Zenobia was a third-century queen of Palmyra who made a bid for supreme rule in the Eastern Roman Empire. Septimia Zenobia (Btzby in Palmyrene) was born c. 240 AD in a noble family of Palmyra (Aramean: Tadmor), a rich Aramean and Arab trading city on the fringes of the Syrian Desert, dominating the caravan routes between Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine. Like her city, Zenobia was profoundly Hellenized (her father may have been named Antiochos) and spoke Aramean, Greek and Latin at least. Her husband Odeinathus, Exarch (ruler) of Palmyra, took a major role in the defence of the Roman East after the death of Emperor Valerian against the Sassanid Persians in 260, taking the title of king in 263 while being officially recognized Dux Orientis by Emperor Gallienus. In 267, upon the assassination of Odeinathus and his elder son, possibly on the orders of Gallienus, Zenobia, probably not even 30-year old yet, assumed the regency in the name of her infant son Vaballathus.
Demonstrating great energy, she consolidated her late husband’s authority in the name of their son, then took advantage of the instability in Rome during what is known as the “Crisis of the Third Century” to extend her direct power to Judaea, Phoenicia, Egypt (conquered in 270) and eastern Anatolia. From her court in Antioch, the ancient Seleucid capital, Zenobia, posing as the inheritor of the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Seleucids and Ptolemies, ruled a multilingual and multicultural quasi-empire, gathering renowned intellectuals and philosophers around her, and promoting a high degree of religious tolerance and possibly fusion of such various creeds as Palmyrene paganism, Christianity, Judaism and Manichaeism.
Officially, she was careful to maintain the forms of Roman authority and tried to have her son Vallabathus recognized as co-emperor. In 271, with the new emperor Aurelian refusing to accept this arrangement, Vallabathus assumed the title of Augustus (emperor), and Zenobia that of Augusta as mother of the emperor. The following year, Aurelian marched against Zenobia, defeating the Palmyrene forces in two great battles before sacking the city of Palmyra itself and capturing Zenobia. Aurelian did his utmost to humiliate and destroy the standing of this woman who had defied him, culminating in her being paraded in Rome on the occasion of his triumph in 274. Sources conflict over her subsequent fate, with some having her beheaded after the triumph, and others stating that she lived the rest of her life in comfortable exile in a villa in Tibur, near Rome.
Whatever her actual fate may have been, Zenobia demonstrated remarkable strength and daring, while proving to be a wise and enlightened ruler, and we are proud to name our award after her.