take Zenobia's kingdom
by force, and into sixty seven, Roman troops invaded Syria,
and this plan didn't pan out so well for Claudius
the Second. It's unclear why he thought the same forces

(13:07):
that had so deftly turned away Persian attacks and save
Rome would fall to the Roman army, which everyone had
recognized was weaker than the army they had just defeated.
But his troops were soundly defeated by the Paul Iron
or Paul Irene. I've seen it written both ways, soldiers.
The defeated emperor just decided that he would leave Zenobia

(13:28):
to her reign. They kind of had a careful alliance. Uh.
They were friendly, but not exactly tight for the rest
of Claudius the Second sovereignty. So, as a new ruler
who had just repelled Roman invasion to secure Palmira's independence,
Zenobia's first priority was to shore up her position. So

(13:48):
even though there were bigger events playing out involving Rome
and its position in the world, her focus was on Palmyra. Yeah,
you have to wonder if having watched her husband kind
of side up with Rome and then really getting burnt
in the deal because he got killed right after he
saved them. If she if that didn't pretty significantly impact

(14:09):
her approach to ruling and saying no, no, it's going
to be us first. Uh. And she really in some accounts,
some of the newer um biographies of her, really do
focus on her more as like I'm trying to look
out for my country and my people, and it's not
so much about her being power hungry, which is how
she's sometimes portrayed. But she first expanded Palmyras borders towards

(14:32):
Mesopotamia to the east and then towards Asia Minor in
the northwest. And during this time she wasn't really neglecting
palmirase duties and its ties with Rome as part of
their alliance. But like I said, she really did have
a sense that she should be looking out for Palmyra
first always. When Roman Emperor Claudius died, Zenobia became a
little more aggressive and her expansion of the territory, although

(14:55):
she also seems to have kept an effort to keep
the peace with Claudius's successor are Ray Alien palm Iron
coins of the period feature a Aelian which shows, you know,
some kind of amicable agreement between the two of them,
but amicable arrangement or not, things did not stay cordial.
Arelium was really adverse to the idea that the Roman

(15:18):
Empire was going to be divided by people like Zenobia,
who were, you know, really creating their own stable power base,
and Palmira was just getting too powerful for his comfort.
So while Aralian was busy with other campaigns and couldn't
really pay attention to what Zenobia was doing, in two
seventy pal Marine troops advanced into Syria and Egypt, and

(15:39):
Zenobia was able to expand her domain so that it
stretched all the way from Egypt to Mesopotamia and from
the hell Sponse to North Arabia. But in two seventy two,
Arelian was then wrapping up other matters and he was
ready to turn his attention to the Palmyra issue. And
as he advanced towards her troops near Antioch, some of

(16:00):
her Roman and Greek troops actually deserted, and as a consequence,
she suffered a terrible defeat. But some things only got
worse when her troops encountered the Imperial Army again in
a Mesa, where she was once again defeated. So unlike before,
when she had pretty soundly taken care of things, her
troops were starting to break up at the same time
that Rome's troops were really rallying and getting more powerful

(16:21):
and more organized under a Relian. This reminds me of
a board game that I like to play called Small World,
in which your goal is to take more territory. Yeah,
but it gets to a point where you cannot defend
the territory to examine more and you start to decline.
And that is what happened. Zenobia fell back to Palmyra,
but Aurelian was right on her heels, and it would

(16:42):
seem like he was about to just strike the killing blow,
but all of this campaign had really taken a toll
on him and his troops, and a Relian at this
point actually offered Zenobia a deal. But in the deal,
she would have to surrender, and she was frankly having
none of that. Uh. Any military strategists would say that
this was a really foolish response on her part. She

(17:04):
was in terrible trouble already, she'd had two big defeats,
and she kind of stirred the pot because she was
a little bit of a staff pants. So here's the
bulk of the letter that was sent to Zenobia by Aralian,
as printed in William Wright's book on Account of Palmyra
and Zenobia. And this was claimed to be preserved by

(17:24):
Flavius of Episcus as part of the Historia Augusta. And
this is Aralian's note. You ought to do that of
your own accord, which is commanded by my letters. I
charge you to surrender on your lives being spared, and you,
o Zenobia, may pass your life in some spot where
I shall place you in pursuance of the distinguished sentence

