rted for one hundred years by a succession of
great princes, who traced their origin to the martial province of
Illyricum. The first of these emperors was Claudius, one of the generals
of Gallienus, and was fifty-four years of age when invested with the
purple. He led the armies of the waning empire against the Alemanni, who
had invaded Italy, and drove them beyond the Alps. But a fiercer tribe of
Germanic barbarians remained to be subdued or repelled--those who had
devastated Greece--the Goths. They again appeared upon the Euxine with a
fleet, variously estimated from two thousand to six thousand vessels,
carrying three hundred and twenty thousand men. A division of this vast,
but undisciplined force, invaded Crete and Cyprus, but the main body
ravaged Macedonia, and undertook the siege of Thessalonica. Claudius
advanced to meet them, and gained at Naissus a complete victory, where
fifty thousand of the barbarians perished. A desultory war followed in
Thrace, Macedonia, and Moesia, which resulted in the destruction of the
Gothic fleet, and an immense booty in captives and cattle.

(M1117) Claudius survived this great, but not decisive victory, but two
years, and was carried off by pestilence, at Sirmiun, A.D. 270; but not
until he had designated for his successor a still greater man--the
celebrated Aurelian, whose father had been a peasant. Every day of his
short reign was filled with wonders. He put an end to the Gothic war,
chastised the Germans who invaded Italy, recovered Gaul, Britain, and
Spain, defeated the Alemanni, who devastated the empire from the Po to the
Danube, destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia had built up in the
deserts of the East, took the queen captive, and carried her to Rome,
where he celebrated the most magnificent triumph which the world had seen
since the days of Pompey and Caesar. This celebrated woman, equaling
Cleopatra in beauty, and Boadicea in valor, and blending the popular
manners of the Roman princes with the stately pomp of Oriental kings, had
retired, on her defeat, to the beautiful city which Solomon had built,
shaded with palms, and ornamented with palaces. There, in that Tadmor of
the wilderness, Palmyra, the capital of her empire, which embraced a large
part of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, she had cultivated the learning of
the Greeks, and the Oriental tongues of the countries she ruled, excelling
equally in the chase and in war, the most truly accomplished woman of
anti