The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

The voluptuous Gallienus could at times start from his rose-strewn couches and the arms of his mistresses, and conduct an energetic raid upon the opponents of his Empire. The victories of Odenathus seem to have inspired one of these fits of vigour. The legions in Gaul had cast off their allegiance to their degraded ruler, put his son Saloninus to death, and chosen as Emperor their able and upright commander, Cassianus Postumus. Gallienus marched against him, pressed him hard for a time, and then returned to Rome to enjoy a magnificent triumph. One hundred white oxen, with gilded horns, two hundred white lambs, several hundred lions, tigers, bears, and other animals, and twelve hundred gladiators, in superb costumes, preceded his car. The more serious Romans looked on in disdain. Some of the mimes, or comedians, dressed as Persians, and went about in the procession, staring in each other’s faces, and saying that they were “looking for the Emperor’s father.” Gallienus had them burned alive.

But the chief interest of this dash into Gaul is that it first brings to our notice the famous Gallic princess Vitruvia or Victoria.[20] We find her supporting Postumus against Gallienus. When he is hard pressed, she persuades him to associate her son, Victorinus, with him in the Empire, and presently she herself becomes Augusta and “Mother of the Camp”—a proof that she accompanied the army. Victorinus is said by one of the contemporary writers to have been more manly than Trajan, more clement than Antonine, graver than Nerva, and a better financier than Vespasian; but this paragon of excellence had the one serious defect that he could not withhold his covetous eyes from the prettier wives of his officers. The responsibility of power sobered him for a time, but before long he led astray the wife of one of his officers, and was assassinated. At his mother’s suggestion he, with his dying voice, named his young son his successor, but the angry soldiers murdered the boy.

Victoria now put forward as candidate one of the soldiers themselves, a brawny officer named Marius, who had at one time been armourer or smith to the camp. He was accepted, but a slight that he was imprudent enough to put upon one of his old associates led to his receiving in his own breast one of the swords he had himself forged, after enjoying the delirious dignity of the purple for two days. The “thirty tyrants” were playing their parts with great rapidity. Tetricus, the commander of the troops and a Senator, was next put forward by Victoria, and he left her in control of the affairs of Gaul while he led the army into Spain. Victoria’s power was not of long duration, and the references to her in the chronicles are too meagre to enable us to picture her remarkable personality. For many years her power in Gaul was so great that her fame ran through the Empire, and Zenobia, as she afterwards told Aurelian, had the design of communicating with her and proposing to divide the Roman world between them. Her end is obscure. When Tetricus returned from Spain, he is said to have resented her domination and put her to death; though it is elsewhere said that her death was due to natural causes. She did not live to witness or share the humiliation of Tetricus a few years later.

We return to Zenobia, who had in the meantime become an independent sovereign. Gallienus had taken alarm at the growth of her power, and sent his general Heraclian with secret instructions to dislodge her. Zenobia divined the real intention of Heraclian and his troops, treated him as an invader, and destroyed his force. An invitation was then received, or obtained, from Egypt, and Zenobia sent 70,000 men to expel the troops of Gallienus from what she regarded as the kingdom of her fathers. Egypt was added to her dominions. Rome was now fully alarmed at the success of the two barbaric women, while every other province of the Empire was overrun by invaders or detached by locally-chosen Emperors. One of these rivals at length drew Gallienus from his palace once more, and gave an opportunity to remove his insolent weakness from the throne. The Emperor was besieging the pretender to the throne in Milan, when some of the leading officers conspired to assassinate him. He was drawn from his tent one night in March (268) by a false alarm that the besieged had made a sally, and, devoid alike of guards and armour, he was soon stricken with a mortal wound. Salonina is said by some to have perished with him, but of this there is no evidence.

His successor, Claudius, an experienced soldier of obscure descent but great personal merit, decided to leave Zenobia and Victoria in possession of their power until he had rid the Empire of the formidable Goths. They were said to have an army of 320,000 men, and the whole of Greece and the north of Asia Minor had been plundered by them. The instruments of Roman comfort or luxury that they took back into the bleak forests of the north seemed to be drawing an inexhaustible stream of marauders upon the debilitated south. Two years were occupied by Claudius in destroying their power, and he had just cleansed the Roman territory of their presence when he died of the pestilence, in the spring of 270. The obscure brother of so virtuous and valorous a ruler was deemed a worthy successor to the purple, but the army made choice of a strong and capable commander, Aurelian, and, after two or three weeks’ timid enjoyment of his power, Quintilius opened his veins and gracefully yielded the throne.

The new Emperor was the bold and sturdy son of a provincial peasant, who had cut his way to the position of commander. Marriage with the daughter of a wealthy noble had further improved his position, and his temperance, zeal for discipline, skill, and bravery had made him a most effective leader. His first care was to complete the victory over the Goths, who were again advancing. After an exhausting struggle he entered into friendly alliance with them, drove back the other barbaric tribes who threatened or ignored the northern frontier of the Empire, and then turned his eyes toward the East. Gibbon makes him first apply himself to the restoration of Gaul, but the historians Vopiscus and Zosimus expressly say that he dealt first with the Queen of the East.

Zenobia had now, in 272, enjoyed her remarkable power for about four years, and seemed, owing to the preoccupation of Rome with the northern barbarians, to have established a solid and durable kingdom. Parthia and Persia respected her southern boundaries; Egypt peacefully acknowledged her rule; and even the cities of Asia Minor were beginning to bow to her title. But Palmyra was not a Rome, and provided too slender a base for so vast a dominion. As Aurelian and his formidable legions marched across Asia Minor, the cities returned at once to the Roman allegiance, and Zenobia prepared for a severe struggle. She led her army out in person from Antioch, and met the Romans near the river Orontes. Modern historians usually follow the account of the battle which describes Aurelian as stealing a victory by stratagem. He is said to have noticed the weight of Zenobia’s heavily-armoured cavalry, drawn them into a wild gallop by a feigned retreat, and then wheeled his troops, when they showed signs of fatigue, and scattered them. But the “Historia Augusta,” the nearest authority, tells us that Aurelian’s troops were really routed at first, and then recovered—owing to a miraculous apparition—and won.

Zenobia retired to Antioch. Her general, Zabda, deluded the inhabitants with a false report of victory, and trailed through the streets a captive whom he had dressed as Aurelian. But the Emperor was advancing, and they fled during the night to Emesa, where they were still able to put 70,000 men in the path of Aurelian. The second battle proved as disastrous to Zenobia as the first, and it was decided to retire at once on Palmyra. For a long time the city held Aurelian at bay, and he magnanimously allowed that its successful resistance was due to the sagacity of Zenobia. In the midst of the long siege he wrote to a friend at Rome:

“I hear that it is said that I do not the work of a man in triumphing over Zenobia. Those who blame me have no idea what kind of a woman she is—how prudent in counsel, how assiduous in arrangement, how severe with the troops, how liberal when it is expedient, how stern when there is need for sternness. I may venture to say that it was due to her that Odenathus put Sapor to flight, and advanced as far as Ctesiphon. I can assure you that she was held in such terror in the East and in Egypt that the Arabs, the Saracens, and the Armenians were afraid to move.”

So difficult and protracted did the siege prove that Aurelian at length wrote to her, offering to spare her life if she would surrender. The answer seems to have been preserved in one of those libraries of valuable documents at Rome, from which the writers of the “Historia Augusta” obtained their material, as they tell us. It ran: