make the most vigorous resistance to the armies of Rome.

Aurelian had before him no light task. In his march over the desert the
Arabs harassed him perpetually. The siege proved difficult, and the
emperor, leading the attacks in person, was himself wounded with a dart.
Aurelian, finding that he had undertaken no trifling task, prudently
offered excellent terms to the besieged, but they were rejected with
insulting language. Zenobia hoped that famine would come to her aid to
defeat her foe, and had reason to expect that Persia would send an army
to her relief. Neither happened. The Persian king had just died.
Convoys of food crossed the desert in safety. Despairing at length of
success, Zenobia mounted her fleetest dromedary and fled across the
desert to the Euphrates. Here she was overtaken and brought back a
captive to the emperor's feet.

Soon afterwards Palmyra surrendered. The emperor treated it with lenity,
but a great treasure in gold, silver, silk, and precious stones fell
into his hands, with all the animals and arms. Zenobia being brought
into his presence, he sternly asked her how she had dared to take arms
against the emperors of Rome. She answered, with respectful prudence,
"Because I disdained to consider as Roman emperors an Aureolus or a
Gallienus. You alone I acknowledge as my conqueror and my sovereign."

Her fortitude, however, did not last. The soldiers, with angry clamor,
demanded her immediate execution, and the unhappy queen, losing for the
first time the courage which had so long sustained her, gave way to
terror, and declared that her resistance was not due to herself, but had
arisen from the counsels of Longinus and her other advisers. It was the
one base act in the woman's life. She had purchased a brief period of
existence at the expense of honor and fame. Aurelian, a fierce soldier,
to whom the learning of Longinus made no appeal, at once ordered his
execution. The scholar died like a philosopher. He uttered no complaint.
He pitied, but did not blame, his mistress. He comforted his afflicted
friends. With the calm fortitude of Socrates he followed the
executioner, and died like one for whom death had no terrors. The
ignorant emperor, in seizing the treasures of Palmyra, did not know that
he had lost its choicest treasure in setting free the soul of Longinus
the scholar.

What followed may be more briefly told. Marching back with his spoils
from Palmyra, Aurelian had already reached Europ