Septimia Zenobia (Palmyrene Aramaic: 𐡡𐡶𐡦𐡡𐡩, romanized: Bat-Zabbai; c. 240 – c. 274) was a third-century queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria. Many legends surround her ancestry; she was probably not a commoner. She married Odaenathus, who became king of the city of Palmyra in 260, elevating it to supreme power in the Near East by defeating the Sasanian Empire of Persia and stabilizing the Roman East. After Odaenathus' assassination in 267, Zenobia became the regent of her son Vaballathus and held de facto power throughout his reign (267 to 272).
In 270, Zenobia launched an invasion that brought most of the Roman East under her sway and culminated with the annexation of Egypt. By mid-271 her realm extended from Ancyra, central Anatolia, to Upper Egypt, although she remained nominally subordinate to Rome. However, in reaction to the campaign of the Roman emperor Aurelian in 272, Zenobia declared her son emperor and assumed the title of empress, thus declaring Palmyra's independence from Rome. The Romans were victorious after heavy fighting; the empress was besieged in her capital and captured in late 272 by Aurelian, who exiled her to Rome, where she spent the remainder of her life.
Zenobia was a cultured monarch and fostered an intellectual environment in her court, which was open to scholars and philosophers. She was tolerant toward her subjects and protected religious minorities. The empress maintained a stable administration, which governed a multicultural, multiethnic empire. Zenobia died after 274, and many tales have been recorded about her fate. Her rise and fall have inspired historians, artists and novelists, and she is a patriotic symbol in Syria.
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Name, appearance and sources
Zenobia was born c. 240–241, and bore the gentilicium (surname) Septimia. Her native Palmyrene name was Bat-Zabbai (written "Btzby" in the Palmyrene alphabet), an Aramaic name meaning "daughter of Zabbai". Such compound names for women were common in Palmyra, where the element "bt" means daughter, but the personal name that follows does not necessarily denote the immediate father, rather referring to the ancestor of the family. In Greek—Palmyra's diplomatic and second language, used in many Palmyrene inscriptions—she used the name Zenobia. In Palmyra, when written in Greek, names such as Zabeida, Zabdila, Zabbai or Zabda were often transformed into "Zenobios" (masculine) and "Zenobia" (feminine). The element "Zabbai" from Zenobia's native name means "gift of N.N. [god]", and the name Zenobia translates to "one whose life derives from Zeus". The historian Victor Duruy believed that the queen used the Greek name as a translation of her native name, in deference to her Greek subjects. The philologist Wilhelm Dittenberger argued that the name Bat-Zabbai underwent a detortum (twist), thus resulting in the name Zenobia.
The ninth-century historian al-Tabari, in his highly fictionalized account, wrote that the queen's name was Na'ila al-Zabba'. Manichaean sources, reporting the visit of the apostle Mar Adda to the region during the time of Odaenathus, called Zenobia "Queen Tadi", wife of kysr (caesar). The name given to Zenobia in those Manichaean writings seems to derive from Tadmor, Palmyra's native name, and this is supported by the Coptic Acts Codex, in which Zenobia is named Queen Thadmor.
No contemporary statues of Zenobia have been found in Palmyra or elsewhere, with only inscriptions on statues' bases surviving, indicating that a statue of the queen once stood in the place; most known representations of Zenobia are the idealized portraits of her found on her coins. Sculptures of Palmyrene style were normally impersonal, unlike Greek and Roman ones: a statue of Zenobia in this style would have given an idea of her general style in dress and jewelry but would not have revealed her true appearance. The non-contemporary historian Edward Gibbon has described her as being "of a dark complexion" and considered "most lovely," and that she "equalled in beauty her [claimed] ancestor Cleopatra." British scholar William Wright visited Palmyra toward the end of the nineteenth century in a vain search for a sculpture of the queen.
