Palmyra
- a city of Syria, whose ruins still remain, the seat of the empire of Odenathus and Zenobia, Plin. 5, 25, 21, § 86; 6, 28, 32, § 144.
- —Hence, Palmȳrēnus (Palmīr-), a, um, adj., of Palmyra: solitudines, Plin. 5, 24, 21, § 87.—Subst.: Palmȳ-rēna, ae, f., the country around Palmyra, Plin. 6, 28, 32, § 143; and Palmȳrēnus, i, m., an epithet of the emperor L. Domitius Aurelius, on account of his victory over Palmyra, Inscr. Grut. 276, 5.
PALMY´RA (Παλμύρα, Ptol. 5.15. § § 19, 24, 8.20.10; Appian, App. BC 5.9: Παλμίρα, J. AJ; and Palmira, Plin. Nat. 5.25. s. 21: Eth. Palmyrenus, or Palmirenus, Id. l. c.), a city of Syria, situated in 34° 24′ N. lat., and 38° 20′ E. long. Its Hebrew name, Tadmor, or Thadmor, denotes, like its Greek one, a city of palms; and this appellation is preserved by the Arabs, who still call it Tedmor. Tadmor was built, or more probably enlarged, by Solomon in the tenth century B.C. (1 Kings, 9.18; 2 Chron. 8.4), and its identity with Palmyra is shown in the passage of Josephus before cited. It is seated in a pleasant and fruitful oasis of the great Syrian desert, and is well watered by several small streams; but the river mentioned by Ptolemy is nowhere to be found. Its situation is fine, under a ridge of hills towards the W., and a little above the level of an extensive plain, which it commands on the E. (Wood, Ruins of Parlmyra, p. 5), at a distance of about 140 miles ENE. of Damascus. It is not mentioned by Xenophon, who must have passed near it, nor in the accounts of the conquests of Alexander the Great. The first historical notice that we find of it is in Appian, who tells us that M. Antony, under pretence of punishing its equivocal conduct, but in reality to enrich his troops with the plunder of a thriving commercial city, directed his march towards it, but was frustrated of his object by the inhabitants removing their goods to the other side of the Euphrates. (B. Civ. 5.100.9.) This account shows that it must have been a town of considerable wealth; and indeed its advantageous situation must have long rendered it an entrepôt for the traffic between the east and Damascus and the Phoenician cities on the Mediterranean. Yet its name is not mentioned either by Strabo or Mela. Under the first Roman emperors it was an independent city; and its situation on the borders of the Roman and Parthian empires gave it a political importance, which it seems to have preserved by a well-judged course of policy, though naturally exposed to much danger in the quarrels of two such formidable neighbours. ( Inter duo imperia summa, et prima--in discordia semper utrinque cura,P lin. l. c.) It is called a colonia on the coins of Caracalla, and Ulpian mentioned it in his first book de Censibus as having the Jus Italicum. It appears, from an inscription, to have assisted the emperor Alexander Severus in his wars against the Persians. (Wood, Inscr. xix.) It is not, however, till the reign of Gallienus that we find Palmyra playing any important part in history; and at this period we have notices of it in the works of Zosimus, Vopiscus, and Trebellius Pollio. Odenathus, a noble of Palmyra, and according to Procopius (B. Pers. 2.100.5) prince of the Saracens who inhabited the banks of the Euphrates, for his great and splendid services against the Persians, received from Gallienus the title of Augustus, and was acknowledged by him as his colleague in the empire. After the assassination of Odenathus by his nephew Maeonius, the celebrated Zenobia, the wife of the former, whose prudence and courage had been of great assistance to Odenathus in his former successes, ascended the vacant throne, and, assuming the magnificent title of Queen of the East, ruled with a manly vigour during a period of five years. Under this extraordinary woman, whose talents and accomplishments were equalled by her beauty, and whose love of literature is shown by her patronage of Longinus, Palmyra attained the highest pitch of its prosperity. She claimed to be descended from the Macedonian kings of Egypt, and her achievements would not have disgraced her ancestry; though, according to other accounts, she was a Jewess. (Milman, Hist. of the Jews, 3. p. 175.) Besides the sovereignty of Syria and Mesopotamia, she is said to have extended her sway over Egypt (Zosim. 1.100.44); but by some critics this fact has been questioned. Claudius, the successor of Gallienus, being engaged in the Gothic War, tacitly acknowledged her authority. But after the termination of the short reign of that emperor, the progress of Zenobia in Asia Minor was regarded by Aurelian with jealousy and alarm. Her arms and intrigues already menaced the security of Bithynia (IB.C. 50), when Aurelian marched against her, and defeated her in two great battles near Antioch and Emesa, at both of which she commanded in person. Zenobia now retreated to Palmyra, and prepared to defend her capital with vigour. The difficulties of the siege are described by Aurelian himself in an original letter preserved by Vopiscus. (Aurel. 