the incredible rise and fall of zenobia; or, history is written by the victors,which sucks because there was a palmyrene warrior queen who almost took down the roman empire and instead all we learn about is roman roads and shit
The story of Zenobia starts as many stories do, with some dude declaring himself in charge of everything. The dude in this case was a sexy bearded Syrian guy called Septimius Odaenathus, and the everything was Palmyra, a power city in Syria. Odaenathus was a fierce-ass military leader who went about invading shit and doing a bunch of war and having a grand old time. Then he married a woman called Zenobia and the two of them did a bunch more war together.
As most married couples do, Odaenathus and Zenobia did classic date stuff like spear hunting panthers on horseback and spear hunting bears on horseback and spear hunting lions on horseback. Just generally killing a bunch of apex predators from atop a giant hard dog with a sharp stick together like a couple of lovestruck maniacs.
The two of them also got into a bit of casual invading with their massive army, basically singlehandedly building the Palmyrene Empire which was pretty fucking big and covered a solid chunk of the Middle East. You don’t hear about this empire much because history is written by the victors and by the victors I of course mean racists.
Hey look, a map. Palmyrene was all the yellow stuff and the pink shit was Rome. Don’t worry about the green bit, nobody cares about that.
Now this was at the peak of the Roman Empire, and Palmyra was technically part of said empire, but this was the third century and the Romans were, famously, having a bit of a disaster of a time.
Crisis of the Third Century? Yes? No? They never taught us about the Romans at Fraserburgh Academy, I don’t know if this is common knowledge. Yes?
Well either way, the emperors all kept getting killed or usurped and were generally all about as useful as a brick to the face, and they were endlessly having to put out fires and deal with rebellions and invasions all over the shop, so they weren’t really in a position to worry about some minor king and queen maybe getting a little too big for their boots down in Syria. Plus, Odaenathus and Zenobia kept being like “oh hey look we got you this new city because we super respect the Roman Empire and thought you’d like it. Oh, you’re busy? That’s fine, we’ll just keep it and look after for you” and so built up quite the fucking empire of their own without having to deal with the Romans. In fact, they were held up by the Romans as defenders of the empire.
Idiots.
The main issue they had to deal with was internal. Odaenathus hadn’t inherited his title, so his legitimacy mostly came out of loyalty to him personally, rather than from his bloodline. So when he died there was would be a good chance that his son wouldn’t be welcomed to the throne with open arms. Odaenathus, who was a smart man, tried to solve this by crowning his oldest son co-king, so he could build up loyalty before his father died.
The fact of a man who is two hundred percent done with your shit.
Which would have been a GREAT IDEA if Odaenathus’ nephew, Maeonius, hadn’t been a massive dick about it. He decided to assassinate both Odaenathus and his son at a dinner party and declare himself king, as he was technically next in line to the throne.
Poor move, pal.
Foolishly, he forgot about Odaenathus’ badass murder-wife, who killed panthers with spears and was absolutely not having this regiciding little shit on her throne. So she was like “think again, motherfucker, my son is going to be king and by my son I mean me, and you are going to be a bloody and mangled corpse instead”. And so she sacrificed him and his co-conspirators on a fucking altar to some pagan god like the most metal fucking bitch in town.
And then she made a start on running the Palmyrene Empire quite happily. She started off doing her classic “just keeping this all warm for the Romans” bit, but eventually decided she was far too much of a boss-ass bitch to pretend to be subservient to those Latin fucks, and declared herself Emperor. Then she got to work invading the planet.
She also got a bunch of coins made up with her face on them, which was apparently a HUGE deal at the time.
Despite being a lady, Zenobia was a fierce military leader and rode ahead of her troops into battle on an Arabian warhorse. They invaded place after place, until they finally conquered fucking Egypt. EGYPT. WHY DOES NOBODY TELL US ABOUT THIS? (Maybe they do, again with the terrible schooling). She rode into Alexandria, staking her claim on her “ancestral home”. She called it her ancestral home because she claimed she was descended from Cleopatra (she was not). She also claimed to be descended from Dido of Carthage (which, again, I’m 99% sure isn’t true because Dido of Carthage wasn’t a real person).
Now this got the Romans’ attention.
They sent a legion after her. She fucking slaughtered them.
Then the Romans, for the first time in a century, got a competent emperor, which was not a good thing for our girl Zenobia. This new guy, Aurelian, was a military guy, and led a massive army against the Palmyenes. Though Zenobia fought a good fight, she was ultimately defeated and beat a hasty retreat back to her city.
She had a phenomenal defensive strategy in her absolute fortress of a city, and very politely told Aurelian to go fuck himself when he offered terms of surrender, but she couldn’t hold out forever. She tried telling Aurelian that the Persians, Rome’s main enemy, were coming to help, but they never did and she was most likely talking out of her arse about this.
I know this isn’t the point, but all the pictures of her are super hot.
So, eventually, our girl mounted her fastest camel and snuck out the back. She was caught, probably because camels are not that fast.
Or are they? I don’t know anything about camels. Are they fast? Are they just like lumpy horses? Do the lumps slow them down? I don’t know, Google it.
Either way she got caught. What happened after that is unknown - some say she was publicly humiliated and executed. Some say she broke down in court and blamed her advisors. Others say she was pardoned and married some rich Roman dude.
What we do know for sure is that Aurelian and his bros spent a long time trying to discredit Zenobia because they didn’t like getting so much shit kicked out of them for so long by a girl. They simultaneously tried to pass her off as a) a sexy sexpot who just seduced everyone (much like they did with Cleopatra), when she was, in fact, a murdery murderpot who killed everyone, and b) super butch and masculine and BASICALLY A MAN because there’s no way a woman could run an empire that held its own for so long against the might of the Roman Empire.
EXCEPT SHE DID. And I hope she haunted them all.
She’s still a Syrian hero to this day, by the way. And who’s even heard of Aurelian?
Maybe lots of people. As I said, I know nothing about the Romans.