In addition to archaeological evidence, Zenobia's life was recorded in different ancient sources but many are flawed or fabricated; the Historia Augusta, a late-Roman collection of biographies, is the most notable (albeit unreliable) source for the era. The author (or authors) of the Historia Augusta invented many events and letters attributed to Zenobia in the absence of contemporary sources. Some Historia Augusta accounts are corroborated from other sources, and are more credible. The Byzantine chronicler Joannes Zonaras is considered an important source for the life of Zenobia.
Origin, family and early life
Palmyrene society was an amalgam of Semitic-speaking peoples, mostly Arabs and Arameans, and Zenobia cannot be identified with any one group; as a Palmyrene, she may have had both Arab and Aramean ancestry. However, the Palmyrene's never considered themselves Arab, and to call Palmyra "Arab" is a modern device with no contemporary usage. Information about Zenobia's ancestry and immediate family connections is scarce and contradictory. Nothing is known about her mother, and her father's identity is debated. Manichaean sources mention a "Nafsha", sister of the "queen of Palmyra", but those sources are confused and "Nafsha" may refer to Zenobia herself: it is doubtful that Zenobia had a sister.
Apparently not a commoner, Zenobia would have received an education appropriate for a noble Palmyrene girl. The Historia Augusta contains details of her early life, although their veracity is dubious; according to the Historia Augusta, the queen's hobby as a child was hunting and, in addition to her Palmyrene Aramaic mother tongue, she was fluent in Egyptian and Greek and spoke Latin. When she was about fourteen years old (ca. 255), Zenobia became the second wife of Odaenathus, the ras ("lord") of Palmyra. Noble families in Palmyra often intermarried, and it is probable that Zenobia and Odaenathus shared some ancestors.
Contemporary epigraphical evidence
Basing their suppositions upon archaeological evidence, various historians have suggested several men as Zenobia's father:
Julius Aurelius Zenobius appears on a Palmyrene inscription as a strategos of Palmyra in 231–232; based on the similarity of the names, Zenobius was suggested as Zenobia's father by the numismatist Alfred von Sallet and others. The archaeologist William Waddington argued in favor of Zenobius' identification as the father, assuming that his statue stood opposite to where the statue of the queen stood in Great Colonnade. However, the linguist Jean-Baptiste Chabot pointed out that Zenobius' statue stood opposite to that of Odaenathus not Zenobia and rejected Waddington's hypothesis. The only gentilicium, a hereditary name borne by people that was originally the name of one's gens (family or clan) by patrilineal descent, appearing on Zenobia's inscriptions was "Septimia" (not "Julia Aurelia", which she would have borne if her father's gentilicium was Aurelius), and it cannot be proven that the queen changed her gentilicium to Septimia after her marriage.
One of Zenobia's inscriptions recorded her as "Septimia Bat-Zabbai, daughter of Antiochus". Antiochus' identity is not definitively known: his ancestry is not recorded in Palmyrene inscriptions, and the name was not common in Palmyra. This, combined with the meaning of Zenobia's Palmyrene name (daughter of Zabbai), led scholars such as Harald Ingholt to speculate that Antiochus might have been a distant ancestor: the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes or Antiochus VII Sidetes, whose wife was the Ptolemaic Cleopatra Thea. In the historian Richard Stoneman's view, Zenobia would not have created an obscure ancestry to connect herself with the ancient Macedonian rulers: if a fabricated ancestry were needed, a more direct connection would have been invented. According to Stoneman, Zenobia "had reason to believe [her Seleucid ancestry] to be true". The historian Patricia Southern, noting that Antiochus was mentioned without a royal title or a hint of great lineage, believes that he was a direct ancestor or a relative rather than a Seleucid king who lived three centuries before Zenobia.
On the basis of Zenobia's Palmyrene name, Bat Zabbai, her father may have been called Zabbai; alternatively, Zabbai may have been the name of a more distant ancestor. The historian Trevor Bryce suggests that she was related to Septimius Zabbai, Palmyra's garrison leader, and he may even have been her father. The archaeologist Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau, attempting to reconcile the meaning of the name "Bat Zabbai" with the inscription mentioning the queen as daughter of Antiochus, suggested that two brothers, Zabbai and Antiochus, existed, with a childless Zabbai dying and leaving his widow to marry his brother Antiochus. Thus, since Zenobia was born out of a levirate marriage, she was theoretically the daughter of Zabbai, hence the name.