(17:45):
of the Senate. Your gems are silver, gold, silk, horses,
camels being given up to the Roman treasury. The laws
and institutions of the palm Irons shall be respected. So
he's basically saying, you'll have to give us everything, but
I'm gonna set you up in a nice house. You'll
be fine, but you will be surrendered. And Zenobia's response
was basically nope. Here is her reply. No one as

(18:10):
yet except THEE, has dared to ask what thou demandest.
Whatever is to be achieved by war must be sought
by valor. Thou askest me to surrender, as if thou
wert ignorant that Queen Cleopatra chose rather to perish than
to survive her dignity. The Persian auxiliaries whom we await

(18:31):
cannot be far off. The Saracens are on our side,
as well as the Armenians. The Syrian robbers O Aurelian
have conquered your army. What then if that band which
we expect on all sides shall come, you will then
lay aside the superciliousness with which you now demand my surrender,
as if you were victor on every side. Yeah, she

(18:54):
didn't really have any interest in bending to his will. Obviously.
I have to wonder how much of this is um
has been made more floral and it's in its verbiage
than the original, But we don't know. This is the
one historical piece of well, and you know we we talked.
We had a similar situation in our episode about Boudice. Yeah,

(19:14):
that she has the big speech, has a big speech
that was recorded by Roman people. Kind of Yeah, same situation, um,
But regardless of whether that is a more florid version
of her reply or not, she did not give up,
and the siegeon Palmira continued and it was nothing short
of catastrophic. The city was basically raised UH and Palmyra

(19:36):
and its residents surrendered, but Zenobia really didn't. She actually
took off on a camel, as you do. She was
headed to Persia to beg for the help that she
had thought was going to be coming and had kind
of threatened Arelian with UH. And that plan did not
work out so well, because she was actually UH pursued
and captured by UH the Roman forces, and she was

(19:57):
taken before Aralian for trial, and according to most accounts,
right around this time, her son also died, so she
was all that was left of the family kingdom that
odin Athos had built. And while many Romans apparently demanded
Zenobia's death, Aurelian instead wanted to make her a big
feature of his victory parade, which was really her last

(20:20):
historic appearance that is recorded consistently throughout many tellings. That's
the last time she was seen UH. And in some
versions of this story, he absolutely loaded her down with
so many jewels and gold chains and pendance that she
could barely walk UM, almost as if to say, fine,
you want to keep all your stuff, here's how you

(20:41):
do it. We're gonna put it all on you and
make you walk in the parade so I can show
you how ridiculous you are and all of Rome will
see it. It's kind of a cruel and interesting way
to punish a person. Yeah. Uh. There are some accounts
that suggest her son was in the parade, which would
say he did not die, but more favored the idea
that he was killed around this time. So at the

(21:02):
end of Zenobia's life, things are a little cloudy when
it comes to details, and there are lots of conflicting
accounts of exactly what happened. In some of the stories,
she commits suicide. In others, she's granted her freedom by
Aralian and she lives out her life and a villa.
The thing that she had not really wanted to have happened.
Variation on the suicide story suggests that she starved to

(21:24):
death on the trip to Rome and never actually appeared
in the parade. Yeah, that she basically went on a
hunger strike, she starved herself. Uh. And some accounts, though,
even paint this picture of her living this really fab
life in her villa, and that she married a Roman
and she had daughters and they all lived as Romans
and happily ever after a kind of version. Uh. Again,

(21:46):
we don't really know. That seems a little far fetched
to me, but it could have happened, I wasn't there. Yeah.
Some some historians like the pairs Zenobia with the Queen
of Sheba as two examples of strong Arab queens, but
Zenobia herself apparently preferred to be compared to Cleopatra. Some
historians have suggested that this was kind of a point

(22:07):
of pride with her because Cleopatra is more famous than
the Queen of Sheba. H. So at times she may
have even claimed to have been a descendant of Cleopatra,
although the math on that is pretty shady. Yeah, like
the math and her her claims of the lineage and
how it would have worked don't really work out correctly.
She is also sometimes compared to Budica, who we referenced

(22:28):
a couple of times and we featured in a previous podcast. Uh.
And as for her city, Palmira, it's been a UNESCO
World Heritage Sites in nineteen eighty. It's pretty much abandoned
at this point, and it's there's a little village I
think nearby, but uh, there're still ruins that stand that
we're somehow survived the the raising that happened under Aralian

