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A nasty spirit of revenge urged the bloody prosecution, and it proved fatal to one of the nephews of the emperor. Nor was the pride of Aurelian less offensive to that assembly than his cruelty.
Zenobia occupied the same post of observation as before. She paced to and fro with a hasty and troubled step the narrow summit of the tower, where she had placed herself. After no long-interval of time, the Roman herald was seen returning from the camp of the Armenians. Again he sallied forth from the tent of Aurelian, on the same errand.
Their united numbers were at length encountered by Aurelian, and the bloody and doubtful conflict ended only with the approach of night. Exhausted by so many calamities, which they had mutually endured and inflicted during a twenty years' war, the Goths and the Romans consented to a lasting and beneficial treaty.
Aurelian, becoming Emperor of Rome, came against this strange little kingdom, and was bravely resisted by Zenobia; but he defeated her, made her prisoner, and caused her to march in his triumph to Rome. She afterwards lived with her children in Italy.
The sway of a woman was never openly acknowledged in Rome, but the Alexandrians and Egyptians were used to female rule, and from contemporary coins we learn that in Egypt the government was carried on in the name of the Empress Severina. The last coins of Aurelian bear the date of the sixth year of his reign, and the coins of Severina are dated in the sixth and seventh years.
He guarded his person by bodies of cavalry and infantry. He clothed himself in imposing robes; elaborately arranged his hair; wore a costly diadem; ornamented his person with gems and pearls, with collars and bracelets. He lived, in short, more like a Heliogabalus than a Trajan or an Aurelian. All traces of popular liberty were effaced. All dignities and honors and offices emanated from him.
But this I say: let there only come over here from the West the faintest whisper of any purpose on the part of Aurelian to consider Zenobia as holding the same position in regard to Rome as Tetricus in Gaul, and that moment a flame is kindled throughout Palmyra that nothing but blood can quench.
Then the Queen of the East, the beautiful Zenobia, confined by fetters of gold, and fainting under the weight of jewels, preceding the beautiful chariot in which she had hoped to enter the gates of Rome. Then the chariot of the Persian king. Then the triumphal car of Aurelian himself, drawn by elephants.
The news overtook the emperor on the Hellespont. Instantly, without pause, "like Ate hot from hell," Aurelian retraced his steps reached the guilty city and consigned it, with all its population, to that utter destruction from which it has never since arisen.
Having waited till the Wine had taken the effect proposed, and the Company were raised to an uncommon pitch of Chearfulness, which he also encouraged by an Example of Freedom and Good Humour, he took an opportunity of rallying the two grave Signiors into an Accommodation: That was seconded with the praises of the young Couple, and the whole Company joined in a large Encomium upon the Graces of Aurelian and the Beauties of Juliana.
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