Zenobia; or, the Fall of Palmyra by William Ware (latest ebook reader TXT) 📖

saw in Zenobia the Queen, and taking off his helmet, said, 'that Caius Petronius, and Cornelius Varro, ambassadors of Aurelian, were in waiting at the outer gates of the palace, and asked a brief audience of the Queen of Palmyra, upon affairs of deepest interest, both to Zenobia and the Emperor.'

'It is not our custom,' said Zenobia in reply, 'when seeking repose, as now, from the cares of state, to allow aught to break it. But we will not be selfish nor churlish. Bid the servants of your Emperor draw near, and we will hear them.'

I was not unwilling that the messengers of Aurelian should see Zenobia just as she was now. Sitting upon her noble Arabian, and leaning upon her hunting spear, her countenance glowing with a higher beauty than ever before, as it seemed to me--her head surmounted with a Parthian hunting-cap, from which drooped a single ostrich feather, springing from a diamond worth a nation's rental, her costume also Parthian, and revealing in the most perfect manner the just proportions of her form--I thought I had never seen even her, when she so filled and satisfied the eye and the mind--and, for that moment, I was almost a traitor to Aurelian. Had Julia filled her seat, I should have been quite so. As it was, I could worship her who sat her steed with no less grace, upon the left of the Queen, without being guilty of that crime. On Zenobia's right were Longinus and Zabdas, Gracchus, and the other noblemen of Palmyra. I and Fausta were near Julia. In this manner, just as we had come in from the chase, did we await the ambassadors of Aurelian.

Announced by trumpets, and followed by their train, they soon wheeled into the lawn, and advanced toward the Queen.

'Caius Petronius and Cornelius Varro,' said Zenobia, first addressing the ambassadors, and moving toward them a few paces, 'we bid you heartily welcome to Palmyra. If we receive you thus without form, you must take the blame partly to yourselves, who have sought us with such haste. We put by the customary observances, that we may cause you no delay. These whom you see are all friends or counsellors. Speak your errand without restraint.'

'We come,' replied Petronius, 'as you may surmises great Queen, upon no pleasing errand. Yet we cannot but persuade ourselves, that the Queen of Palmyra will listen to the proposals of Aurelian, and preserve the good understanding which has lasted so long between the West and the East. There have been brought already to your ears, if I have been rightly informed, rumors of dissatisfaction on the part of our Emperor, with the affairs of the East, and of plans of an eastern expedition. It is my business now to say, that these rumors have been well founded. I am further to say, that the object at which Aurelian has aimed, in the preparations he has made, is not Persia, but Palmyra.'

'He does us too much honor,' said Zenobia, her color rising, and her eye kindling; 'and what, may I ask, are specifically his demands, and the price of peace?'

'For a long series of years,' replied the ambassador, 'the wealth of Egypt and the East, as you are aware, flowed into the Roman treasury. That stream has been diverted to Palmyra. Egypt, and Syria, and Bithynia, and Mesopotamia, were dependants upon Rome, and Roman provinces. It is needless to say what they now are. The Queen of Palmyra was once but the Queen of Palmyra; she is now Queen of Egypt and of the East--Augusta of the Roman empire--her sons styled and arrayed as Cæsars. By whatever consent of former emperors these honors have been won or permitted, it is not, we are required to say, with the consent of Aurelian. By whatever service in behalf of Rome they may, in the judgment of some, be thought to be deserved, in the judgment of Aurelian the reward exceeds greatly the value of the service rendered. But while we would not be deemed insensible to those services, and while he honors the greatness and the genius of Zenobia, he would, he conceives, be unfaithful to the interests of those who have raised him to his high office, if he did not require that in the East, as in the West, the Roman empire should again be restored to the limits which bounded it in the reigns of the virtuous Antonines. This he holds essential to his own honor, and the glory of the Roman world.'

'You have delivered yourself, Caius Petronius,' replied the Queen, in a calm and firm voice, 'as it became a Roman to do, with plainness, and as I must believe, without reserve. So far I honor you. Now hear me, and as you hear, so report to him who sent you. Tell Aurelian that what I am, I have made myself; that the empire which hails me Queen has been moulded into what it is by Odenatus and Zenobia; it is no gift, but an inheritance--a conquest and a possession; it is held, not by favor, but by right of birth and power; and that when he will give away possessions or provinces which he claims as his or Rome's, for the asking, I will give away Egypt and the Mediterranean coast. Tell him that as I have lived a queen, so, the gods helping, I will die a queen,--that the last moment of my reign and my life shall be the same. If he is ambitious, let him be told that I am ambitious too--ambitious of wider and yet wider empire--of an unsullied fame, and of my people's love. Tell him I do not speak of gratitude on the part of Rome, but that posterity will say, that the Power which stood between Rome and Persia, and saved the empire in the East, which avenged the death of Valerian, and twice pursued the king of kings as far as the gates of Ctesiphon, deserved some fairer acknowledgment than the message you now bring, at the hands of a Roman emperor.'

'Let the Queen,' quickly rejoined Petronius, but evidently moved by what he had heard, 'let the Queen fully take me. Aurelian purposes not to invade the fair region where I now am, and where my eyes are rejoiced by this goodly show of city, plain and country. He hails you Queen of Palmyra! He does but ask again those appendages of your greatness, which have been torn from Rome, and were once members of her body.'

