[106] This we learn from the characteristic narrative of Petrus, fr. 10, which is to be placed before fr. 11.
[107] The account of the continuator of Dio, fr. 7, that the old Odaenathus was put to death, as suspected of treason, by one (not elsewhere mentioned) Rufinus, and that the younger, when he had impeached this person at the bar of the emperor Gallienus, was dismissed on the declaration of Rufinus that the accuser deserved the same fate, cannot be correct as it stands. But Waddington’s proposal to substitute Gallus for Gallienus, and to recognise in the accuser the husband of Zenobia, is not admissible, since the father of this Odaenathus was Hairanes, in whose case there existed no ground at all for such an execution, and the excerpt in its whole character undoubtedly applies to Gallienus. Rather must the old Odaenathus have been the husband of Zenobia, and the author have erroneously assigned to Vaballathus, in whose name the charge was brought, his father’s name.
[108] All the details which are current in our accounts of Zenobia originate from the imperial biographies; and they will only be repeated by such as do not know this source.
[109] The name Vaballathus is given, in addition to the coins and inscriptions, by Polemius Silvius, p. 243 of my edition, and the biographer of Aurelian, c. 38, while he describes as incorrect the statement that Odaenathus had left two sons, Timolaus and Herennianus. In reality these two persons emerging simply in the imperial biographies appear along with all that is connected with them as invented by the writer, to whom the thorough falsification of these biographies is to be referred. Zosimus too, i. 59, knows only of one son, who went into captivity with his mother.
[110] Whether Zenobia claimed for herself formal joint-rule, cannot be certainly determined. In Palmyra she names herself still after the rupture with Rome merely βασιλίσση (Waddington, 2611, 2628), in the rest of the empire she may have laid claim to the title Augusta, Σεβαστή; for, though there are no coins of Zenobia from the period prior to the breach with Rome, yet on the one hand the Alexandrian inscription with βασιλίσσης καὶ βασιλέως προσταξάντων (Eph. epigr. iv. p. 25, p. 33) cannot lay any claim to official redaction, and on the other hand the inscription of Byblos, C. I. Gr. 4503 b = Waddington, n. 2611, gives in fact to Zenobia the title Σεβαστή alongside of Claudius or Aurelian, while it refuses it to Vaballathus. This is so far intelligible, as Augusta was an honorary designation, Augustus an official one, and thus that might well be conceded to the woman which was refused to the man.
[111] So Zosimus, i. 44, narrates the course of events with which Zonaras, xii. 27 and Syncellus, p. 721, in the main agree. The report in the life of Claudius, c. 11, is more displaced than properly contradictory; the first half is only indicated by the naming of Saba; the narrative begins with the successful attempt of Timagenes to ward off the attack of Probus (here Probatus). The view taken of this by me in Sallet (Palmyra, p. 44) is not tenable.
[112] The determination of the date depends on the fact that the usurpation-coins of Vaballathus cease already in the fifth year of his Egyptian reign, i.e. 29th August 270–71; the fact that they are very rare speaks for the beginning of the year. With this essentially agrees the circumstance that the storming of the Prucheion (which, we may add, was no part of the city, but a locality close by the city on the side of the great oasis; Hieronymus, vit. Hilarionis, c. 33, 34, vol. ii. p. 32 Vall.) is put by Eusebius in his Chronicle in the first year of Claudius, by Ammianus, xxii. 16, 15, under Aurelian; the most exact report in Eusebius, H. Eccl. vii. 32, is not dated. The reconquest of Egypt by Probus stands only in his biography, c. 9; it may have happened as it is told, but it is possible also that in this thoroughly falsified source the history of Timagenes has been mutatis mutandis transferred to the emperor.
[113] This is perhaps what the report on the battle of Hemesa, extracted by Zosimus, i. 52, wished to bring out, when it enumerates among the troops of Aurelian the Dalmatians, Moesians, Pannonians, Noricans, Raetians, Mauretanians, and the guard. When he associates with these the troops of Tyana and some divisions from Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenice, Palestine, this applies beyond doubt to the Cappadocian garrisons, which had joined after the capture of Tyana, and to some divisions of the armies of the East favourably disposed to Rome, who went over to Aurelian upon his marching into Syria.
[114] By mistake Eutropius, ix. 13, places the decisive battle haud longe ab Antiochia: the mistake is heightened in Rufius, c. 24 (on whom Hieronymus, chron. a. Abr. 2289 depends), and in Syncellus, p. 721, by the addition apud Immas, ἐν Ἴμμαις, which place, lying 33 Roman miles from Antioch on the road to Chalcis, is far away from Hemesa. The two chief accounts, in Zosimus and the biographer of Aurelian, agree in all essentials.
[115] This is the name given by Zosimus, i. 60, and Polemius Silvius, p. 243; the Achilleus of the biographer of Aurelian, c. 31, seems a confusion with the usurper of the time of Diocletian.—That at the same time in Egypt a partisan of Zenobia and at the same time robber-chief, by name Firmus, rose against the government, is doubtless possible, but the statement rests only on the imperial biographies, and the details added sound very suspiciously.