Ancient sources
In the Historia Augusta, Zenobia is said to have been a descendant of Cleopatra and claimed descent from the Ptolemies. According to the Souda, a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia, after the Palmyrene conquest of Egypt, the sophist Callinicus of Petra wrote a ten-volume history of Alexandria dedicated to Cleopatra. According to modern scholars, by Cleopatra Callinicus meant Zenobia. Apart from legends, there is no direct evidence in Egyptian coinage or papyri of a contemporary conflation of Zenobia with Cleopatra. The connection may have been invented by Zenobia's enemies to discredit her, but circumstantial evidence indicates that Zenobia herself made the claim; an imperial declaration once ascribed to Emperor Severus Alexander (died 235) was probably made by Zenobia in the name of her son Vaballathus, where the king named Alexandria "my ancestral city", which indicates a claim to Ptolemaic ancestry. Zenobia's alleged claim of a connection to Cleopatra seems to have been politically motivated, since it would have given her a connection with Egypt and made her a legitimate successor to the Ptolemies' throne. A relationship between Zenobia and the Ptolemies is unlikely, and attempts by classical sources to trace the queen's ancestry to the Ptolemies through the Seleucids are apocryphal.
Although some Arab historians linked Zenobia to the Queen of Sheba, their accounts are apocryphal. Medieval Arabic traditions identify a queen of Palmyra named al-Zabba', and her most romantic account comes from al-Tabari. According to al-Tabari, she was an Amalekite; her father was 'Amr ibn Zarib, an 'Amālīq sheikh who was killed by the Tanukhids. Al-Tabari identifies a sister of al-Zabba' as "Zabibah". Jadhimah ibn Malik, the Tanukhid king who killed the queen's father, was killed by al-Zabba'. According to al-Tabari, al-Zabba' had a fortress along the Euphrates and ruled Palmyra.
Al-Tabari's account does not mention the Romans, Odaenathus, Vaballathus or the Sassanians; focusing on the tribes and their relations, it is immersed in legends. Although the account is certainly based on the story of Zenobia, it is probably conflated with the story of a semi-legendary nomadic Arab queen (or queens). Al-Zabba''s fortress was probably Halabiye, which was restored by the historic Palmyrene queen and named Zenobia.
Queen of Palmyra
Consort
During the early centuries AD, Palmyra was a city subordinate to Rome and part of the province of Syria Phoenice. In 260 the Roman emperor Valerian marched against the Sassanid Persian monarch Shapur I, who had invaded the empire's eastern regions; Valerian was defeated and captured near Edessa. Odaenathus, formally loyal to Rome and its emperor Gallienus (Valerian's son), was declared king of Palmyra. Launching successful campaigns against Persia, he was crowned King of Kings of the East in 263. Odaenathus crowned his eldest son, Herodianus, as co-ruler. In addition to the royal titles, Odaenathus received many Roman titles, most importantly corrector totius orientis (governor of the entire East), and ruled the Roman territories from the Black Sea to Palestine. In 267, when Zenobia was in her late twenties or early thirties, Odaenathus and his eldest son were assassinated while returning from a campaign.
The first inscription mentioning Zenobia as queen is dated two or three years after Odaenathus' death, so exactly when Zenobia assumed the title "queen of Palmyra" is uncertain. However, she was probably designated as queen when her husband became king. As queen consort, Zenobia remained in the background and was not mentioned in the historical record. According to later accounts, including one by Giovanni Boccaccio, she accompanied her husband on his campaigns. If the accounts of her accompanying her husband are true, according to Southern, Zenobia would have boosted the morale of the soldiers and gained political influence, which she needed in her later career.
