But a new emperor ruled in Rome: Aurelian, soldier and statesman.
"Rome," he said, "shall never lose a province." And then the
struggle for dominion in the East began. The strength and power
of Rome, directed by the Emperor himself, at last triumphed.
Palmyra fell, and Zenobia, after a most heroic defence of her
kingdom, was led a prisoner to Rome. Clad in magnificent robes,
loaded with jewels and with heavy chains of gold, she walked,
regal and undaunted still, in the great triumphal procession of
her conqueror, and, disdaining to kill herself as did Cleopatra
and Dido, she gave herself up to the nobler work of the education
and culture of her children, and led for many years, in her villa
at Tibur, the life of a noble Roman matron.

Such, in brief, is the story of Zenobia. You must read for
yourselves the record of her later years, as it stands in
history, if you would know more of her grandeur in her days of
power, and her moral grandeur in her days of defeat.

And with Zenobia fell Palmyra. Centuries of ruin and neglect have
passed over the once fairy-like city of the Syrian oasis. Her
temples and colonnades, her monuments and archways and wonderful
buildings are prostrate and decayed, and the site even of the
glorious city has been known to the modern world only within the
last century. But while time lasts and the record of heroic deeds
survives, neither fallen column nor ruined arch nor all the
destruction and neglect of modern barbarism can blot out the
story of the life and worth of Bath Zabbai, the brave girl of the
Syrian desert, whom all the world honors as the noblest woman of
antiquity--Zenobia of Palmyra, the dauntless "Queen of the East."