Warrior Queens
Page 16
Two oracles were now consulted by the Palmyrenes concerning the fate of their eastern empire: the Apollo Sarpedonius at Seleucia and the Venus Aphacitis (of Aphaca in Syria). On a grander scale, it was a situation reminiscent of Boudica’s rally when she first invoked the goddess Andraste and then released the hare from the folds of her skirt ‘as a species of divination’. But the hare – doubtless by careful stage management – had run off in an auspicious direction. The Apollo Sarpedonius returned an answer which indicated that he found the mere enquiry odious:
Accursed race! avoid my sacred fane
Whose treach’rous deeds the angry gods disdain.23
As for the Venus Aphacitis, she declined to instigate that phenomenon of a rounded airy figure, appearing from a lamp of fire, which sometimes greeted the fortunate; and the Palmyrene offerings at her cistern floated unhappily on the surface, a sign that the goddess had rejected them.
As things turned out, Boudica’s auspiciously lolloping hare proved to be a false prophet, whereas the Apollo Sarpedonius and the Venus Aphacitis could have claimed the satisfaction, in some pantheon where they had gloomy colloquy with each other, of getting things absolutely right. But then what omen, favourable or otherwise, has ever altered the course of history? The fact was that with a strong Roman presence back on the Eastern scene, the luck of Zenobia – and Palmyra – was fast running out.
Aurelian’s first campaign took him as far as Ankara. The city duly opened its gates since the Palmyrenes had not left behind a garrison, either because Ankara was judged too far from their centre of operations, or because they had insufficient troops to do so. The first resistance encountered by Aurelian was in the defiles of Taurus, commanded by the city of Tyana, which the Palmyrenes held. Possibly aided by treachery, Aurelian was able to prevail. But he did not permit his troops to sate themselves on pillage in the customary manner – yet. After all, as he pointed out, resplendent and wealthy Palmyra lay ahead.
The Palmyrenes fell back on the line of the Orontes river, which flows north-west from Emesa to Antioch. Here just outside Antioch the two armies faced each other: but it was far from being such a disparate confrontation as that of Romans and Britons at Boudica’s ‘last battle’. It is true the Roman legions were once again veterans of a life of war, such as those Suetonius had had at his command; Aurelian also had some light cavalry. But he had no archers or heavy cavalry. The Palmyrenes on the other hand had both: and the prowess of their archers was renowned throughout the East. Zenobia’s line of battle consisted of a line of archers on foot, with an imposing mass of both cavalry and infantry behind; unfortunately her cavalry, famous too for its zest and power, had a tendency to lose touch with the infantry due to the unchecked depth of its charge.
In the battle which followed, with Zenobia seen galloping alongside her troops although transmitting orders through her general Zabdas, this lack in restraint on the part of the Palmyrene cavalry proved crucial. Zosimus tells us that the Romans pretended to flee, luring the Palmyrenes on until both men and horses were ‘thoroughly tired, through the excessive heat and weight of their armour’.24 As a result the Palmyrene cavalry was cut off and subjected to the most frightful slaughter.
Following this reverse, it even took a trick on the part of Zabdas to secure his re-entry to Antioch (he pretended to be leading in the captive Aurelian) since the waning fortunes of the Palmyrenes were evident to their subjugated neighbours. Zenobia, pursued by Aurelian, now fell back on Emesa, and it was here, on the banks of the Orontes, some five or six miles north of modern Homs, that her ‘last battle’ took place. According to Zosimus, Zenobia at this point still had, out of those Syrians loyal to her, seventy thousand men. But Aurelian’s own troops, augmented by reinforcement, may by this stage have been almost as numerous.
The battle was long and fierce: but in the end the fiery Palmyrenes, for all their archers and their cavalry, were no more match for the seasoned Roman legionaries than the warriors of the Iceni had been, with their decorated shields, chariots and long swords. The Roman staying-power could not be gainsaid. Once again the Palmyrene cavalry failed to re-form after its initial charge, and the Emperor was able to throw in his footsoldiers against them. ‘The slaughter was promiscuous,’ wrote Zosimus, ‘some falling by the sword and others by their own and their enemies’ horses.’25 The field was covered with dead men and animals. So fell the flower of the Palmyrene aristocracy.