According to the Historia Augusta, Odaenathus was assassinated by a cousin named Maeonius. In the Historia Augusta, Odaenathus' son from his first wife was named Herodes and was crowned co-ruler by his father. The Historia Augusta claims that Zenobia conspired with Maeonius for a time because she did not accept her stepson as his father's heir (ahead of her own children). The Historia Augusta does not suggest that Zenobia was involved in the events leading to her husband's murder, and the crime is attributed to Maeonius' moral degeneration and jealousy. This account, according to the historian Alaric Watson, can be dismissed as fictional. Although some modern scholarship suggests that Zenobia was involved in the assassination due to political ambition and opposition to her husband's pro-Roman policy, she continued Odaenathus' policies during her first years on the throne.
Regent
In the Historia Augusta , Maeonius was emperor briefly before he was killed by his soldiers, however, no inscriptions or evidence exist for his reign. At the time of Odaenathus' assassination, Zenobia might have been with her husband; according to chronicler George Syncellus, he was killed near Heraclea Pontica in Bithynia. The transfer of power seems to have been smooth, since Syncellus reports that the time from the assassination to the army handing the crown to Zenobia was one day. Zenobia may have been in Palmyra, but this would have reduced the likelihood of a smooth transition; the soldiers might have chosen one of their officers, so the first scenario of her being with her husband is more likely. The historical records are unanimous that Zenobia did not fight for supremacy and there is no evidence of delay in the transfer of the throne to Odaenathus and Zenobia's son, the ten-year-old Vaballathus. Although she never claimed to rule in her own right and acted as a regent for her son, Zenobia held the reins of power in the kingdom, and Vaballathus was kept in his mother's shadow, never exercising real power.
The Palmyrene monarchy was new; allegiance was based on loyalty to Odaenathus, making the transfer of power to a successor more difficult than it would have been in an established monarchy. Odaenathus tried to ensure the dynasty's future by crowning his eldest son co-king, but both were assassinated. Zenobia, left to secure the Palmyrene succession and retain the loyalty of its subjects, emphasized the continuity between her late husband and his successor (her son). Vaballathus (with Zenobia orchestrating the process) assumed his father's royal titles immediately, and his earliest known inscription records him as King of Kings.
Odaenathus controlled a large area of the Roman East, and held the highest political and military authority in the region, superseding that of the Roman provincial governors. His self-created status was formalized by Emperor Gallienus, who had little choice but to acquiesce. Odaenathus's power relative to that of the emperor and the central authority was unprecedented and elastic, but relations remained smooth until his death. His assassination meant that the Palmyrene rulers' authority and position had to be clarified, which led to a conflict over their interpretation. The Roman court viewed Odaenathus as an appointed Roman official who derived his power from the emperor, but the Palmyrene court saw his position as hereditary. This conflict was the first step on the road to war between Rome and Palmyra.
Odaenathus' Roman titles, such as dux Romanorum, corrector totius orientis and imperator totius orientis differed from his royal eastern ones because the Roman ranks were not hereditary. Vaballathus had a legitimate claim to his royal titles, but had no right to the Roman ones—especially corrector (denoting a senior military and provincial commander in the Roman system), which Zenobia used for her son in his earliest known inscriptions with "King of Kings". Although the Roman emperors accepted the royal succession, the assumption of Roman military rank antagonized the empire. Emperor Gallienus may have decided to intervene in an attempt to regain central authority; according to the Historia Augusta, praetorian prefect Aurelius Heraclianus was dispatched to assert imperial authority over the east and was repelled by the Palmyrene army. The account is doubtful, however, since Heraclianus participated in Gallienus' assassination in 268. Odaenathus was assassinated shortly before the emperor, and Heraclianus would have been unable to be sent to the East, fight the Palmyrenes and return to the West in time to become involved in the conspiracy against the emperor.
