Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 2 of 2). Charles Bucke
destroyed it, and put to death most of its population, without distinction of age or sex. The slaughter was so extensive, that none were left to plough the adjacent lands.
Aurelian soon repented of his severity. He wrote to Bassus: – “You must now sheathe the sword; the Palmyrenes have been sufficiently slaughtered. We have not spared women; we have slain children; we have strangled old men; we have destroyed the husbandmen. To whom, then, shall we leave the land? To whom shall we leave the city? We must spare those who remain; for we think, that the few there are now existing, will take warning from the punishment of the many who have been destroyed.”
The emperor then goes on to desire his lieutenant to rebuild the Temple of the Sun as magnificently as it had been in times past; to expend 300 pounds weight of gold, which he had found in the coffers of Zenobia, beside 1800 pounds weight of silver, which was raised from the sale of the people’s goods; together with the crown jewels, all which he ordered to be sold, to make money to beautify the temple; while he himself promises to write to the Senate, to send a priest from Rome to dedicate it. But, in the language of Gibbon, it is easier to destroy than it is to restore.
Zenobia was now to be led to the conqueror’s triumph. This triumph was celebrated with extraordinary magnificence. It was opened by twenty elephants, four royal tigers, and above two hundred of the most curious animals from every climate of the known world. Ambassadors from Æthiopia, Arabia, Persia, Bactriana, India, and China, attended the triumph; and a long train of captives, – Goths, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alemanni, Franks, Gauls, Syrians, and Egyptians. Amongst these, Zenobia. She was confined in fetters of gold; a slave supported the gold chain which encircled her neck, and she almost fainted under the weight of her jewels. She did not ride, but walk! preceded by the chariot in which she had once indulged the vain hope of entering Rome as empress62.
The Palmyrenes63, says Zosimus, had several declarations from the gods, which portended the overthrow of their empire; and, among others, having consulted the temple of Apollo, at Seleucia in Cilicia, to know if they should ever obtain the empire of the East, they got the following unceremonious answer:
Avoid my temple, cursed, treacherous nation!
You even put the gods themselves in passion.
The religion of the Palmyrenes, it is evident, was pagan; their government, for the most part, republican; but their laws are entirely lost; nor can anything be known in respect to their polity, but what may be gathered from the inscriptions. Their chief deity was the Sun.
In regard to their knowledge of art, they have left the finest specimens in the ruins that now remain; and, doubtless, Longinus’ work on the Sublime was written within its walls. “From these hints we may see,” says Mr. Wood, “that this people copied after great models in their manners, their vices, and their virtues. Their funeral customs were from Egypt, their luxury was Persian, and their letters and arts were from the Greeks. Their situation in the midst of these three great nations makes it reasonable to suppose, that they adopted most of their customs and manners. But to say more on that head from such scanty materials, would be to indulge too much in mere conjecture, which seems rather the privilege of the reader than of the writer.”
Some years after this, we find Diocletian erecting several buildings here; but what they were is not stated. Justinian, also, repaired Palmyra, which, according to Procopius, had been almost entirely deserted. These repairs, however, are supposed to have reference rather to strength than to ornament; and this is the last mention of Palmyra in Roman history.
The various fortunes of Palmyra, to and from the time of Mahomet’s appearance, are scarcely known, except that it was considered as a place of great strength; and that in the twelfth century, A. D. 1171, there were, according to Benjamin of Tudela, who visited the spot in that year, two thousand Jews in it.
Palmyra, according to the Arabs, once occupied an area nearly ten miles in circumference, and is supposed to have been reduced to its present confined and ruined state by the quantities of sand64 driven on it by whirlwinds.
The walls of the city were flanked by square towers. They were three miles in circumference, and it is imagined that they included the great temple. What remains there are of the wall, do not look, according to Mr. Wood, unlike the work of Justinian; and may be part of the repairs mentioned by Procopius; and the highest antiquity anything else can claim is the time of the Mamelukes.
Примечание 165
We shall now give place to accounts in respect to the first impressions, made by these ruins on the minds of different travellers.