(22:51):
and I'm sure someone was rebuilt. But that's the scoop,
A little bit more of a deeper dive on Zenobia
and her mythic status and a relationship with with Rome. Yeah.
I don't think we'll ever know the full true story
at this point. Nope. The longer the years go on,
the less the information becomes reliable. Well, and even if

(23:12):
we find, uh, you know, unearthed from somewhere more accounts
of her life, in all likelihoods, they would just add
more contradictions anything, they would be new and exciting version,
exciting contradictions to the story that already hasn't many contradictions. Yeah,
which is the peril of any ancient story. In ancient history,

(23:32):
we can't always trust the accounts, Nope, And the trustworthy
ones are often really brief, So we put it together.
I believe you also have some listener mails. I do.
I have two pieces of mail, both about our Haunted
Mansion podcast. Uh. The first is from our listener Jesse,
and she says, I listened to both parts of your
podcast on the hand and Haunted Mansion while I was
at work last week and loved it so much that

(23:53):
my husband and I listened to it again on our
way through aut Disney World last Sunday, and I'm wondering
if she wasn't there at the same time I was. Uh.
Finally got us in the spirit no pen intended, and
we went on the Haunted Mansion first. That we live
in Florida now, I grew up in southern California and
my family always had annual passes to Disneyland. We would
go on all of the rides repeatedly, of course, and
this included the Haunted Mansion. Since we were there so frequently,

(24:16):
we got to know a lot of the cast members,
and one of the stories they were fond of telling
us was that there was a little table in the
seance room that was often moved by actual spirits during
the hours when the park was closed. I have many
happy memories of riding the Haunted Mansion and checking to
see what side of the room the table would be
on that day. Sure enough, sometimes it was on the
left side, and sometimes it was on the right. Whether

(24:37):
or not this was evidence of an actual mischievous spirit
or just a bit of extra Disney magic sprinkled on
by cast members isn't for debate. We love the podcast,
keep up the good work. So I just love that
because it is one of those uh Disney magic things
where no cast member, We'll tell you one way and
the other I tell you probably spirit. I love it.
And then we got another great email from Jeff who

(25:00):
is the webmaster at JOm buggies dot com that I
actually referenced in our podcast. He says, Hi, Tracy and Holly,
great episode on the Haunted Mansion a personal passion of mine.
One thing I thought i'd point out in case it
might matter to you, and of course it does, Jeff. Uh,
the Evergreen House you mentioned is not actually any reference
for the architectural look of disney Lands Pounded mansion that
was debunked a few years ago by a couple of
Disney historians and salutes and my website played a part,

(25:23):
and Jason Surrell even noted the new information in the
revised edition of his book that came out to a
couple of years ago. The Winchester House and also Hurst Castle,
by the way, we're studied by uh W E D
primarily in terms of how they handled group tours. Ken
Anderson actually just copied right down to the perspective. A
photo of another house in Baltimore called the Shipley Lie

(25:43):
Decker House that he found it in a book of
Victorian arc that was in the W. E. D Library. Uh.
And he says if the W. E. D imagineers did
visit the Evergreen House in Baltimore, I'm guessing it was
simply to research the Shipley Lie Decker House, since the
Evergreen House is part of Johns Hopkins University. But the
Shipley Lie Decker House is very clearly the beginning and

(26:04):
end of the architectural inspiration for Walt's Hana Mansion at Disneyland.
I'll attach a side by side image. But I love
the episode. I'm looking forward to part two, and this
gave me an awesome excuse to buy the updated version
of the book when I was in Disney World yesterday.
I just got back. Uh. And he is absolutely correct
that is mentioned in the update. So thank you Jeff

(26:24):
for correcting that, because of course we care. That's cool stuff.
I want to visit all those houses that were part
of the I mean, I've been to a couple, but
that would be a fun tour, like the inspiration for Disneylands.
Want imagine tour of weird and wonderful mention. Let's do that,
Okay for the podcast, uh, So, thank you to both
of you for your funny emails. Keep those coming. If

(26:46):
you would like to email us, you can do so
at History Podcasts at Discovery dot com. You can visit
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Twitter at missed in History and missed in History dot
tumbler dot com. We are also on Pinterest spinning historical
things and things of historical interest. Uh. If you would
like to learn about a topic related to today's subject,

(27:07):
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and wacky search, you can type in the words first
feminists and uh. The article that will come up is
We're ancient Egyptians the first feminists and that was written
by Kristin Conger of stuff Mom Never Told You, and
it is a really fun read. So if you would
like to learn about that, or anything else your mind
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