We might dwell upon many characters, and the various phases or circumstances of human life that have developed them; but we hasten onwards.

Victoria, the Queen of the West, was the mother of Marcus Victorinus, monarch of Gaul. After the death of her son she strove to save the throne for Gaul, which she had rescued from the despotism of Rome. Her soldiers acknowledged her supremacy, and called her the "Mother of Armies." She successively placed Marius and Tetricus on the throne, and reigned with great vigour in the name of those two dependent sovereigns, A.D. 170.

We pass now from the heroine of the West to the "Queen of the East," the great Zenobia. "Amidst the barren deserts of Arabia there bloomed an oasis, which, from the beauty and the shade of its palms, bore the name of Palmyra; and which tradition assumed to have been the site of the Tadmor of King Solomon.

Its pure air, its numerous springs, and fruitful soil, with its happy position (between the Gulf of Persia and the Mediterranean), had made it a halt for the caravans, which bore to Rome and to the remotest nations of the Roman empire the rich productions of India. For the mutual commercial benefits it conferred on the Roman and Parthian empires, the little republic of the desert had long been suffered to maintain a peaceable obscurity; and it still preserved an humble neutrality, until it was suddenly raised to be the capital of an empire, and to stand forth the rival of Rome herself.

Odenatus, the brave chief of that peculiar tribe of Arabs called Saracens, who rather dwelt in than reigned over the desert regions that surround Palmyra, becoming alarmed at the approach of Sapor, sent ambassadors to the Persian monarch, with the voluntary offer of his homage, and with costly presents to bribe his friendship. Sapor received both with contempt, threw the presents into the water,

and ordered the donor to come in person, to prostrate himself at the feet of his sovereign

master.

"The Arab chief felt bitterly this insult; but there was one ever near him, in war or peace, who urged him to avenge it, and who encouraged him to take arms against the greatest king of the earth; to oppose his own wandering Arabs to the Persian phalanx, and, fighting for his honour and independence, to conquer or to die.

"The counsel seemed more than human, but Odenatus listened to it, as though it were oracular; for it came from Zenobia, his wife, companion, and friend. 'If the doubtful achievements of Semiramis be excepted,' says Gibbon, 'Zenobia perhaps was the only woman whose superior genius broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the climate, the manners, and the institutions of Asia.'

"To a mind whose resources assisted to raise her husband from a private station to a

throne, she united a person whose beauty was universally acknowledged. Her voice, like her mind, was strong and harmonious, and her powerful understanding, strengthened and developed by study, enabled her, in the midst of the fatigues of war and of the chase, to conquer the difficulties of the Greek, the Syriac, and the Egyptian languages; all of which she spoke with grace and purity and, though she did not venture to converse in Latin, she was learned in every branch of its literature.

"Such was Zenobia when her counsels worked on Odenatus, and encouraged him to undertake a war which could only be justified by its success, a success to which she mainly contributed. Her eloquence, her beauty, and her genius, are allowed by all writers to have had a miraculous effect on the ardent temperaments and fervid spirits of the sons of the desert; and the Arabs of all tribes and denominations crowded to her standard yearning to resent the wrongs of the brave

chief whom she had chosen for her husband. The forces of Odenatus and Zenobia thus became so considerable as to induce the Roman legions to join them, and to make common cause against the common enemy. Zenobia, who had inured her constitution to fatigue, disdaining to take the field in a covered carriage (like the ladies of the Persian camp) appeared on horseback in a military habit, and in all the brilliant panoply of war. Sometimes she descended from her Arab charger, and marched on foot for many miles across the Syrian desert, at the head of the troops. It was thus, at the side of her husband, that she first encountered the Persian army in the plains of Mesopotamia.

“The engagement that ensued was long and doubtful; but the impetuous courage of the light Arab cohorts prevailed over the ponderous unwieldy armament of the great king.' The Persians gave way; Mesopotamia, Nisibis, and Carræ, were taken. The troops of Sapor were overcome, his treasures plundered, and