'Your emperor is gracious indeed!' replied the Queen, smiling; 'if he may hew off my limbs, he will spare the trunk!--and what were the trunk without the limbs?'

'And is this,' said Petronius, his voice significant of inward grief, 'that which I must carry back to Rome? Is there no hope of a better adjustment?'

'Will not the Queen of Palmyra delay for a few days her final answer?' added Varro: 'I see, happily, in her train, a noble Roman, from whom, as well as from us, she may obtain all needed knowledge of both the character and purposes of Aurelian. We are at liberty to wait her pleasure.'

'You have our thanks, Romans, for your courtesy, and we accept your offer; although in what I have said, I think I have spoken the sense of my people.'

'You have indeed, great Queen,' interrupted Zabdas with energy.

'Yet I owe it to my trusty counsellor, the great Longinus,' continued the Queen, 'and who now thinks not with me, to look farther into the reasons--which, because they are his, must be strong ones---by which he supports an opposite judgment.'

'Those reasons have now,' said the Greek, 'lost much or all of their force,'--Zabdas smiled triumphantly--'yet still I would advocate delay.'

'Let it be so then,' said the Queen; 'and in the meanwhile, let the ambassadors of Aurelian not refuse the hospitalities of the Eastern Queen. Our palace is yours, while it shall please you to remain.'

'For the night and the morning, we accept your offers; then, as strangers in this region, we would return to the city, to see better than we have yet done the objects which it presents. It seemed to us, on a hasty glance, surrounded by its luxuriant plains, like the habitation of gods. We would dwell there a space.'

'It shall be as you will. Let me now conduct you to the palace.'

So saying, Zenobia, putting spurs to her horse, led the way to the palace, followed by a long train of Romans and Palmyrenes. The generous hospitality of the tables closed the day and wore away the night.

Letter VII.

You will be glad to learn, my Curtius, that the time has now come, when I may with reason look for news from Isaac, or for his return. It was his agreement to write of his progress, so soon as he should arrive at Ecbatana. But since he would consume but a very few days in the accomplishment of his task, if, the gods helping, he should be able to accomplish it at all, I may see him even before I hear from him, and, O day thrice happy! my brother perhaps with him. Yet am I not without solicitude, even though Calpurnius should return. For how shall I meet him?--as a Persian, or a Roman?--as a friend, or an enemy? As a brother, I can never cease to love him; as a public enemy of Rome, I may be obliged to condemn him.

You have indeed gratified me by what you have said concerning the public works in which the emperor is now engaged. Would that the erection of temples and palaces might draw away his thoughts from the East. The new wall, of so much wider sweep, with which he is now enclosing the city, is well worthy the greatness of his genius. Yet do we, my Curtius, perceive in this rebuilding and strengthening of the walls of Rome, no indication of our country's decline? Were Rome vigorous and sound, as once, in her limbs, what were the need of this new defence about the heart? It is to me a confession of weakness, rather than any evidence of greatness and strength. Aurelian achieves more for Rome by the strictness of his discipline, and his restoration of the ancient simplicity and severity among the troops, than he could by a triple wall about the metropolis. Rome will then already have fallen, when a Gothic army shall have penetrated so far as even to have seen her gates. The walls of Rome are her living and moving walls of flesh. Her old and crumbling ramparts of masonry, upon which we have so often climbed in sport, rolling down into the surrounding ditch huge masses, have ever been to me, when I have thought of them, pregnant signs of security and power.

The ambassadors, Petronius and Varro, early on the morning succeeding their interview with the Queen, departed for the city. They were soon followed by Zenobia and her train of counsellors and attendants. It had been before agreed that the princess, Fausta, and myself, should remain longer at the palace, for the purpose of visiting, as had been proposed, the aged Christian hermit, whose retreat is among the fastnesses of the neighboring mountains. I would rather have accompanied the Queen, seeing it was so certain that important interviews and discussions would take place, when they should be all returned once more to the city. I suppose this was expressed in my countenance, for the Queen, as she took her seat in the chariot, turned and said to me: 'We shall soon see you again in the city. A few hours in the mountains will be all that Julia will require; and sure I am that the wisdom of St. Thomas will more than repay you for what you may lose in Palmyra. Our topics will relate but to worldly aggrandizement--yours to more permanent interests.'

How great a pity that the love of glory has so fastened upon the heart of this wonderful woman; else might she live, and reign, and die the object of universal idolatry. But set as her heart is upon conquest and universal empire throughout the East, and of such marvellous power to subdue every intellect, even the strongest, to her will, I can see nothing before her but a short and brilliant career, ending in ruin, absolute and complete. Zenobia has not, or will not allow it to be seen that she has, any proper conception of the power of Rome. She judges of Rome by the feeble Valerian, and the unskilful Heraclianus, and by their standard measures such men as Aurelian, and Probus, and Carus. She may indeed gain a single battle, for her genius is vast, and her troops well disciplined and brave. But the loss of a battle would be to her the loss of empire, while to Rome it would be but as the