Curtius and Lucilia have this moment come in, and full of these tidings interrupt me--they with Portia wish to be remembered to you with affection. I shall soon write again--telling you then especially of my interviews with Aurelian, and of Probus. Farewell.
Note.
Piso, it will be observed, makes no mention of, nor allusion to, the story recorded by the historian Zosimus, of the Queen's public accusation of Longinus and the other principal persons of Palmyra, as authors of the rebellion, in order to save her own life. It is well known that Zenobia, chiefly on the authority of this historian, has been charged with having laid upon Longinus and her other counsellors, all the blame of the revolt, as if she had been driven by them against her will into the course she pursued. The words of Zosimus are as follows:
'Emisam rediit et Zenobiam cum suis complicibus pro tribunali stitit. Illa causas exponens, et eulpa semet eximens multos alios in medium protulit, qui cam veluti fæminam seduxissent; quorum in numero et Longinus erat.--Itidem alii quos Zenobia detulerat suppliciis adficiebatur.'
This is suspicious upon the face of it. As if Aurelian needed a formal tribunal and the testimony of Zenobia to inform him who the great men of Palmyra were, and her chief advisers. Longinus, at least, we may suppose, was as well known as Zenobia. But if there was a formal tribunal, then evidence was heard--and not upon one side only, but both. If therefore the statements of Zenobia were false, there were Longinus and the other accused persons, with their witnesses, to make it appear so. If they were true--if she had been overruled--led--or driven--by her advisers, then it was not unreasonable that punishment--if some must suffer--should fall where it did.
But against Zosimus may be arrayed the words of Aurelian himself, in a letter addressed to the Roman senate, and preserved by Pollio. He says,
'Nec ego illi (Zenobiæ) vitam conservassem nisi cam scissem multum Rom:
Reip. profuisse, quum sibi vel liberis suis Orientis servaret imperium.'
Aurelian here says that he would not have spared her life but for one reason, namely, that she had done such signal service to the republic, when either for herself or for her children she had saved the empire in the East. Aurelian spared her life, if he himself is to be believed, because of services rendered to Rome, NOT because by the accusation of others she had cleared herself of the charge of rebellion. Her life was never in any danger, if this be true; and unless it were, she of course had no motive to criminate Longinus in the manner related by Zosimus.
Longinus and his companions suffered therefore, not in consequence of any special accusation--it was not needed for their condemnation--but as a matter of course, because they were leaders and directors of the revolt. It was the usage of war.
Why are Pollio (the biographer of Zenobia) and Vopiscus (the biographer of Aurelian) and Zonaras all silent respecting so remarkable a point of the history of Zenobia? Pollio does not hesitate to say that she had been thought by some to have been partner in the crime of murdering Odenatus and his son Herod--a charge which never found credit in any quarter. Such a biographer surely would not have passed over in silence the unutterable baseness of Zenobia in the accusation of Longinus, if he had ever heard of it and had esteemed it to have come to him as well vouched at least as the other story. Omission under such circumstances is good evidence that it came to him not so well vouched--that is, not vouched at all.