But Zenobia did not fall. After a grim council of war, the decision was taken to abandon Emesa for the base stronghold of Palmyra, where at least the Palmyrenes would not have to contend with growing Syrian hostility. Zenobia’s withdrawal across the desert to Palmyra – a distance of perhaps one hundred miles – was something to which custom had habituated both her and her Arab troops. Aurelian’s pursuit, given the terrain and the ability of the nomads who inhabited it to harry him, was more of an ordeal and thus more of an achievement. And, once he had arrived to set up his blockade, Palmyra’s isolated position, with the caravans no longer active, told against her rather than her enemies. In the subsequent siege, it was famine as much as anything else which ravaged the inhabitants.
Zenobia however had not lost her spirit. It was at this point that her chronicler has her engaging in a correspondence with Aurelian on the subject of surrender.26 Aurelian was already publicly bemoaning his fate in being matched against a woman in that passage quoted earlier: ‘as if Zenobia was contending against me with her own strength alone …’. To the Queen herself he wrote in contemptuous terms: ‘And you, O Zenobia, may pass your life in some spot where I shall place you in pursuance of the distinguished sentence of the Senate; your gems, your silver, gold, silk, horses, camels, being given up to the Roman treasury.’
‘Thou askest me to surrender’, replied the Palmyrene Queen proudly, ‘as if thou wert ignorant that Queen Cleopatra chose rather to perish than to survive her dignity.’ In answer to Aurelian’s indignant question: ‘How, O Zenobia, hast thou dared to insult Roman emperors?’ she answered: ‘Thee I acknowledge to be Emperor, since thou hast conquered’, but the rest of them, including Gallienus, she did not consider worthy of the name of chief – princeps. She added: ‘Believing Vitruvia* to be a woman like me, I desired to become a partner in the royal power, should the supply of lands permit.’
At the same time as firing off this defiant letter – about the authorship of which there would later be some significant dispute — Zenobia sought assistance from the Persians. It is kindest and by no means unreasonable to regard Zenobia’s subsequent secret flight from Palmyra as part of her plan for securing this Persian help, since Aurelian blocked off not only supplies but also any overt Persian relief force. Taking a female camel – ‘which is the swiftest of that kind of animal, and much more swift than horses’ – she managed to slip out of the beleaguered city. Riding furiously, Zenobia got as far as the Euphrates. Here she was captured as she was boarding a boat, either recognized or betrayed. Taken to Emesa, Zenobia found herself once more facing the Emperor Aurelian, but this time unaided by Palmyrene archers or cavalry.
Palmyra itself was captured and sacked. But in the persons of Aurelian and Zenobia an interesting battle of the sexes was joined, one from which the Palmyrene Queen undoubtedly emerged victorious. Aurelian for his part remained uneasy at his triumph over a mere woman, and reflected that in ages to come it might not redound entirely to his credit to have done so. He therefore continued to stress at length the amazing qualities of the Palmyrene Queen: a woman perhaps, but what a woman! So brave, bold, daring, prudent in council, firm in purpose, etc., etc. Moreover Odainat’s victories in Persia were due entirely to her, ‘such was the dread entertained of this woman, among the natives of the East and of Egypt, that she kept in check the Arabians, the Saracens and the Armenians’.28 Frantically Aurelian attempted to elude the taint of the Shame Syndrome, generally supplied to those who were actually defeated by ‘mere women’ like Boudica, but still capable of adhering to those who defeated them.