100.26.) After defying for a long time the arms of the Roman emperor, Zenobia, being disappointed of the succour which she expected to receive from the Persians, was ultimately compelled to fly, but was. overtaken on the banks of the Euphrates by the light horse of Aurelian, and brought back a prisoner. Shortly after this event her capital surrendered, and was treated with clemency by the conqueror, who, however, sullied his fame by the cruel execution of Longinus and some of the principal citizens, whom Zenobia had denounced to him. The personal adventures of Zenobia we need not pursue, as they will be found related in the Dictionary of Biography and Mythology. No sooner had Aurelian crossed the Hellespont than he was recalled by the intelligence that the Palmyrenians had risen against and massacred the small garrison which he had left in their city. The emperor immediately marched again to Palmyra, which now paid the full penalty of its rebellion. In an original letter Aurelian has himself recorded the unsparing execution, which extended even to old men, women, and children. (Vopisc. Aur. 100.31.) To the remnant of the Palmyrenians, indeed, he granted a pardon, with permission to repair and inhabit their ruined city, and especially discovered much solicitude for the restoration of the Temple of the Sun. But the effects of the blow were too heavy to be retrieved. From this period (A.D. 273) Palmyra gradually dwindled into an insignificant town, and at length became only a place of refuge for a few families of wandering Arabs. It served indeed for some years as a Roman military station; and Diocletian partially restored some of its buildings, as appears from an inscription preserved by Wood. About the year 400 the first Illyrian legion was quartered there (Not. Imp. ); and Procopius tells us that it was fortified by Justinian (de Aed. 2.2). But this is the last that we hear of Palmyra under the Romans; and the sinking for-tunes of their empire probably soon led them to abandon it.
The remains of the buildings of Palmyra are chiefly of the Corinthian order, which was the favourite style of architecture during the two or three centuries which preceded Diocletian; whence we may infer that the splendour which it once exhibited was chiefly owing to Odenathus and Zenobia. For many centuries even the site of Palhyra remained totally unknown except to the roving Arabs of the desert, whose magnificent accounts of its ruins at length excited the curiosity of the English merchants settled at Aleppo. Under the auspices of the Levant Company, an expedition started in 1678 for the purpose of exploring them; but the persons who composed it were robbed and ill-treated by the Arabs, and compelled to return without having accomplished their object. In 1691 the expedition was renewed with better success, and an account of the discoveries then made was published in the transactions of the Royal Society. (Sellers, Antiquities of Palmyra, Pref.) Subsequently Palmyra was visited in 1751 by Wood and Dawkins, who published the results of their journey in a large folio volume with magnificent engravings. The account in Volney (vol. ii.) is chiefly taken from this work. Among the more recent descriptions may be mentioned that of Irby and Mangles (Travels, ch. v.), who visited Palmyra in 1816. According to these travellers the plates of Wood and Dawkins have done more than justice to the subject; and although the view of the ruins from a distance, with their line of dazzling white columns extending between one and two miles, and relieved by the contrast of the yellow sand of the desert, is very striking, yet, when examined in detail, they excite but little interest. Taken separately, not a single column or architectural member is worthy of admiration. None of the former exceed 40 feet in height and 4 feet in diameter, and in the boasted avenue they are little more than 30 feet high. The remains of the Ternmple of the Sun form the most magnificent object, and being of the Ionic order, relieve the monotony of the prevailing Corinthian style. These columns, which are 40 feet high and 4 feet in diameter, are fluted, and formed of only three or four pieces of stone; and in former times were surmounted by brazen Ionic capitals. The facade of the portico consists of 12 columns, like that of the temple of Baalbec, besides which there are other points of resemblance. On the whole, however, the ruins are far inferior to those at Baalbec. At the time of Messrs. Irby and Mangles' visit the peristyle court of the Temple of the Sun was occupied by the Arabian village of Tadmor; but with this exception, and the Turkish burial ground, the space was unencumbered, and there was nothing to obstruct the researches of the antiquary. In some places the lines of the streets and the foundations of the houses were distinctly visible. The sculptures are uniformly coarse and bad; the stone is of a perishable description, and scarcely deserves the name of marble. The sepulchres outside the walls formed perhaps the most interesting part of the remains. These consist of square towers, from three to five stories high, forming sepulchral chambers, with recesses for the reception of the bodies. In these tombs mummies and mummy cloths are found, prepared very much after the Egyptian manner; but there are no paintings, and on the whole they are far from being so interesting as the Egyptian sepulchres. There was a sculptured tablet in bas-relief, with seven or eight figures standing and clothed in long robes, supposed to represent priests. Several Greek and Palmyrene inscriptions, and two or three in Latin and Hebrew, have been discovered at Palmyra. They will be found in Wood's Ruins of Palmyra, and the following works may also be consulted: Bernard and Smith, Inscriptiones Graecae Palmyrenorum, Utrecht, 1698; Giorgi, De Inscriptionibus Palmyrenis quae in Musaeo Capitolino adservantur interpretandis Fpistola, Rome, 1782; Barthélemy, in Mém de l'Académie des Inscr. tom. xxiv.; and Swinton, in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlviii.
