(5) PALMYRENE EMPIRE
(270-273 AD)
And now we come to the biggest usurper states of all, during the Crisis of the Third Century when the Roman Empire split into three, with two breakaway empires at either end of it, west and east.
The Palmyrene empire was the more dangerous of the two, since it seized most of the wealthier eastern part of the empire, including the empire’s breadbasket in Egypt.
Ironically, the Palmyrene empire originated from the city of Palmyra (now in modern Syria) which while styling itself as a kingdom loyally defended the eastern borders of the Roman Empire from the Sassanid Persians, under its king Odaenathus, who defeated the Persians in 260 AD.
For his loyalty to and defense of the Roman Empire, he was rewarded with the position of Governor of the East, holding the highest political and military authority in the region, superseding that of the Roman provincial governors.
Unfortunately, he and his son were assassinated, so the Palmyrene kingdom now came under the control of its queen, widow of Odaenathus – one of those femme fatale figures to the empire that so alarmed Rome like Cleopatra before her, Zenobia.
Although it’s somewhat sad that Cleopatra eclipses Zenobia in popular imagination, since the shade of Cleopatra wishes she was Zenobia – Zenobia did what Cleopatra could only dream of doing, forge an eastern empire as a genuine rival to Rome.
Zenobia trod lightly at first, but her Palmyrene kingdom slowly transformed into the Palmyrene empire in open rebellion against the Roman Empire and conquering much of the latter’s eastern territory from 270 AD, although historians debate to what extent that rebellion was aimed at Palmyrene independence or more ambitiously at the imperial throne in Rome itself.
And she might have succeeded, certainly in the former and perhaps even the latter, had she not been opposed by the legendary restorer of the world himself, Emperor Aurelian, who made short work of her Palmyrene Empire in 272, as well as a brief revival of its rebellion under her successors in 273
RATING: 4 STARS****
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