assumed the purple in
Europe (A.D. 270); and though he only reigned for seventeen days the
Alexandrian mint found time to engrave new dies and to issue coined
money in his name.

On the death of Claudius, also, the Palmyrenes renewed their attacks
upon Egypt, and this second time with success. The whole kingdom
acknowledged Zenobia as their queen; and in the fourth and fifth years
of her reign in Palmyra we find her name on the Alexandrian coins. The
Greeks, who had been masters of Egypt for six hundred years, either in
their own name or in that of the Roman emperors, were then for the first
time governed by an Asiatic. Palmyra in the desert was then ornamented
with the spoils of Egypt; and travellers yet admire the remains of eight
large columns of red porphyry, each thirty feet high, which stood in
front of the two gates to the great temple. They speak for themselves,
and tell their own history. From their material and form and size we
must suppose that these columns were quarried between Thebes and the Red
Sea, were cut into shape by Egyptian workmen under the guidance of Greek
artists in the service of the Roman emperors; and were thence carried
away by the Syrian queen to the oasis-city in the desert between
Damascus and Babylon.

[Illustration: 161.jpg COIN OF ATHENODORUS]

Zenobia was a handsome woman of a dark complexion, with an aquiline
nose, quick, piercing eyes, and a masculine voice. She had the
commanding qualities of Cleopatra, from whom her flatterers traced her
descent, and she was without her vices. While Syriac was her native
tongue, she was not ignorant of Latin, which she was careful to have
taught to her children; she carried on her government in Greek, and
could speak Koptic with the Egyptians, whose history she had studied
and written upon. In her dress and manners she joined the pomp of the
Persian court to the self-denial and military virtues of a camp. With
these qualities, followed by a success in arms which they seemed to
deserve, the world could not help remarking, that while Gallienus was
wasting his time with fiddlers and players, in idleness that would have
disgraced a woman, Zenobia was governing her half of the empire like a
man.

Zenobia made Antioch and Palmyra the capitals of her empire, and Egypt
became for the time a province of Syria. Her religion like her language
was Syriac. The name of her husband, Odenathus, means sacred to the
goddess Adoneth, and that of her son, Vabal