[116] The chronology of these events is not quite settled. The rarity of the Syrian coins of Vaballathus as Augustus shows that the rupture with Aurelian (end of 270) was soon followed by the conquest. According to the dated inscriptions of Odaenathus and Zenobia of August 271 (Waddington, 2611), the rule of the queen was at that time still intact. As an expedition of this sort, from the conditions of the climate, could not well take place otherwise than in spring, the first capture of Palmyra must have ensued in the spring of 272. The most recent (merely Palmyrene) inscription which we know from that quarter (Vogué, n. 116) is of August 272. The insurrection probably falls at this time; the second capture and the destruction somewhere in the spring of the year 273 (in accordance with which, I. 166, note 1, is to be corrected).
[117] It throws no light on the position of the Armenians, that in descriptions otherwise thoroughly apocryphal (vita Valer. 6; vita Aurel. 37, 28) the Armenians after the catastrophe of Valerian keep to the Persians, and appear in the last crisis of the Palmyrenes as allies of Zenobia by the side of the Persians; both are obvious consequences from the general position of things. That Aurelian did not subdue Armenia any more than Mesopotamia, is supported in this case partly by the silence of the authorities, partly by the account of Synesius (de regno, p. 17) that the emperor Carinus (rather Carus) had in Armenia, close to the frontier of the Persian territory, summarily dismissed a Persian embassy, and that the young Persian king, alarmed by its report, had declared himself ready for any concession. I do not see how this narrative can be referred to Probus, as von Gutschmid thinks (Zeitschr. d. deutsch. morgenl. Gesell. xxxi. 50); on the other hand it suits very well the Persian expedition of Carus.
[118] The reconquest of Mesopotamia is reported only by the biographer, c. 8; but at the outbreak of the Persian war under Diocletian it is Roman. There is mention at the same place of internal troubles in the Persian empire; also in a discourse held in the year 289 (Paneg. iii. c. 17) there is mention of the war, which is waged against the king of Persia—this was Bahram II.—by his own brother Ormies or rather Hormizd adscitis Sacis et Ruffis (?) et Gellis (comp. Nöldeke, Tabarî, p. 479). We have altogether only some detached notices as to this important campaign.
[119] This is stated clearly by Mamertinus (Paneg. ii. 7, comp. ii. 10, iii. 6) in the oration held in 289: Syriam velut amplexu suo tegebat Euphrates antequam Diocletiano sponte (that is, without Diocletian needing to have recourse to arms, as is then further set forth) se dederent regna Persarum; and further by another panegyrist of the year 296 (Paneg. v. 3): Partho ultra Tigrim reducto. Turns like that in Victor, Caes. xxxix. 33, that Galerius relictis finibus had marched to Mesopotamia, or that Narseh, according to Rufius Festus, c. 25, ceded Mesopotamia in peace, cannot on the other hand be urged; and as little, that Oriental authorities place the Roman occupation of Nisibis in 609 Sel. = 297/8 A.D. (Nöldeke, Tabarî, p. 50). If this were correct, the exact account as to the negotiations for peace of 297 in Petrus Patricius, fr, 14, could not possibly be silent as to the cession of Mesopotamia and merely make mention of the regulation of the frontier-traffic.
[120] That Narseh broke into Armenia at that time Roman, is stated by Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 11; for Mesopotamia the same follows from Eutropius, ix. 24. On the 1st March 296 peace was still subsisting, or at any rate the declaration of war was not yet known in the west (Paneg. v. 10).
[121] The differences in the exceptionally good accounts, particularly of Petrus Patricius, fr. 14, and Ammianus, xxv. 7, 9, are probably only of a formal kind. The fact that the Tigris was to be the proper boundary of the empire, as Priscus says, does not exclude, especially considering the peculiar character of its upper course, the possibility of the boundary there partially going beyond it; on the contrary, the five districts previously named in Petrus appear to be adduced just as beyond the Tigris, and to be excepted from the following general definition. The districts adduced by Priscus here and, expressly as beyond the Tigris, by Ammianus—these are in both Arzanene, Carduene, and Zabdicene, in Priscus Sophene and Intilene ("rather Ingilene, in Armenia Angel, now Egil"; Kiepert), in Ammianus Moxoene and Rehimene (?)—cannot possibly all have been looked on by the Romans as Persian before the peace, when at any rate Armenia was already Romano iuri obnoxia (Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 11); beyond doubt the more westerly of them already then formed a part of Roman Armenia, and stand here only in so far as they were, in consequence of the peace, incorporated with the empire as the satrapy of Sophene. That the question here concerned not the boundary of the cession, but that of the territory directly imperial, is shown by the conclusion, which settles the boundary between Armenia and Media.
[122] We cannot exactly determine the standing quarters of the Syrian legions; yet what is here said is substantially assured. Under Nero the 10th legion lay at Raphaneae, north-west from Hamath (Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3); and at that same place, or at any rate nearly in this region under Tiberius the 6th (Tacitus, Ann. ii. 79); probably in or near Antioch the 12th under Nero (Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 18, 19). At least one legion lay on the Euphrates; for the time before the annexation of Commagene Josephus attests this (Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3), and subsequently one of the Syrian legions had its headquarters in Samosata (Ptolemaeus, v. 15, 11; inscription from the time of Severus, C. I. L. vi. 1409; Itin. Antonini, p. 186). Probably the staffs of most of the Syrian legions had their seat in the western districts, and the ever-recurring complaint that encamping in the towns disorganised the Syrian army, applies chiefly to this arrangement. It is doubtful whether in the better times there existed headquarters proper of the legions on the edge of the desert; at the frontier-posts there detachments of the legions were employed, and in particular the specially disturbed district between Damascus and Bostra was strongly furnished with legionaries provided on the one hand by the command of Syria, on the other by that of Arabia after its institution by Trajan.
[123] There is a coin of Byblus from the time of Augustus with a Greek and Phoenician legend (Imhoof-Blumer, Monnaies grecques, 1883, p. 443).
[124] Johannes Chrysostomus of Antioch († 407) points on several occasions (de sanctis martyr. Opp. ed. Paris, 1718, vol. ii. p. 651; Homil. xix. ibid. p. 188) to the ἑτεροφωνία, the βάρβαρος φωνή of the λαός in contrast to the language of the cultured.
[125] The extract of Photius from the romance of Jamblichus, c. 17, which erroneously makes the author a Babylonian, is essentially corrected and supplemented by the scholion upon it. The private secretary of the great-king, who comes among Trajan’s captives to Syria, becomes there tutor of Jamblichus, and instructs him in the "barbarian wisdom," is naturally a figure of the romance running its course in Babylon, which Jamblichus professes to have heard from this his instructor; but characteristic of the time is the Armenian court-man-of-letters and princes’ tutor (for it was doubtless as “good rhetor” that he was called by Sohaemus to Valarshapat) himself, who in virtue of his magical art not merely understands the charming of flies and the conjuring of spirits, but also predicts to Verus the victory over Vologasus, and at the same time narrates in Greek to the Greeks stories such as might stand in the Thousand and One Nights.