Captivity and fate
Aurelian, learning about Zenobia's departure, sent a contingent which captured the empress before she could cross the Euphrates to Persia; Palmyra capitulated soon after news of Zenobia's captivity reached the city in August 272. Aurelian sent the empress and her son to Emesa for trial, followed by most of Palmyra's court elite (including Longinus). According to the Augustan History and Zosimus, Zenobia blamed her actions on her advisers; however, there are no contemporary sources describing the trial, only later hostile Roman ones. The empress's reported cowardice in defeat was probably Aurelian's propaganda; it benefited the emperor to paint Zenobia as selfish and traitorous, discouraging the Palmyrenes from hailing her as a heroine. Although Aurelian had most of his prisoners executed, he spared the empress and her son to parade her in his planned triumph.
Zenobia's fate after Emesa is uncertain since ancient historians left conflicting accounts. Zosimus wrote that she died before crossing the Bosporus on her way to Rome; according to this account, the empress became ill or starved herself to death. The generally unreliable chronicler John Malalas wrote that Aurelian humiliated Zenobia by parading her through the eastern cities on a dromedary; in Antioch, the emperor had her chained and seated on a dais in the hippodrome for three days before the city's populace. Malalas concluded his account by writing that Zenobia appeared in Aurelian's triumph and was then beheaded.
Most ancient historians and modern scholars agree that Zenobia was displayed in Aurelian's 274 triumph; Zosimus was the only source to say that the empress died before reaching Rome, making his account questionable. A public humiliation (as recounted by Malalas) is a plausible scenario, since Aurelian would probably have wanted to publicize his suppression of the Palmyrene rebellion. Only Malalas, however, describes Zenobia's beheading; according to the other historians, her life was spared after Aurelian's triumph. The Augustan History recorded that Aurelian gave Zenobia a villa in Tibur near Hadrian's Villa, where she lived with her children. Zonaras wrote that Zenobia married a nobleman, and Syncellus wrote that she married a Roman senator. The house she reportedly occupied became a tourist attraction in Rome.
Titles
The queen owed her elevated position to her son's minority. To celebrate Herodianus' coronation, a statue was erected in Palmyra in 263. According to the inscription on the base of the statue, it was commissioned by Septimius Worod, then the duumviri (magistrate) of Palmyra, and Julius Aurelius, the Queen's procurator (treasurer). According to the historian David Potter, Zenobia is the queen mentioned, and the inscription is an evidence for the usage of the title by her during Odaenathus' lifetime. An inscription on a milestone on the road between Palmyra and Emesa, dated to Zenobia's early reign, identifies her as "illustrious queen, mother of the king of kings"; this was the first inscription giving her an official position. A lead token from Antioch also identifies Zenobia as queen.
The earliest confirmed attestation of Zenobia as queen in Palmyra is an inscription on the base of a statue erected for her by Zabdas and Zabbai, dated to August 271 and calling her "most illustrious and pious queen". On an undated milestone found near Byblos, Zenobia is titled Sebaste. The queen was never acknowledged as sole monarch in Palmyra, although she was the de facto sovereign of the empire; she was always associated with her husband or son in inscriptions, except in Egypt (where some coins were minted in Zenobia's name alone). According to her coins, the queen assumed the title of Augusta (empress) in 272, and reigned under the regnal name Septimia Zenobia Augusta. In 272, Zenobia, no longer acting as queen-regent, but as Empress of the East, rode forth to beat back the Roman Empire.
Descendants
Aside from Vaballathus, it is unclear if Zenobia had other children, and their alleged identities are subject to scholarly disagreements. The image of a child named Hairan (II) appears on a seal impression with that of his brother Vaballathus; no name of a mother was engraved and the seal is undated. Odaenathus' son Herodianus is identified by Udo Hartmann with Hairan I, a son of Odaenathus who appears in Palmyrene inscriptions as early as 251. David S. Potter, on the other hand, suggested that Hairan II is the son of Zenobia and that he is Herodianus instead of Hairan I. Nathanael Andrade maintained that Hairan I, Herodianus, and Hairan II are the same person, rejecting the existence of a second Hairan.