With regard to the general history and antiquities of Palmyra, besides the works already cited in this article, the following may be consulted: Seller, Antiquities of Palmyra, London, 1696; Huntington in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. xix. Nos. 217, 218; a Dissertation by Dr. Halley in the same work; Gibbon's Decline and Fall. ch. xi.; St. Mart, Hist. de Palmyre, Paris, 1823; Addison's Damascus and Palmyra; Richter, Wallfahrt; Cassas, Voyage Pittoresque de la Syrie; Laborde, Voyage en Orient; &c.
[T.H.D](Πάλμυρα; the O. T. Tadmor). A celebrated city of Syria, standing in an oasis of the great Syrian Desert, which from its position was a halting-place for the caravans between Syria and Mesopotamia. Here Solomon built a city, which was called in Hebrew Tadmor—that is, “a city of palm-trees.” Of this name the Greek Palmyra is a translation. Under Hadrian and the Antonines it was highly favoured, and reached its greatest splendour. The history of its temporary elevation to the rank of a capital, in the third century of the Christian era, is related under Odenathus and Zenobia. After its capture by Aurelian in A.D. 270 it was partly destroyed, but was made a frontier fortress, and under Justinian was strongly fortified. When the Arabs overran the country it was taken by them, and in the year 1400 was plundered by the Tartars under Tamerlane. Its splendid ruins, which form a most striking object in the midst of the desert, are of the Roman period. They resemble those of Heliopolis (q.v.), though less fine. Among them are the remains of a temple of the Sun (or Baal), a great colonnade which originally consisted of some 1500 columns of the Corinthian order, and was nearly a mile in length. There are also a number of square sepulchral towers of much interest; and the streets can still be traced. Several inscriptions in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and the Palmyrean dialect are still extant. See Wood, Bouverie, and Dawkins, The Ruins of Palmyra (1753); Seiff, Reisen in der asiatischen Türkei (1875); and Wright, An Account of Palmyra and Zenobia (London, 1895).
Great oasis in the Syrian desert E of Homs, occupied since prehistoric times. Palmyra grew at the end of the Hellenistic period and flourished until the 3d c. A.D., enriched by the caravan traffic between the Roman and Parthian Empires. After Valerian was captured by the Sassanid Shapur, a prince of Palmyra, Septimius Odaenathus, organized the defense of the Roman East. His widow, Zenobia, extended his empire to Egypt. Palmyra was defeated by Aurelian in 272, sacked, and occupied by a Roman garrison. First Diocletian and then Justinian fortified the town against the Persians. It surrendered to the Moslems in A.D. 637 and declined under the Abbassids.
The monuments include the three great sanctuaries of Bêl, Nabo, and Baalshamin; a wide avenue with colonnades at the sides which is crossed by other porticoed streets, a theater, an agora and its annexes, marble fountains, public baths, a palace often called the Camp of Diocletian, ramparts, and numerous necropoleis.
The oasis has two springs: one, not very abundant, is in the center of the ancient city, the other, the Efqa spring, on the W edge of the town. It wells up in a deep cave, shaped artificially into a long tunnel bordered by benches and by small rock-cut chapels with incense altars (pyrat) dedicated to the Spirit of the Spring.
The temple of Bêl, to the E, is a vast sanctuary of traditional Syrian plan. A quadrangular area, more than 200 in on each side, is enclosed by a high wall bordered on the inside by porticos; in the middle of this court stood a cella. On the outside, to the W, propylaea dating from the second half of the 2d c. A.D. included a portico with eight Corinthian columns. A wide stairway led up to the portico. In the wall of the peribolus three gates gave access to the W portico of the courtyard, built in the middle of the 2d c. A.D. On the other three sides the porticos (built between A.D. 80 and 120) have a double row of columns, lower than those of the W portico. The brackets jutting out from the shafts, very common at Palmyra, carried honorific statues.
