Aurelian passed the five years of his reign in an activity which beggars belief, going from one frontier to another, and from war to war. At first, he wisely made peace with the Goths, to whom he gave up the claims of Rome on Dacia. This country may have been in a condition like that of Gaul in the fifth century. The Romans may have kept their ground only in the impassable places of Transylvania, which he now evacuated, there being no hope left of driving back the Goths who had made inroads almost everywhere. The population of Dacia had been so much weakened by the wars, that the country could not be kept: those who wished to leave it, now settled in Bulgaria which thereby gained strength.—The war against the great Zenobia, who was already dreaming of nothing less than an Asiatic empire, was decided by two battles, at Antioch and at Emesa. As Zenobia could stand her ground against the Persians, but not against the Roman legions, her infantry must have been bad: it may be that she had formed in Syria a militia which overawed the Persians, whereas the Romans, who did not wish to give arms into the hands of the borderers, carried on the war with the aid of mercenaries. Zenobia’s defence of Palmyra did not answer the expectation which was entertained of her courage; for she fled and was taken prisoner. In her captivity, she showed herself to be an Asiatic woman, by sacrificing her best advisers as having beguiled her into bad policy: among these was the ingenious Longinus. As without doubt, even at that time, there was in many minds the idea of a Greek Asiatic Empire, an intellectual Greek like Longinus may indeed have suggested such a thought to his princess. It was one of the acts which have stained Aurelian’s purple, that he had this distinguished man put to death; and still worse was his giving up Palmyra to destruction on account of a rebellion of its inhabitants.