A controversial Palmyrene inscription mentions the mother of the King Septimius Antiochus; the name of the queen is missing, and Dittenberger refused to fill the gap with Zenobia's name, but many scholars, such as Grace Macurdy considered that the missing name is Zenobia. Septimius Antiochus may have been Vaballathus' younger brother, or was presented in this manner for political reasons; Antiochus was proclaimed emperor in 273, when Palmyra revolted against Rome for a second time. If Antiochus was a son of Zenobia, he was probably a young child not fathered by Odaenathus; Zosimus described him as insignificant, appropriate for a five-year-old boy. On the other hand, Macurdy, citing the language Zosimus used when he described him, considered it more plausible that Antiochus was not a son of Zenobia, but a family relation who used her name to legitimize his claim to the throne.
The names of Herennianus and Timolaus were mentioned as children of Zenobia only in the Historia Augusta. Herennianus may be a conflation of Hairan and Herodianus; Timolaus is probably a fabrication, although the historian Dietmar Kienast suggested that he might have been Vaballathus. According to the Historia Augusta, Zenobia's descendants were Roman nobility during the reign of Emperor Valens (reigned 364–375). Eutropius and Jerome chronicled the queen's descendants in Rome during the fourth and fifth centuries. They may have been the result of a reported marriage to a Roman spouse or offspring who accompanied her from Palmyra; both theories, however, are tentative. Zonaras is the only historian to note that Zenobia had daughters; he wrote that one married Aurelian, who married the queen's other daughters to distinguished Romans. According to Southern, the emperor's marriage to Zenobia's daughter is a fabrication. Another descent claim is the relation of saint Zenobius of Florence (337–417) with the queen; the Girolami banking family claimed descent from the fifth century saint, and the alleged relation was first noted in 1286. The family also extended their roots to Zenobia by claiming that the saint was a descendant of her.
Evaluation and legacy
An evaluation of Zenobia is difficult; the queen was courageous when her husband's supremacy was threatened and by seizing the throne, she protected the region from a power vacuum after Odaenathus' death. According to Watson, she made what Odaenathus left her a "glittering show of strength". In the view of Watson, Zenobia should not be seen as a total powermonger, nor as a selfless hero fighting for a cause; according to the historian David Graf, "She took seriously the titles and responsibilities she assumed for her son and that her program was far more ecumenical and imaginative than that of her husband Odenathus, not just more ambitious".
Zenobia has inspired scholars, academics, musicians and actors; her fame has lingered in the West, and is supreme in the Middle East. As a heroic queen with a tragic end, she stands alongside Cleopatra and Boudica. The queen's legend turned her into an idol, that can be reinterpreted to accommodate the needs of writers and historians; thus, Zenobia has been by turns a freedom fighter, a hero of the oppressed and a national symbol. The queen is a female role model; according to the historian Michael Rostovtzeff, Catherine the Great liked to compare herself to Zenobia as a woman who created military might and an intellectual court. During the 1930s, thanks to an Egyptian-based feminist press, Zenobia became an icon for women's-magazine readers in the Arabic-speaking world as a strong, nationalistic female leader.
Her most lasting legacy is in Syria, where the queen is a national symbol. Zenobia became an icon for Syrian nationalists; she had a cult following among Western-educated Syrians, and an 1871 novel by journalist Salim Al Bustani was entitled Zenobia malikat Tadmor (Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra). Syrian nationalist Ilyas Matar, who wrote Syria's first history in Arabic in 1874, (al-'Uqud al-durriyya fi tarikh al-mamlaka al-Suriyya; The Pearl Necklace in the History of the Syrian Kingdom), was fascinated by Zenobia and included her in his book. To Matar, the queen kindled hope for a new Zenobia who would restore Syria's former grandeur. Another history of Syria was written by Jurji Yanni in 1881, in which Yanni called Zenobia a "daughter of the fatherland", and yearned for her "glorious past". Yanni described Aurelian as a tyrant who deprived Syria of its happiness and independence by capturing its queen.
