February 22, 2010 • 13 mins
Some authors have described Zenobia, a queen of Palmyra, as a second Cleopatra. Listen in as Sarah and Katie explore the history of Palmyra and Zenobia in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lamber and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And one of
our absolute favorite podcasts was What Happened to Cleopatra's Children.
(00:20):
We chose it because we really like Cleopatra and Jubatu,
and Jubatu because he's our our favorite historical personage, um.
But we also chose it because we wanted to learn
more about Cleopatra's personal life and that of her children.
But consequently we learned a little bit about her struggle
against Rome too, and she is not the only woman
(00:41):
who stood up to Rome. Another woman who has as
our subject for today's podcast, and I'll let really in
give her introduction with this quote, how Ozenobia has thou
dared to insult Roman emperors? And how indeed so? A
little bit about who she was. She was the third
century queen of Palmyra, which today as Syria, and she
(01:01):
was a warrior queen. She conquered again and again until
she came up against Aurelian. She also styled herself like Cleopatra,
who she viewed somewhat as a role model, and did
a lot of building her own legend in her own time.
There are all these stories about her, you know, about
her being this gorgeous woman with her dark brown skin
and her pearly white teeth. But she was someone who
(01:24):
could drink with the boys and also used sex as
a weapon within the bounds of her marriage. So of
course this kind of woman gets written about. Picaccio and
Chaucer right about her. Chaucer mentions her in the Monk's Tale.
So a little bit about who she is. Zenobia has
two names in Latin, it's septimmy as Zenobia and an
Aramaic it's abouts Aby. She was Arab, but she may
(01:47):
also have been Aramian, and some have said she was
Jewish because she treated the Jews of Alexandria well. But
other historians have made a point, like Antonia Fraser, that
that says a lot about Jews in history and their
persecution if you assume just because someone was nice enough
to be people, they must have been part of the group.
So Zenobia's mother may have been Egyptian. Her father was
(02:10):
definitely a wealthy, educated Arab merchant aristocrat, and we've mentioned
Cleopatra a few times now. Zenobia wanted to be like Cleopatra.
She's her role model. She says she's descended from her
by Juba to of course Um, she probably isn't, but
she's still just seizes on this potential ancestor to align
(02:32):
herself with and should kind of put herself in that mole.
And just as Cleopatra tries to align herself with Isis,
the goddess isis Um, Zenobia has this more modern version.
So we should talk a little bit more about Palmyra
and what this kingdom is that she has. It's also
non invites more ancient named Todd Moore at the city
and then the third century BC is when it became important,
(02:55):
and that's because of the city's location in relation to trade.
It's between the Deterranean and the Euphrates on an oasis,
so it was linked by caravan routes to Phoenicia and
Mysa and Damascus, so it's really linking Mesopotamia to the
East here and as far as trade goes, it's a
good place to be. Camels, another favorite topic of pot
(03:18):
are bringing in silk and jade from China. Spices and
ebony are coming in from India, and these wealthy merchant
aristocrats who live there are oftentimes patrons of the art
as well. In a D one fourteen, Palmyra is technically
part of the Roman Empire, but Hadrian gave them a
lot of freedom, even let them levy their own municipal taxes,
(03:40):
which was a big deal. And Palmyra is valuable to
the Roman Empire because it connects them to the east,
and also because of their military prowess. The Palmarian archers
were considered pretty amazing and the Romans were hoping to
use them against the Parthians. So Palmira eventually becomes a colony,
so they get an even better deal than they have
(04:00):
and again more freedom from Rome. And Rome puts Zenobia's
husband on nat Or odin Athis maybe in charge um
and they're too busy dealing with the Goths. The Roman
emperors are too busy, right, so they want someone else
who's watching over the eastern provinces for them while they're
(04:22):
fighting battles on their other borders, and Odonais does the
empire of service. The Emperor Valerian has been defeated, captured
and killed in a gory way by King Support of Persia,
and say he was forced to swallow molten gold and
it looks like Persia is going to take over these
eastern provinces, but odan Athis manages to repel them. However,
(04:44):
he is assassinated in two sixty six or two sixty seven,
as is his heir from his first marriage. So who
killed them? That's our big question here. This guy's at
the height of his glory and he's assassinated. There's a
good reason to believe it could have been Zenobia because
next in line for the throne is her kid, Babalathus Athenodorus.