The cella (first half of the 1st c. A.D.) was in the middle of the court, with its long side facing the entry and the door in the center of this long W side. Its original foundations of Hellenistic type, a crepis with steps on all four sides, were transformed into a large podium when the level of the courtyard was lowered at the time the porticos were built. The peristyle consisted of fluted columns, 15 by 8, with capitals bearing acanthus leaves of gilded bronze. A frieze of winged spirits holding garlands of fruit adorns the entablature, which is topped by stepped merlons, and many pieces of the frieze are scattered on the ground. The ceiling of the peristyle consisted of decorated stone compartments. Several limestone beams, now on the ground, have reliefs with traces of painting on them: divinities in front of sacrificial altars, a procession with veiled women and a dromedary carrying the draped image under a canopy, and hunting scenes.
The plan of the cella is unique in Syria. On each of the short sides was a deep niche with a monolithic sculptured ceiling; the niches held the cult statues. The ceiling of the N niche depicts the great god, surrounded by the planets and the signs of the zodiac. In front of the S niche a gently sloping ramp allowed the image to be moved easily to a processional litter.
Near the SW corner of the courtyard is another ramp that passed under the W portico, allowing easy passage for processions and sacrificial animals. Between the cella and the high portico the foundations of the sacrificial altar are visible to the N, and the remains of a consecrated basin to the S. Pieces of sculpture in soft limestone have been found beneath the courtyard (now in the museum). They are remains of a temple of the Hellenistic period.
A wide colonnaded street runs NW from the temple of Bêl, connecting most of the monuments. The street has three parts with different orientations. A monumental arch with three bays and sumptuous decoration marks the first change of direction, a (restored) tetrapylon the second. The first section has been partly cleared. It is about 40 m wide and dates from the first half of the 3d c. A.D. Shops with cut stone facade and banquet hall open under the S portico. Jutting out from the alignment of the colonnade, four tall Corinthian columns form the portico of a nymphaeum with sculpture; its basin occupies an apse flanked by two niches.
The temple of Nabo, S of the monumental arch, was begun in the second half of the 1st c. A.D. and was still under construction in A.D. 146. Following the normal Syrian plan, the cella stood on a high podium in the middle of the enclosure. A wide stairway with an altar on the first step led to the podium from the S, and the peristyle consisted of 6 columns by 12. The temple succeeded a Hellenistic one, pieces of architecture and sculpture from which have been found. A sacred well stood in front of the cella, as well as a monument with small columns and a frieze depicting standing figures—a small chapel or monumental altar. The columns of the porticos had Doric capitals and the roof was supported directly by the architraves. On the back walls, highly colored frescos depicted religious scenes. The propylaea opened to the S. The sanctuary had faced away from the great avenue, which cut off its N portico.
The middle section of the avenue, more than 300 m long and 30 m wide, is the best preserved. It has shops under the porticos and brackets for honorific statues on the columns. On the N side are four columns of pink Egyptian granite from the portico of public baths, which an inscription identifies as Baths of Diocletian. To the S, the colonnade passes beside the theater.
The theater, dating from the 2d c. A.D., was built on flat ground. It has a cavea with 13 well-preserved tiers of seats, an orchestra paved with large rectangular slabs, a scaenae frons whose five doors open on exedras with finely carved frames, and graceful Corinthian columns adorning the middle of the facade. The theater is surrounded by a semicircular court, with a colonnade on the outside. A street with porticos leads S, almost on the axis of the theater, to a triumphal gate with three openings which was later incorporated into the ramparts. West of the theater, a small building with a peristyle courtyard and a room with tiers of seats arranged in a semicircle was probably the Senate. Immediately to the S is a vast rectangular enclosure, with walls over 10 m high and no trace of roofing, porticos, or paving: this was an annex to the agora, on which it opens to the W. To the E it opens on the street of the theater, and to the S was a huge gate, big enough to admit loaded camels. The famous fiscal law of Palmyra, a tariff for caravans, was found just in front of the S wall.
The large agora, which dates from the beginning of the 2d c. A.D., was a quadrangular, walled area, surrounded on the inside by porticos. More than 200 brackets in the columns or walls bore statues of emperors (Septimius Severus and his family), of Roman or Palmyrene officials, Roman soldiers, and caravan leaders. In the SW corner is a banquet hall.
