Soon afterwards Palmyra surrendered. The emperor treated it with lenity, but a great treasure in gold, silver, silk, and precious stones fell into his hands, with all the animals and arms. Zenobia being brought into his presence, he sternly asked her how she had dared to take arms against the emperors of Rome. She answered, with respectful prudence, "Because I disdained to consider as Roman emperors an Aureolus or a Gallienus. You alone I acknowledge as my conqueror and my sovereign." Her fortitude, however, did not last. The soldiers, with angry clamor, demanded her immediate execution, and the unhappy queen, losing for the first time the courage which had so long sustained her, gave way to terror, and declared that her resistance was not due to herself, but had arisen from the counsels of Longinus and her other advisers. It was the one base act in the woman's life. She had purchased a brief period of existence at the expense of honor and fame. Aurelian, a fierce soldier, to whom the learning of Longinus made no appeal, at once ordered his execution. The scholar died like a philosopher. He uttered no complaint. He pitied, but did not blame, his mistress. He comforted his afflicted friends. With the calm fortitude of Socrates he followed the executioner, and died like one for whom death had no terrors. The ignorant emperor, in seizing the treasures of Palmyra, did not know that he had lost its choicest treasure in setting free the soul of Longinus the scholar. What followed may be more briefly told. Marching back with his spoils from Palmyra, Aurelian had already reached Europe when word came to him that the Palmyrians whom he had spared had risen in revolt and massacred his garrison. Instantly turning, he marched back, his soul filled with thirst for revenge. Reaching Palmyra with great celerity, his wrath fell with murderous fury on that devoted city. Not only armed rebels, but women and children, were massacred, and the city was almost levelled with the earth. The greatness of Palmyra was at an end. It never recovered from this dreadful blow. It sunk, step by step, into the miserable village, in the midst of stately ruins, into which it has now declined. On his return Aurelian celebrated his victories and conquests with a magnificent triumph, one of the most ostentatious that any Roman emperor had ever given. His conquests had been great, both in the West and the East, and no emperor had better deserved a triumphant return to the imperial city, the mistress of the world.