(05:06):
I'm sorry if I mispronouncing that, which is entirely likely,
and then she would be regent for him. Or it
could also have been the Romans, who may not have
been happy with this self styled king taking over large
parts of their empire and who's getting quite proud of
himself too. So Zenobia becomes region and immediately attacks Egypt.
Rome is busy again fighting the golfs, and in two
(05:29):
sixty nine she's conquered most of Egypt and the next
most of Syria, and by two seventies she's into Asia Minor.
So Palmyra now goes from Egypt to the Bosphorus, including Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine,
in Northern Arabia, Egypt, and a big part of Asia Minor.
She's controlling this huge amount of territory in all of
the trade routes that go through it, which is the
(05:50):
really crucial thing here. Rome totally depends on Egypt for corn,
So if you have Zenobia shedding you out of Egypt,
you're you're in a mess of rubble. So this is
bad news for Rome, but again they're dealing with other
things on other fronts. They don't have the time or
the energy to devote to Zenobia until she declares that
she is independent from Rome, she's no longer a part
(06:12):
of their empire, and in two seventy one she has
money made with her and her son's image, which it's
basically just a declaration of war. Reminds me again of
Cleopatra too, oh exactly. So, the Palm Marines go to
the oracles to find out about the future of their empire,
and it does not go well, to say the very least.
(06:33):
The oracle at Apollo Sarpidonius tells them their inquiries basically
an insult, and the oracle at Venus Aphasitas won't even
take their offerings. Didn't you say it floats there. Yeah,
this is a bad, bad omen for the pal Marines.
It reminded us of the Specters that when whenever ghosts
the Specters happen, it's just bad news. But Realme has
(06:55):
a new emperor into seventy, a Relian, and he's tired
of Zenobia's shenanigans and marches to Asia Minor. So the
pal Marines faith are alien outside of Antioch, and the
palm Marines had this awesome line of archers with the
cavalry behind it and then the infantry behind that, But
the cavalry had a bad habit of getting over zealous
(07:17):
and just losing touch with what else was going on,
according to Anthony Fraser's Yes, and so they get tricky
and they pretend to retreat, hoping that the cavalry will
follow them, which they do, and they then have the
cavalry and the writers running around in the desert until
they get tired, at which point they surround them and
(07:39):
kill them all. So Zenobia is obviously in trouble. At
this point, she heads to Amis that she has alien
in pursuit of her, and each side has about seventy
thousand men, which is a truly large number, and they
catch up with her and the Romans when they were
simply the better army. There are dead men and horses
(08:00):
littering the countryside, and Zenobia flees again. She goes back
to Palmyra, which is about a hundred miles from where
they are. She's probably hoping the distance and the terrain
and the heat are going to keep Arelian from getting
to her, but he makes it, and then she's stuck.
She's in this isolated area. She's got nowhere else to go,
and he sets up a blockade, and famine sets in
(08:21):
pretty soon, and the two right each other's Enobia and
Arlian and Uh. He tells her to surrender and offers
her pretty good terms, but she refuses, absolutely and defiantly.
She will not surrender to the emperor, and she leaves
the city. The snottier interpretation of it is that she
(08:43):
was just trying to escape and she was leaving her
people to their fate, but some people say she was
going to try to get help from Persia against Arielian.
Either way, she's caught at their euphrates and she's brought
to a mesa. Palmyra falls and now she has to
deal with Arillian. So Arelian is not happy that all
of this trouble happened over a woman, and he gives
all these speeches basically trying to justify fighting a woman, essentially,
(09:08):
you know, saying, well, she's a woman, but she really
has a lot of the qualities of a man just
trying to make himself better, look a little better. But
then she goes back with the classic trick of saying, well,
I'm just a weak woman, and it was men who
tricked me. And you know this was none of my
own doing. I didn't even write that defiant letter. It
(09:30):
was the scholar instead, poor scholars executed. And she plays
her cards well. She's taken as a captive to Rome
in this giant parade that Aurelian sets up. In addition
to having Zenobia wearing tons of jewels, pounds of them
and gold shackles, the triumph also features elephants and giraffes
(09:51):
and gladiators and ambassadors captives wearing placards. So I really
liked that detail. They've got people all sorts of captives.
Arialian scotten even though you know Zenobia's captain number one,
but they are signs around their necks saying like Amazon
or something, except for Zenobia, who doesn't need them. With
the pounds of jewels. It's like an exotic natural history triumph.