The paved platform and basin of a marble fountain with an apse lie on the N side of the great avenue, facing the street which enters it W of the theater. Immediately to the W, between two columns, a lane with irregular paving-stones leads N to the Temple of Baalshamin. A column on the S portico of the avenue bears an inscription in honor of Zenobia. The monument to the S may be a Caesareum. The tetrapylon (restored) stands on a paved base with two steps. Its 16 granite columns on four massive bases have Corinthian capitals and a sculptured entablature. Around the tetrapylon is an elongated oval space, bordered to the N by a continuous portico.
The W and longest section of the great avenue has a magnificent semicircular exedra under its S portico. The colonnade ends in a funerary temple of the 3d c. A.D., with six columns on its facade, outside the city gate.
To the S an avenue bordered by two porticos ends in an oval space and a gate with a triple bay. This was built at the beginning of the 2d c. A.D. The group of buildings called the Camp of Diocletian lies above this street on the slopes of the mountain chain which bounds the site to the W. Past the triple gate is a large quadrilateral area divided into four quarters by two streets which intersect at right angles under a tetrapylon. The axial street then entered a vast courtyard and ended in a stairway leading to a wide gallery, onto the center of which opened a large apsidal chamber, flanked on each side by several rooms. The dominant position, arrangement, and sculptured decoration suggest that this was the palace of the princes of Palmyra, later rearranged by the Roman governors. A temple dedicated to Arab divinities lay to the N, at the end of the transverse street. In the district NW of the great avenue was a grid of streets, between houses with peristyles of the 3d c. A.D. Two Christian basilicas of the usual three-nave plan were built there in the 5th c.
The Temple of Baalshamin, farther E, was dedicated in 132, two years after Hadrian's visit to Palmyra. It consists of a cella, without a podium, set in the middle of a complex group of courtyards. The cella is decorated with pilasters on the outside and lighted by windows; its facade has a portico of four Corinthian columns. Much of the sculptured adornment is in the museum. The temple replaced a sanctuary of the previous century, the S courtyard of which had been dedicated in A.D. 33 and the N portico (with a banquet hall partly covered by the 2d c. temple) built in 67. A large courtyard to the N contained archaic sculptures and dedications of the beginning of the 1st c. A.D. In the SW corner of a courtyard to the S, built in the middle of the 2d c. A.D., lay the main entry to the sanctuary.
Houses of the 3d c., E of the temple of Bêl, have produced fine mosaics: Achilles discovered at Skyros, Asklepios (both in the Palmyra museum), and Cassiopeia (Damascus museum).
The ramparts, which can be followed for ca. 12 km, have an alternating sequence of three rectangular bastions and one semicircular one. Although commonly attributed to Zenobia, they date to Diocletian and were restored by Justinian. Along the S stretch (ca. 3 m thick) the rampart makes use of the N crest of the wadi and the S walls of the agora. An older fortification, of the 1st c. B.C. at the earliest, included the Efqa spring and ran SW. The Damascus gate has been identified there, on the edge of the necropoleis.
These necropoleis surround the town and have several types of tombs: tower tombs (more than 150), house tombs, and hypogaea. The Valley of the Tombs opens to the SW along the Emesa road. The oldest tower tombs (the most remarkable is that of Atenatan, dating from 9 B.C.) have a lower story with vaults opening to the exterior. The tower tomb of Jamblichus (A.D. 83) has four stories still standing; in it were found pieces of Chinese silk used to wrap the mummified corpses. The tower tomb of Elahbel, finished in A.D. 103, also with four stories, has a balcony like a sarcophagus on the third floor. In the same necropolis was the hypogaeum of Yarhai (partly reconstructed in the Damascus museum). Its plan is normal, an inverted ⊥, but the end of the W lateral branch there is a sarcophagus with a sculpture depicting the deceased lying in the banqueting position, and in the exedra of the central branch (to the S) three sarcophagi form a triclinium for a funerary banquet. Funerary compartments in the walls are sealed by slabs on which are carved busts of the deceased, priests with ceremonial head-dress, and women adorned with heavy jewelry.
In the SW necropolis along the Damascus road, several hypogaea have fresco and stucco decoration: the hypogaeum of the Three Brothers (ca. A.D. 140) has a group of fine sculptures and an exedra with paintings of the beginning of the 3d c. A.D.; that of Atenatan (A.D. 98) has an exedra with a triclinium dating from A.D. 229. Its sarcophagi with sculptures still show traces of painting. The deceased is depicted with his pages and wears Persian costume. Another necropolis, farther E, also has several fine hypogaea: in one of them the two stone leaves of the door at the bottom of the staircase down to the chamber have been preserved. The finest of the house tombs of Palmyra, built in A.D. 236, is in the N necropolis. Many of the sculptures from these necropoleis are now in the museums of Palmyra and Damascus, and in the Louvre.
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J.-P. REY-COQUAIS