In spite of the stubborn resistance of the city, Aurelian did not now destroy Palmyra or treat its inhabitants cruelly. But when he reached the Bosphorus on his way back to Rome, word came that the Palmyrenes had already revolted and had slain the Roman garrison left by the conqueror. Thereupon he quickly retraced his march and recaptured the city without difficulty. This time the enraged emperor ordered the beautiful capital to be razed and allowed his soldiers to engage in an awful massacre. Neither women nor children were spared, and when the avenging army finally left the unhappy city, its splendid buildings were but heaps of dusty rubbish, among which hid a miserable remnant of its heartbroken inhabitants. Thus departed forever the glory of Palmyra. The heart of the world has been touched by the pathetic spectacle of proud, beautiful Zenobia led captive through the streets of Rome to grace Aurelian’s triumphal procession. Yet the emperor seems to have treated his captive with unusual consideration and respect, and he generously bestowed upon her a large estate near Tivoli. There, in the company of her two sons, she passed the rest of her days quietly, though we dare not hope happily. Palmyra was afterwards partially rebuilt by Diocletian and was fortified by Justinian, who made it a garrison town; but it never regained its former prosperity. The city was overrun by the desert Arabs, and suffered severely during the conflicts among the rival Moslem conquerors of Syria. In the year 745 it was again destroyed; in the eleventh and twelfth centuries it suffered from severe earthquakes; in 1401 it was plundered by the Tartar Tamerlane; in the sixteenth century it was taken by the Druses, and in the seventeenth it was razed by the Turks. For many generations the ancient city on the oasis was completely unknown to the Western world, though the wandering Bedouins delighted to talk of the marvelous ruins in the midst of the great desert. Modern Tadmor—for it has taken again its old Semitic name—is but a wretched Arab hamlet of perhaps three hundred inhabitants, whose mud-plastered hovels lie in the midst of imposing ruins. Fully a square mile of the plain is strewn with the débris of temples, palaces and majestic colonnades. Many columns are still standing, after having braved the wars and earthquakes of sixteen centuries; but by far the greater number of them lie prone on the ground, half buried by the drifting dust. The most prominent object that meets the eye is the Great Temple of Baal, the sun-god, which stands on a high platform overlooking the plain. Although Aurelian himself had this edifice restored after the final subjugation of Palmyra, it has since been badly damaged by earthquakes and defaced by the fanaticism of Moslem iconoclasts. Yet eight of its tall fluted columns and practically all of one side-wall enable us to guess what must have been the beauty of this structure when it was the chief sanctuary of Zenobia’s capital.