(10:13):
I really wish I'd been there. But she goes off
to live the rest of her life rather quietly. She
married a Roman senator and went to live in a
villain in the countryside, and that's pretty much the end
of what you hear about Zenobia. So this slow denolment
of her life contrasts really interestingly to that of Cleopatra,
who knows how to go out with a bang or
(10:34):
a rather exactly um. But yeah, I find it so
interesting that somebody who has modeled her life um so
closely on that of Cleopatra is willing to give it
up in the end and admit her defeat. I guess
another interesting thing about Zenobia versus other warrior queens throughout history,
(10:57):
like Boudica, and again I'm going to Anthony of Rager's
book Your Queen's is that her military pursuits weren't about
righting wrongs or any sort of weren't moral, No, they
were completely about ambition, pure burning ambition. And you know,
then she ends up in her little villa in the countryside,
I guess, accomplishing what she could well, and and that
(11:17):
fits into this legend building that we were talking about
earlier that surrounds her, this ambition to UM not only
conquer territories, but build herself up into this uh consequently
mythical personage. She's done such a good job at her
own legend building that she seems kind of false almost.
(11:38):
She seems like the perfect character for UM, like a
made for TV movie or something. It would absolutely go
see that. But that brings us to listener mail, and
today listener mails a little bit different. We're not going
to give you anyone's names, but we had a listener
right to us and he said, please ease in caps,
(12:01):
no more women's history, and we're sorry to say that
that's not going to happen, not at all. I think
when a lot of people think of women's history, they
think of a Jane Austen novel come to life, people
sitting in sitting rooms and talking about manners and things.
And we don't want to discount those stories because those
(12:22):
stories are important, and we would love to talk about
someone like Jane Austen. We do, we would love Jane Austen,
but there are also other stories that don't get covered
as often and things that you do miss in history,
like Zenobia, who I certainly never encountered before today, someone
who was working very much in a male sphere. So
since we're not willing to discount fifty one percent of history, um,
(12:45):
you should send us your favorite women's history topics or
any history because we're always open to it. All to
history podcasts at how stuff works dot com, and if
you like to follow us on Twitter, we're at Missed
in History And if you would like to learn more
about women in the history, you should check out our
website at www dot how stuff works dot com. For
(13:10):
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com and be sure to check out
the Stuff you Missed in History class, blogged on the
how stuff works dot com home page
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lamber and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And one of
our absolute favorite podcasts was What Happened to Cleopatra's Children.
(00:20):
We chose it because we really like Cleopatra and Jubatu,
and Jubatu because he's our our favorite historical personage, um.
But we also chose it because we wanted to learn
more about Cleopatra's personal life and that of her children.
But consequently we learned a little bit about her struggle
against Rome too, and she is not the only woman
(00:41):
who stood up to Rome. Another woman who has as
our subject for today's podcast, and I'll let really in
give her introduction with this quote, how Ozenobia has thou
dared to insult Roman emperors? And how indeed so? A
little bit about who she was. She was the third
century queen of Palmyra, which today as Syria, and she
(01:01):
was a warrior queen. She conquered again and again until
she came up against Aurelian. She also styled herself like Cleopatra,
who she viewed somewhat as a role model, and did
a lot of building her own legend in her own time.
There are all these stories about her, you know, about
her being this gorgeous woman with her dark brown skin
and her pearly white teeth. But she was someone who
(01:24):
could drink with the boys and also used sex as
a weapon within the bounds of her marriage. So of
course this kind of woman gets written about. Picaccio and
Chaucer right about her. Chaucer mentions her in the Monk's Tale.
So a little bit about who she is. Zenobia has
two names in Latin, it's septimmy as Zenobia and an
Aramaic it's abouts Aby. She was Arab, but she may
(01:47):
also have been Aramian, and some have said she was
Jewish because she treated the Jews of Alexandria well. But
other historians have made a point, like Antonia Fraser, that
that says a lot about Jews in history and their
persecution if you assume just because someone was nice enough
to be people, they must have been part of the group.
So Zenobia's mother may have been Egyptian. Her father was
(02:10):
definitely a wealthy, educated Arab merchant aristocrat, and we've mentioned
Cleopatra a few times now. Zenobia wanted to be like Cleopatra.
She's her role model. She says she's descended from her
by Juba to of course Um, she probably isn't, but
she's still just seizes on this potential ancestor to align
(02:32):
herself with and should kind of put herself in that mole.