All the evidence points to the fact that Zenobia was now taken captive to Rome. Zosimus is the only dissenting voice, but then in suggesting that Zenobia died on her way to Europe by her own hand he was manifestly trying to emphasize the identity of Zenobia with Cleopatra. Other versions agree with a wealth of circumstantial detail that Zenobia reached Italy in safety where she was obliged to walk in the Emperor’s triumph.30
One would like to have witnessed this apotheosis of the Emperor Aurelian, although preferably not in chains. First came a parade of the most curious wild beasts, including not only elephants but tigers, giraffes and elks: subsequently the prudent Aurelian gave this menagerie to various Roman citizens so that the privy purse would not be burdened with their upkeep. Then came the gladiators and then the ambassadors of such diverse empires as Ethiopia, Persia, India and China. The human menagerie which followed was of no less interest to the inquisitive spectators: captives from, as it seemed, every corner of the globe attesting to the range of Aurelian’s victories, and all neatly labelled with placards round their necks to din in the geography lesson (as diplomats today are labelled at a United Nations session). In this manner there trailed past not only the recent victims of the East, but also Hibernians, Vandals, Franks and Swabians. Among these last were a group of Gothic women who had been discovered fighting in men’s clothes: helpfully the placards round their necks read ‘Amazon’.
Four chariots in all formed part of the procession. One of these, which had once belonged to the King of the Goths, was drawn by stags: at the Capitol the stags would be slain and vowed to the altar of Jupiter. The others were of Eastern provenance: the chariot of Odainat, adorned with silver and gold, the chariot given to Aurelian by the Emperor of Persia, and the chariot of Zenobia (that chariot in which she had often disdained to ride, preferring with her ‘masculine energy’ the hardihood of horseback).
It was indeed Zenobia herself, walking in front of her chariot, who was the focus of every eye. She bore no placard round her neck, nor was she labelled ‘Amazon’ or for that matter ‘Penthesilea’ or ‘Hippolyta’. Nevertheless the half-fainting Palmyrene Queen (for once she might have been glad of that chariot), shackled by golden fetters and weighed down by the very mass of those jewels she had once displayed so proudly, stood by her very presence for Aurelian’s victory in the East, much as the Greek heroes’ legendary victories over the Amazons had symbolized the victory of Greeks over the barbarians.
Zenobia, the great survivor, survived the ordeal of the Triumph. She did more than that: she built a new life.31 At some later point, she seems to have married a Roman senator. At any rate she was able to retire in affluence to a villa, granted to her by the Roman state, at Tibur (Tivoli), near that of Hadrian. A hundred years later her descendants, either by this second husband or by Odainat – Vaballathus disappears from view, but two other sons walked with her in the Triumph – were known in senatorial circles; the fifth-century Bishop of Florence, Zenobius, may have owed his unusual name to a still remembered ancestress.
Zenobia’s instinct for survival, unlike her forcible marital chastity, has received a bad press from historians, although one can detect a certain gloomy satisfaction at finding a woman, however bold on the field, choosing to behave really badly in a genuine crisis. Theodor Mommsen thundered: ‘Zenobia, after she had for years born rule with masculine energy, did not now disdain to invoke a woman’s privileges and to throw the responsibility on her advisers.’ Gibbon was more philosophical: ‘as female fortitude is commonly artificial, so it is seldom steady or consistent’.32 For tradition has it that Zenobia, unruffled by such considerations, had the bad taste to enjoy her life as a Roman matron. She held a fashionable salon in her villa, where only her outlandish Roman accent (but then she did speak Greek, Aramaic and Egyptian) betrayed her exotic origins. As Zenobia dispensed hospitality and perhaps told stories of her tribulations walking in the Triumph or even tales of desert rides – did she ever dream of that female camel, the swiftest in the business? – Aurelian was obliged to return to Palmyra. There he quelled another insurrection. Finally both Palmyra and Alexandria were plundered to excess and the Palmyrene civilization passed away.
So finally the story of Zenobia and the Romans, as a coda to that of Boudica, reminds one that there could be advantages in being a Warrior Queen – as opposed to a Warrior King – as well as disadvantages; or at least so far as the queen herself was concerned. Boudica was scourged (and her daughters raped), which it has been suggested was a deliberate outrage on the part of the Romans, connected to Boudica’s sex; Zenobia on the other hand betrayed Longinus with impunity, if one leaves out of account her short bejewelled travail on foot. The Only-a-Weak-Woman Syndrome – ‘I am as good as (or even better than) a man when I ride to victory but I’m Only-a-Weak-Woman when I’m defeated’ – is also part of the history of the Warrior Queen.
