On the hushed plain, where sullen horror broods, And darkest frown the Syrian solitudes; Where morn’s soft steps no balmy fragrance leave, And parched and dewless is the couch of eve; Thy form, pale city of the waste, appears Like some faint vision of departed years; In massy clusters still a giant train, Thy sculptured fabrics whiten on the plain. Still stretch thy columned vistas far away, The shadowed dimness of their long array. But where the stirring crowd, the voice of strife, The glow of action and the thrill of life? Hear the loud crash of yon huge fragments fall, The pealing answer of each desert hall; The night-bird shrieking from her secret cell, The hollow winds, the tale of ruin tell. See, fondly lingering, Mithra’s parting rays Gild the proud towers, once vocal with his praise: But the cold altars clasping weeds entwine, And Moslems worship at the godless shrine. Yet here slow pausing memory loves to pour Her magic influence o’er this pensive hour: And yet, as yon recesses deep prolong The echoed sweetness of the Arab song, Recalls that scene, when wisdom’s sceptred child, First broke the stillness of the lonely wild. From air, from ocean, from earth’s utmost clime, The summoned genii heard the muttered rhyme; The tasking spell their airy hands obeyed, And Tadmor glittered in the palmy shade. So to her feet the tide of ages brings The wealth of nations and the pomp of kings, And for her warrior queen, from Parthia’s plain To the dark Ethiop, spreads her ample reign: Vain boast, ev’n she who winds the field along, Waked fiercer frenzy in the patriot throng; And sternly beauteous in the meteor’s light, Shot through the tempest of Emesa’s fight. While trembling captives round the victor wait, Hang on his eye, and catch the word of fate, Zenobia’s self must quail beneath his nod, A kneeling suppliant to the mimic god. But one there stood amid that abject throng, In truth triumphant, and in virtue strong; Beamed on his brow the soul which, undismayed. Smiled at the rod, and scorned the uplifted blade. O’er thee, Palmyra, darkness seems to lower The boding terrors of that fearful hour; Far from thy glade indignant freedom fled, And hope too withered as Longinus bled[61].
Palmyra, having become subject to a foreign yoke, bore the burthen with impatience. The inhabitants cut off the Roman garrison. On which Aurelian instantly returned, took the town, destroyed it, and put to death most of its population, without distinction of age or sex. The slaughter was so extensive, that none were left to plough the adjacent lands.
Aurelian soon repented of his severity. He wrote to Bassus:—“You must now sheathe the sword; the Palmyrenes have been sufficiently slaughtered. We have not spared women; we have slain children; we have strangled old men; we have destroyed the husbandmen. To whom, then, shall we leave the land? To whom shall we leave the city? We must spare those who remain; for we think, that the few there are now existing, will take warning from the punishment of the many who have been destroyed.”
The emperor then goes on to desire his lieutenant to rebuild the Temple of the Sun as magnificently as it had been in times past; to expend 300 pounds weight of gold, which he had found in the coffers of Zenobia, beside 1800 pounds weight of silver, which was raised from the sale of the people’s goods; together with the crown jewels, all which he ordered to be sold, to make money to beautify the temple; while he himself promises to write to the Senate, to send a priest from Rome to dedicate it. But, in the language of Gibbon, it is easier to destroy than it is to restore.
Zenobia was now to be led to the conqueror’s triumph. This triumph was celebrated with extraordinary magnificence. It was opened by twenty elephants, four royal tigers, and above two hundred of the most curious animals from every climate of the known world. Ambassadors from Æthiopia, Arabia, Persia, Bactriana, India, and China, attended the triumph; and a long train of captives,—Goths, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alemanni, Franks, Gauls, Syrians, and Egyptians. Amongst these, Zenobia. She was confined in fetters of gold; a slave supported the gold chain which encircled her neck, and she almost fainted under the weight of her jewels. She did not ride, but walk! preceded by the chariot in which she had once indulged the vain hope of entering Rome as empress[62].
The Palmyrenes[63], says Zosimus, had several declarations from the gods, which portended the overthrow of their empire; and, among others, having consulted the temple of Apollo, at Seleucia in Cilicia, to know if they should ever obtain the empire of the East, they got the following unceremonious answer:
Avoid my temple, cursed, treacherous nation! You even put the gods themselves in passion.
The religion of the Palmyrenes, it is evident, was pagan; their government, for the most part, republican; but their laws are entirely lost; nor can anything be known in respect to their polity, but what may be gathered from the inscriptions. Their chief deity was the Sun.
In regard to their knowledge of art, they have left the finest specimens in the ruins that now remain; and, doubtless, Longinus’ work on the Sublime was written within its walls. “From these hints we may see,” says Mr. Wood, “that this people copied after great models in their manners, their vices, and their virtues. Their funeral customs were from Egypt, their luxury was Persian, and their letters and arts were from the Greeks. Their situation in the midst of these three great nations makes it reasonable to suppose, that they adopted most of their customs and manners. But to say more on that head from such scanty materials, would be to indulge too much in mere conjecture, which seems rather the privilege of the reader than of the writer.”