Mr. Halifax says66, “the city itself appears to have been of a large extent by the space now taken up by the ruins;” but that there are no footsteps of any walls remaining, nor is it possible to judge of the ancient figure of the place. The present inhabitants, as they are poor, miserable, dirty people, so they have shut themselves up, to the number of about thirty or forty families, in little huts made of dirt, within the walls of a spacious court, which inclosed a most magnificent heathen temple: thereinto also Mr. Halifax’s party entered, the whole village being gathered together at the door; whether to stand upon their defence in case the strangers proved enemies (for some of them had guns in their hands), or out of mere curiosity to gaze, he knew not. However the guide, who was an Arab whom Assyne their king had sent to conduct them through the village, being a man known among them, they had an easy admittance; and, with a great many welcomes in their language, were led to the sheik’s house, with whom they took up their abode. “And to mention here what the place at first view represented, certainly the world itself could not afford the like mixture of remains of greatest state and magnificence, together with the extremity of poverty and wretchedness.” The nearest parallel Mr. Halifax could think of, was that of the temple of Baal, destroyed by Jehu, and converted into a draught-house.
“We had scarce passed the sepulchres,” says Mr. Wood, “when the hills opening discovered to us all at once the greatest quantity of ruins we had ever seen, all of white marble; and beyond them, towards the Euphrates, a flat waste as far as the eye could reach, without any object that showed either life or motion.”
When Mr. Wood’s party arrived, they were conducted to one of the huts, of which there were about thirty, in the court of the great temple. The inhabitants of both sexes were well-shaped, and the women, though very swarthy, had good features. They were veiled; but did not so scrupulously conceal their faces as the Eastern women generally do. They paint the ends of their fingers red, their lips blue, and their eyebrows and eyelashes black67.
They had large rings of gold or brass in their ears and nostrils, and appeared to be healthy and robust.
The ruins were next visited by Mr. Bruce: – “When we arrived at the top of the hill,” says he, “there opened before us, the most astonishing, stupendous, sight, that perhaps ever appeared to mortal sight. The whole plain below, which was very extensive, was covered so thick with magnificent ruins, as the one seemed to touch the other, all of fine proportions, all of agreeable forms, all composed of white stone, which, at that distance, appeared like marble. At the end of it stood the Palace of the Sun, a building worthy so magnificent a scene.”
The effect on the imagination of Mr. Addison appears to have been equally lively: – “At the end of the sandy plain,” says he, “the eye rests upon the lofty columns of the Temple of the Sun, encompassed by a dark elevated mass of ruined buildings; and beyond, all around, and right and left towards the Euphrates, as far as the eye can reach, extends the vast level naked flat of the great desert, over which the eye runs in every direction, piercing the boundless horizon, without discovering a human being or a trace of man. Naked, solitary, unlimited space extends around, where man never breathes under the shade, or rests his limbs under the cover of a dwelling. A deep blue tint spreads along its surface, here and there shaded with a cast of brown; the distant outline of the horizon is clear
“The emperor afterwards presented Zenobia with an elegant villa at Tibur, or Tivoli, about twenty miles from the capital; where, in happy tranquillity, she fed the greatness of her soul with the noble images of Homer, and the exalted precepts of Plato; supported the adversity of her fortunes with fortitude and resignation; and learned that the anxieties, attendant on ambition, are happily exchanged for the enjoyments of ease, and the comforts of philosophy. The Syrian queen sank into a Roman matron; her daughters married into noble families; and her race was not yet extinct in the fifth century.” – Gibbon.
Addison.
Yet Bruce says: – “Palmyra is nowhere covered with sand or rubbish as in other ruins. The desert that surrounds it is rather gravel than sand, and is, therefore, not easily moved. Her mountains are perfectly bare, and produce nothing.”
This Emir lived upon rapine; being followed by a considerable number of men, who not only hated labour, but disliked equally to live under any settled government.
Philosophical Transactions.
This was the custom also in the days of Ezekiel. See ch. xxiii. 40.