None of this should detract from the achievements of Zenobia in her prime. There is a figure of Arab legend called variously Zebbâ, al-Zabbà or az-Zabbà: a beautiful warrior who leads her troops to victory in a series of confrontations, as well as indulging in some wily tricks, based on her own charms.33 Zebbâ has two fortresses on the left and right banks of the Euphrates – in some stories her sister called Zainab (the Arab version of Zenobia) occupies one of them – and in one legend at least remains chaste; moreover Zebbâ, like Zenobia, is captured in an incident at a river. Although an exact connection between Zenobia and Zebbâ cannot be made – just as a historical figure like Boudica can never be exactly connected with the legendary Boadicea – nevertheless there are too many coincidences between them to dismiss it altogether.
It therefore seems fitting, as we go forward on the long march of Boudica’s mythical history, to remember that Zenobia also has her own lively myths in her own Arab culture (Zainab is a popular name in Syria today). A modern play by Assi and Mansour Al-Rahbani ends with Zenobia poisoning herself just before the Roman soldiers bind her in chains. She dies with the words ‘O Liberty!’ on her lips, and her mourning people promise themselves never to forget her (or the idea of liberty).34
It is good to bear this Arab heroine in mind; for we shall find the ‘chaste’ Zenobia appearing from time to time in a somewhat pallid disguise in Europe:
That lovely form enshrines the gentlest virtues
Softest compassion, unaffected wisdom,
To outward beauty lending higher charms35
as an eighteenth-century play had it. It is difficult to imagine this ‘beauteous mourner’ raising her ‘suppliant voice’ for ‘mild humanity’ carving out an empire from Egypt to Asia Minor in defiance of Rome itself. ‘O Zenobia, hast thou dared to insult Roman emperors?’ wrote Aurelian to the real-life Queen: she had and she did. It is Zenobia’s courage which links her to Boudica; her ambition (and her instinct for survival) sets her apart.
* Victoria or Vitruvia, the influential mother of the rebel Gallic Emperor Victorinus (who succeeded Postumus in 268/9); she also helped the next Gallic Emperor, Tetricus, to power.27
PART TWO
CHAPTER NINE
MATILDA, DAUGHTER OF PETER
The daughter of Peter and the faithful hand-maid of Christ
Pope Gregory VII to Matilda Countess of Tuscany
‘To you, m
y most beloved and loving daughter, I do not hesitate to disclose any of these thoughts, for even you yourself can hardly imagine how greatly I may count upon your zeal and discretion.’ The writer of this letter in late 1074 was Pope Gregory VII. The ‘most beloved and loving’ daughter in question was Matilda Countess of Tuscany, a woman now in her late thirties, who had inherited vast dominions in northern Italy from her father some twenty years back. As she moved towards independence from the various tutelages of mother and stepfather, increasingly she was acting as the ‘faithful hand-maid’ of St Peter – a hand-maid with a sharp sword in her hand and an army at her back.1
The combination of Countess Matilda’s prolonged military endeavours with her own sense of a holy mission is what made her egregious among her contemporaries: ‘For St Peter and Matilda!’ her men shouted as they stormed the fortresses of the Apennines while she termed herself ‘Matilda by the Grace of God’. It also inspired their admiration – if they were on the same side.
The approval which Matilda received from her allies and subordinates, based on her gender, not despite it, clearly related to the apparently ‘holy’ nature of her chosen role. The pious Christian Matilda would not have relished a comparison to pagan Boadicea, with her invocation to Andraste on the eve of battle a thousand years earlier. As a matter of interest, she would not even have recognized the allusion. Penthesilea was not forgotten and Matilda would receive the usual ration of such comparisons to the Amazonian Queen. However, not only had Boadicea vanished into her unknown grave but her very name had been forgotten, awaiting the rediscovery of Tacitus’ manuscripts in a monastery library in the fourteenth century.2 Yet Matilda’s role represents an important aspect of the subject of the Warrior Queen, that of Holy (Armed) Figurehead. Just as Boadicea must have gained strength from the image of the Celtic goddess in her people’s minds, so Matilda received practical support from the notion of the halo round her head – and the sword in her hand.