In modern Syria, Zenobia is regarded as a patriotic symbol; her image appeared on banknotes, and in 1997 she was the subject of the television series Al-Ababeed (The Anarchy). The series was watched by millions in the Arabic-speaking world. It examined the Israeli–Palestinian conflict from a Syrian perspective, where the queen's struggle symbolized the Palestinians' struggle to gain the right of self-determination. Zenobia was also the subject of a biography by Mustafa Tlass, Syria's former minister of defense and one of the country's most prominent figures.
Myth, romanticism and popular culture
Harold Mattingly called Zenobia "one of the most romantic figures in history". According to Southern, "The real Zenobia is elusive, perhaps ultimately unattainable, and novelists, playwrights and historians alike can absorb the available evidence, but still need to indulge in varied degrees of speculation."
She has been the subject of romantic and ideologically-driven biographies by ancient and modern writers. The Augustan History is the clearest example of an ideological account of Zenobia's life, and its author acknowledged that it was written to criticize the emperor Gallienus. According to the Augustan History, Gallienus was weak because he allowed a woman to rule part of the empire and Zenobia was a more able sovereign than the emperor. The narrative changed as the Augustan History moved on to the life of Claudius Gothicus, a lauded and victorious emperor, with the author characterizing Zenobia's protection of the eastern frontier as a wise delegation of power by Claudius. When the Augustan History reached the biography of Aurelian, the author's view of Zenobia changed dramatically; the queen is depicted as a guilty, insolent, proud coward; her wisdom was discredited and her actions deemed the result of manipulation by advisers.
Zenobia's "staunch" beauty was emphasized by the author of the Augustan History, who ascribed to her feminine timidity and inconsistency (the reasons for her alleged betrayal of her advisers to save herself). The queen's sex posed a dilemma for the Augustan History since it cast a shadow on Aurelian's victory. Its author ascribed many masculine traits to Zenobia to make Aurelian a conquering hero who suppressed a dangerous Amazon queen. According to the Augustan History, Zenobia had a clear, manly voice, dressed as an emperor (rather than an empress), rode horseback, was attended by eunuchs instead of ladies-in-waiting, marched with her army, drank with her generals, was careful with money (contrary to the stereotypical spending habits of her sex) and pursued masculine hobbies such as hunting. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a fanciful fourteenth-century account of the queen in which she is a tomboy in childhood who preferred wrestling with boys, wandering in the forests and killing goats to playing like a young girl. Zenobia's chastity was a theme of these romanticized accounts; according to the Augustan History, she disdained sexual intercourse and allowed Odaenathus into her bed only for conception. Her reputed chastity impressed some male historians; Edward Gibbon wrote that Zenobia surpassed Cleopatra in chastity and valor. According to Boccaccio, Zenobia safeguarded her virginity when she wrestled with boys as a child.
Selected cultural depictions
Sculptures:
Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra (1857) by Harriet Hosmer, exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Zenobia in Chains (1859) by Harriet Hosmer. Two copies were made, one exhibited at the Huntington Library and the other at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
Literature:
Chaucer narrates a condensed story of Zenobia's life in one of a series of "tragedies" in "The Monk's Tale".
La gran Cenobia (1625) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca.
Zénobie, tragédie. Où la vérité de l'Histoire est conservée dans l'observation des plus rigoureuses règles du Poème Dramatique (1647) by François Hédelin.
Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra; a Narrative, Founded on History. (1814) by Adelaide O'Keeffe.
The Queen of the East (1956) by Alexander Baron.
Moi, Zénobie reine de Palmyre (1978) by Bernard Simiot.
The Chronicle of Zenobia (2006) by Judith Weingarten.
"A Predicament" (1838) by Edgar Allan Poe.
Paintings:
Queen Zenobia Addressing her Soldiers by Giambattista Tiepolo; it dates to the early eighteenth century but the exact year is not known. This painting (part of a series of tableaux of Zenobia) was painted by Tiepolo on the walls of the Zenobio family palace in Venice, although they were unrelated to the queen.