Since the days of Semiramis no female ruler in ancient times attained so high a pinnacle of greatness throughout the East as Zenobia. For more than five years, unaided, she set the Roman emperors at defiance, defeated their armies, and laughed equally at their threats and their underhand machinations. Septimia Zenobia was an Arab princess, and while some writers assert that she was a Jewess, the heroine herself claimed descent, through her father Amru, from the Ptolemies of Egypt. Truly she was as beautiful as any Egyptian queen--even the handsome Cleopatra. By some writers she has been cited as the loveliest woman of her age. An olive complexion, pearly teeth, large, brilliant, black eyes, which sparkled alternately with the fire of the heroine and the sweetness of the loving wife--such were the charms of her face. Her voice was rich and musical. She was conversant with Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Egyptian; and compiled for her own reading an epitome of Homer. Her tutor in philosophy was the famous Greek, Cassius Longinus. Zenobia was a widow, and the mother of a son, Vhaballathus, when she wedded Odenathus, Prince of Palmyra. The latter, however, was a widower, and also the father of a son--Ouarodes, or Herod, a weak and effeminate youth. Septimius Odenathus, who raised himself by his own genius and the fortune of war, to the sovereignty of the East, was, like his wife, an Arab. He was chief prince of the wild Saracen tribes who dwelt in the Syrian deserts, on the shores of the Euphrates. Odenathus early learned the rudiments of war in the exciting chase of wild beasts--a pastime which, to the last, he never wearied of, and in which he was joined with equal ardour by Zenobia. Together the royal pair, during the intervals of peace, hunted lions, panthers, or bears, through the woods and deserts of Syria. When the emperor Valerian was captured and flayed alive by Sapor, King of Persia, A.D. 260, Odenathus marched, at the head of an Arab host, against the Persians, defeated them near Antioch, compelled them to retreat, beat them again on the banks of the Euphrates, and finally drove them across the river; capturing, in the first battle, the greater part of the wives and treasures of Sapor. Zenobia accompanied her husband in this, as in all his subsequent expeditions, and bravely seconded his efforts. She proved herself as good a soldier as any, and endured, with the utmost fortitude, the same hardships as the meanest there. Disdaining the use of a covered carriage, she frequently marched several miles at the head of the troops. Pursued closely by Odenathus and Zenobia, Sapor fled through Mesopotamia, suffering many defeats, losing towns and cities, and at last took refuge in Ctesiphon, his capital, where the victors besieged him for some months.