uins that even now are like symbols of
power--vast walls that impose on the imagination by their bulk,
enormous statues, temples that seem to mock at time and destruction.
The men who built those structures must have had supreme confidence in
themselves, they must have possessed incalculable resources, they must
have been masters of their world. Where are they now? What were their
names? They have sunk like a spent flame, and we have not even the
mark on a stone to tell us how they lived or loved or struggled. Far
in that moaning desert lie the remains of a city so great that even
the men who know the greatest of modern cities can hardly conceive the
original appearance and dimensions of the tremendous pile. Travellers
from Europe and America go there and stand speechless before works
that dwarf all the efforts of modern men. The woman who ruled in that
strong city was an imposing figure in her time, but she died in a
petty Roman villa as an exile, and Palmyra, after her departure, soon
perished from off the face of the earth. One pathetic little record
enables us to guess what became of the population over whom the queen
Zenobia ruled. A stone was dug up on the northern border of England,
and the inscription puzzled all the antiquarians until an Oriental
scholar found that the words were Syriac. "Barates of Palmyra erects
this stone to the memory of his wife, the Catavallaunian woman who
died aged thirty-three." That is a rude translation. Poor Barates was
brought to Britain, married a Norfolk woman of the British race, and
spent his life on the wild frontier. So the powerful queen passed away
as a prisoner, her subjects were scattered over the earth, and her
city, which was once renowned, is now haunted by lizard and antelope.
Alas for fame! Alas for the stability of earthly things! The
conquerors of Zenobia fared but little better. How strong must those
emperors have been whose very name kept the world in awe! If a man
were proscribed by Rome, he was as good as dead; no fastness could
hide him, no place in the known world could give him refuge, and his
fate was regarded as so inevitable that no one was foolhardy enough to
try at staving off the evil day. How coolly and contemptuously the
lordly proconsuls and magistrates regarded the early Christians. Pliny
did not so much as deign to notice their existence, and Pontius
Pilate, who had to deal with the first twelve, seems to have looked
upon them as mere pestilent mal