“You have spoken,” replied Zenobia to the ambassadors, with a calm voice and steady glance, “with plainness, as it became a Roman to do”; and then her eye flashed with proud disdain as she drew her stately form up to still more lofty proportions, and she continued: “Now hear me, and as you hear, so report to him who sent you. Tell Aurelian that what I am, I have made myself; that the empire which hails me queen has been moulded into what it is by Odenathus and Zenobia; it is no gift, but an inheritance, a conquest, and a possession; it is held, not by favor, but by right of birth and power; and when he will give away possessions or provinces which he claims as his, or Rome’s, for the asking, I will give away Egypt and the Mediterranean coast. Tell him, that as I have lived a queen, so, the gods helping, I will die a queen; that the last moment of my reign and my life shall be the same. If he is ambitious, let him be told that I am ambitious too—ambitious of wider empire, of an unsullied fame, and of my people’s love. Tell him I do not speak of gratitude on the part of Rome; but that posterity will say that the power which stood between Rome and Persia, and saved the empire in the East, which avenged the death of Valerian, and twice pursued the Persian king, even to the gates of his own Ctesiphon, deserved some fairer acknowledgment from an ally whom its arms had thus befriended than the message you now bring from your Roman emperor.” With proud dignity the ambassadors were then dismissed, and Zenobia prepared to defend her rights and kingdom. Nor did she indolently permit the emperor of the West to approach the gates of her fair Palmyra. With brave rashness she went forth to meet him, and two great battles were fought, one near Antioch, and the second near Emæsa. In both these contests the brave Zenobia herself led her troops to the onslaught, giving the second place in command to her valiant warrior Zabdas, whose great prowess in arms had hitherto made him a successful general. But in both these battles Zenobia was defeated, and she was forced to fall back within the gates of Palmyra. Here she made a brave and last defence. And again she boldly defied Aurelian from her towers, as she had already defied him on the field of battle. So great was her courage and so valiant her defence, that Aurelian was obliged to admit her claims of being a most powerful and determined foe, and thus wrote of her: “Those who speak with contempt of the war I am waging against a woman, are ignorant of both the character and power of Zenobia. It is impossible to enumerate her warlike preparations of stones, of arrows, and of every species of missile weapons and military engines.”