A city that was never lost
Palmyra is sometimes described as forgotten or lost, but that is not accurate. Its ruins stood in plain sight in the Syrian desert, local people lived among them for centuries, and European travellers visited and described them from the seventeenth century onward. What was forgotten, for many readers, is the political history of a city that for a few years in the third century CE headed a state of its own. That story centres on Queen Zenobia, and the sources for it are patchy and sometimes unreliable.
Odaenathus and the crisis of the 260s
Palmyra was a wealthy caravan city within the Roman province of Syria, governed by a local council and prominent families. In the third century the empire was under severe strain. In 260 the Persian king Shapur I captured the Roman emperor Valerian, an extraordinary humiliation, and Rome’s eastern provinces were open to attack.
Septimius Odaenathus, the leading man of Palmyra, who held Roman rank, took the lead in resisting the Persians. He drove them back and campaigned toward their capital at Ctesiphon, later known for Taq Kasra. In return the emperor Gallienus gave him extraordinary military authority in the East. Odaenathus was in effect a Roman ally who also acted independently. He was murdered around 267 or 268, along with his eldest son, in circumstances that ancient sources explain in different ways.
Zenobia and the breakaway state
After his death, his widow Zenobia (Bat-Zabbai in Palmyrene) ruled on behalf of their young son Vaballathus. Over the next few years she widened Palmyra’s reach. Her forces took control of much of Syria and, around 270, Egypt, and pushed into parts of Anatolia. For a time she and Vaballathus avoided an open break, and coins from Egypt were issued with the name of the Roman emperor Aurelian on one side and Vaballathus on the other. By 271, however, Zenobia had taken the title of Augusta and Vaballathus was styled as Augustus, a clear claim to imperial status.
Her motives and her self-image are not known with certainty. Later writers, including the unreliable Historia Augusta, portray her as a learned, courageous queen who traced her descent to Cleopatra. That description should be treated cautiously. What is more secure is that Palmyra’s rulers had built a powerful position during a time of imperial weakness, and that they controlled valuable trade, including routes connected to the Silk Road trade routes.
Aurelian’s response
Aurelian, emperor from 270, first dealt with other threats. By 272 he was ready to march east with his Roman legions and allied troops. He won battles near Antioch and at Emesa (modern Homs), then moved on Palmyra. According to the ancient accounts, Zenobia left the city to seek help from Persia, but she was caught near the Euphrates and brought back. The city submitted.
A second rebellion in Palmyra followed, and Aurelian returned in 273. He suppressed it and the city was plundered; its walls and some parts were damaged. Palmyra never regained its previous status, although it continued as a smaller town and a Roman military post, and its later fortifications came under Diocletian. The fate of Zenobia is uncertain. Some sources say she was taken to Rome and walked in Aurelian’s triumph around 274, and later accounts say she lived on in Italy, but these later details are of doubtful reliability. Her story shows how a frontier city could gain power in a crisis, and how the fall of Rome in the West would later be preceded by many earlier tests of imperial unity.
Palmyra since antiquity
After Aurelian, Palmyra’s monuments gradually aged. The Temple of Bel was reused as a church and then a mosque, and a village grew inside its court. Western visitors, including English merchants in the seventeenth century and later scholars, drew and published views of the ruins, which strongly influenced European ideas of classical architecture. Excavations and surveys in the twentieth century revealed more of the city’s streets, temples and tombs.
In the twenty-first century the site suffered severely during the Syrian conflict. Armed groups captured it in May 2015 and again in December 2016, and during these periods the Temple of Baalshamin, the main building of the Temple of Bel, the Monumental Arch and several tower tombs were destroyed or badly damaged, and the theatre and museum were also hit. The retired Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, who had devoted decades to the site, was killed in August 2015. Government forces retook Palmyra in March 2016 and again in March 2017. Since then, specialists have recorded the damage and discussed whether, and how, to restore buildings. Opinions differ, and decisions involve Syrian authorities, international bodies and the people who live nearby.
What the story shows
Palmyra’s treasure is not hidden gold but the combination of buildings, inscriptions and carved portraits that document a diverse trading city. The Zenobia episode is only one chapter of that history. It shows how a local ruling family took advantage of a crisis, how Rome responded, and how the sources, written mostly by outsiders, can shape a legend that is hard to separate from fact.