And just as Cleopatra tries to align herself with Isis,
the goddess isis Um, Zenobia has this more modern version.
So we should talk a little bit more about Palmyra
and what this kingdom is that she has. It's also
non invites more ancient named Todd Moore at the city
and then the third century BC is when it became important,
(02:55):
and that's because of the city's location in relation to trade.
It's between the Deterranean and the Euphrates on an oasis,
so it was linked by caravan routes to Phoenicia and
Mysa and Damascus, so it's really linking Mesopotamia to the
East here and as far as trade goes, it's a
good place to be. Camels, another favorite topic of pot
(03:18):
are bringing in silk and jade from China. Spices and
ebony are coming in from India, and these wealthy merchant
aristocrats who live there are oftentimes patrons of the art
as well. In a D one fourteen, Palmyra is technically
part of the Roman Empire, but Hadrian gave them a
lot of freedom, even let them levy their own municipal taxes,
(03:40):
which was a big deal. And Palmyra is valuable to
the Roman Empire because it connects them to the east,
and also because of their military prowess. The Palmarian archers
were considered pretty amazing and the Romans were hoping to
use them against the Parthians. So Palmira eventually becomes a colony,
so they get an even better deal than they have
(04:00):
and again more freedom from Rome. And Rome puts Zenobia's
husband on nat Or odin Athis maybe in charge um
and they're too busy dealing with the Goths. The Roman
emperors are too busy, right, so they want someone else
who's watching over the eastern provinces for them while they're
(04:22):
fighting battles on their other borders, and Odonais does the
empire of service. The Emperor Valerian has been defeated, captured
and killed in a gory way by King Support of Persia,
and say he was forced to swallow molten gold and
it looks like Persia is going to take over these
eastern provinces, but odan Athis manages to repel them. However,
(04:44):
he is assassinated in two sixty six or two sixty seven,
as is his heir from his first marriage. So who
killed them? That's our big question here. This guy's at
the height of his glory and he's assassinated. There's a
good reason to believe it could have been Zenobia because
next in line for the throne is her kid, Babalathus Athenodorus.
(05:06):
I'm sorry if I mispronouncing that, which is entirely likely,
and then she would be regent for him. Or it
could also have been the Romans, who may not have
been happy with this self styled king taking over large
parts of their empire and who's getting quite proud of
himself too. So Zenobia becomes region and immediately attacks Egypt.
Rome is busy again fighting the golfs, and in two
(05:29):
sixty nine she's conquered most of Egypt and the next
most of Syria, and by two seventies she's into Asia Minor.
So Palmyra now goes from Egypt to the Bosphorus, including Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine,
in Northern Arabia, Egypt, and a big part of Asia Minor.
She's controlling this huge amount of territory in all of
the trade routes that go through it, which is the
(05:50):
really crucial thing here. Rome totally depends on Egypt for corn,
So if you have Zenobia shedding you out of Egypt,
you're you're in a mess of rubble. So this is
bad news for Rome, but again they're dealing with other
things on other fronts. They don't have the time or
the energy to devote to Zenobia until she declares that
she is independent from Rome, she's no longer a part
(06:12):
of their empire, and in two seventy one she has
money made with her and her son's image, which it's
basically just a declaration of war. Reminds me again of
Cleopatra too, oh exactly. So, the Palm Marines go to
the oracles to find out about the future of their empire,
and it does not go well, to say the very least.
(06:33):
The oracle at Apollo Sarpidonius tells them their inquiries basically
an insult, and the oracle at Venus Aphasitas won't even
take their offerings. Didn't you say it floats there. Yeah,
this is a bad, bad omen for the pal Marines.
It reminded us of the Specters that when whenever ghosts
the Specters happen, it's just bad news. But Realme has
(06:55):
a new emperor into seventy, a Relian, and he's tired
of Zenobia's shenanigans and marches to Asia Minor. So the
pal Marines faith are alien outside of Antioch, and the
palm Marines had this awesome line of archers with the
cavalry behind it and then the infantry behind that, But
the cavalry had a bad habit of getting over zealous
(07:17):
and just losing touch with what else was going on,
according to Anthony Fraser's Yes, and so they get tricky
and they pretend to retreat, hoping that the cavalry will
follow them, which they do, and they then have the
cavalry and the writers running around in the desert until
they get tired, at which point they surround them and
(07:39):
kill them all. So Zenobia is obviously in trouble. At
this point, she heads to Amis that she has alien
in pursuit of her, and each side has about seventy
thousand men, which is a truly large number, and they
catch up with her and the Romans when they were
simply the better army. There are dead men and horses
(08:00):
littering the countryside, and Zenobia flees again. She goes back
to Palmyra, which is about a hundred miles from where
they are. She's probably hoping the distance and the terrain
and the heat are going to keep Arelian from getting
to her, but he makes it, and then she's stuck.
