[110] Whether Zenobia claimed for herself formal joint-rule, cannot be certainly determined. In Palmyra she names herself still after the rupture with Rome merely βασιλίσση (Waddington, 2611, 2628), in the rest of the empire she may have laid claim to the title _Augusta_, Σεβαστή; for, though there are no coins of Zenobia from the period prior to the breach with Rome, yet on the one hand the Alexandrian inscription with βασιλισσης καὶ βασιλέως προσταξάντων (_Eph. epigr._ iv. p. 25, p. 33) cannot lay any claim to official redaction, and on the other hand the inscription of Byblos, _C. I. Gr._ 4503 b = Waddington, n. 2611, gives in fact to Zenobia the title Σεβαστή alongside of Claudius or Aurelian, while it refuses it to Vaballathus. This is so far intelligible, as Augusta was an honorary designation, Augustus an official one, and thus that might well be conceded to the woman which was refused to the man.
[111] So Zosimus, i. 44, narrates the course of events with which Zonaras, xii. 27 and Syncellus, p. 721, in the main agree. The report in the life of Claudius, c. 11, is more displaced than properly contradictory; the first half is only indicated by the naming of Saba; the narrative begins with the successful attempt of Timagenes to ward off the attack of Probus (here Probatus). The view taken of this by me in Sallet (_Palmyra_, p. 44) is not tenable.
[112] The determination of the date depends on the fact that the usurpation-coins of Vaballathus cease already in the fifth year of his Egyptian reign, _i.e._ 29th August 270-71; the fact that they are very rare speaks for the beginning of the year. With this essentially agrees the circumstance that the storming of the Prucheion (which, we may add, was no part of the city, but a locality close by the city on the side of the great oasis; Hieronymus, _vit. Hilarionis_, c. 33, 34, vol. ii. p. 32 Vall.) is put by Eusebius in his Chronicle in the first year of Claudius, by Ammianus, xxii. 16, 15, under Aurelian; the most exact report in Eusebius, _H. Eccl._ vii. 32, is not dated. The reconquest of Egypt by Probus stands only in his biography, c. 9; it may have happened as it is told, but it is possible also that in this thoroughly falsified source the history of Timagenes has been _mutatis mutandis_ transferred to the emperor.