"'With these words his head fell upon his bosom, and he died. I returned to the conflict; but it had become a rout, and I was borne along with the rushing throng toward the gates.'"
Subsequently, an Armenian army, which had come to relieve Zenobia, are seen from the towers to strike their tents, throw down their allegiance to the Queen, and join the army of Aurelian. The following picture of the besieged city affords a striking contrast to the brilliant metropolis which our readers have seen described in the former letters:
"This last has proved a heavier blow to Palmyra than the former. It shows that their cause is regarded by the neighboring powers as a losing one, or already lost, and that hope, so far as it rested upon their friendly interposition, must be abandoned. The city is silent and sad. Almost all the forms of industry having ceased, the inhabitants are doubly wretched through their necessary idleness; they can do little but sit and brood over their present deprivations, and utter their dark bodings touching the future. All sounds of gayety have ceased. They who obtained their subsistence by ministering to the pleasures of others, are now the first to suffer--for there are none to employ their services. Streets, which but a little while ago resounded with notes of music and the loud laughter of those who lived to pleasure, are now dull and deserted. The brilliant shops are closed, the fountains forsaken, the Portico solitary--or they are frequented by a few who resort to them chiefly to while away some of the melancholy hours that hang upon their hands. And those who are abroad seem not like the same people. Their step is now measured and slow, the head bent, no salutation greets the passing stranger or acquaintance, or only a few cold words of inquiry, which pass from cold lips into ears as cold. Apathy--lethargy--stupor--seem fast settling over all."
The next movement of the Queen, is to go in person to the court of Persia, to obtain the aid of Sapor and the Prince Hormisdas, who has sought in marriage the Princess Julia, her daughter, who, though devoted to Calpurnius, offers herself as a victim on the altar of her country. The Queen, with attendants, leaves Palmyra, by a subterranean aqueduct, leading beyond the Roman camp, but is betrayed by a female slave, who is bribed to treachery by the Palmyrene traitor, Antiochus, and carried to the camp of Aurelian. The interview between Zenobia and the Roman general, with the account of an attempt by the enraged army, so long foiled by a woman, to destroy her, cannot be curtailed, and is yet too long to extract. It is in fine unity and the strictest keeping with the whole narrative. Antiochus, the traitor, is scourged beyond the camp of the Romans, by Aurelius' order. Terms of capitulation are now offered and accepted, and Palmyra, as a nation, ceases to exist. Aurelian enters the city; the Roman army is converted into a body of laborers and artizans, who are employed in constructing wains, of every form and size, to transport the treasures of the rifled city, by the aid of multitudes of elephants and camels, across the desert to the sea, to adorn the triumph of Aurelian, and add to the splendors of Rome; while the senators and councillors of Palmyra, among whom are Longinus and Gracchus, are led guarded from the city, amid the vehement grief of the people, to the camp of the Roman conqueror, and finally conveyed to the Roman prisons, at Emesa, a Syrian town, to await death at his hands.