She's in this isolated area. She's got nowhere else to go,
and he sets up a blockade, and famine sets in
(08:21):
pretty soon, and the two right each other's Enobia and
Arlian and Uh. He tells her to surrender and offers
her pretty good terms, but she refuses, absolutely and defiantly.
She will not surrender to the emperor, and she leaves
the city. The snottier interpretation of it is that she
(08:43):
was just trying to escape and she was leaving her
people to their fate, but some people say she was
going to try to get help from Persia against Arielian.
Either way, she's caught at their euphrates and she's brought
to a mesa. Palmyra falls and now she has to
deal with Arillian. So Arelian is not happy that all
of this trouble happened over a woman, and he gives
all these speeches basically trying to justify fighting a woman, essentially,
(09:08):
you know, saying, well, she's a woman, but she really
has a lot of the qualities of a man just
trying to make himself better, look a little better. But
then she goes back with the classic trick of saying, well,
I'm just a weak woman, and it was men who
tricked me. And you know this was none of my
own doing. I didn't even write that defiant letter. It
(09:30):
was the scholar instead, poor scholars executed. And she plays
her cards well. She's taken as a captive to Rome
in this giant parade that Aurelian sets up. In addition
to having Zenobia wearing tons of jewels, pounds of them
and gold shackles, the triumph also features elephants and giraffes
(09:51):
and gladiators and ambassadors captives wearing placards. So I really
liked that detail. They've got people all sorts of captives.
Arialian scotten even though you know Zenobia's captain number one,
but they are signs around their necks saying like Amazon
or something, except for Zenobia, who doesn't need them. With
the pounds of jewels. It's like an exotic natural history triumph.
(10:13):
I really wish I'd been there. But she goes off
to live the rest of her life rather quietly. She
married a Roman senator and went to live in a
villain in the countryside, and that's pretty much the end
of what you hear about Zenobia. So this slow denolment
of her life contrasts really interestingly to that of Cleopatra,
who knows how to go out with a bang or
(10:34):
a rather exactly um. But yeah, I find it so
interesting that somebody who has modeled her life um so
closely on that of Cleopatra is willing to give it
up in the end and admit her defeat. I guess
another interesting thing about Zenobia versus other warrior queens throughout history,
(10:57):
like Boudica, and again I'm going to Anthony of Rager's
book Your Queen's is that her military pursuits weren't about
righting wrongs or any sort of weren't moral, No, they
were completely about ambition, pure burning ambition. And you know,
then she ends up in her little villa in the countryside,
I guess, accomplishing what she could well, and and that
(11:17):
fits into this legend building that we were talking about
earlier that surrounds her, this ambition to UM not only
conquer territories, but build herself up into this uh consequently
mythical personage. She's done such a good job at her
own legend building that she seems kind of false almost.
(11:38):
She seems like the perfect character for UM, like a
made for TV movie or something. It would absolutely go
see that. But that brings us to listener mail, and
today listener mails a little bit different. We're not going
to give you anyone's names, but we had a listener
right to us and he said, please ease in caps,
(12:01):
no more women's history, and we're sorry to say that
that's not going to happen, not at all. I think
when a lot of people think of women's history, they
think of a Jane Austen novel come to life, people
sitting in sitting rooms and talking about manners and things.
And we don't want to discount those stories because those
(12:22):
stories are important, and we would love to talk about
someone like Jane Austen. We do, we would love Jane Austen,
but there are also other stories that don't get covered
as often and things that you do miss in history,
like Zenobia, who I certainly never encountered before today, someone
who was working very much in a male sphere. So
since we're not willing to discount fifty one percent of history, um,
(12:45):
you should send us your favorite women's history topics or
any history because we're always open to it. All to
history podcasts at how stuff works dot com, and if
you like to follow us on Twitter, we're at Missed
in History And if you would like to learn more
about women in the history, you should check out our
website at www dot how stuff works dot com. For
(13:10):
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com and be sure to check out
the Stuff you Missed in History class, blogged on the
how stuff works dot com home page
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