A few months after the surrender the Palmyrenes once more rose, killed the small Roman garrison serving there, and proclaimed one Antiochus[115] as ruler, while they at the same time attempted to induce the governor of Mesopotamia, Marcellinus, to revolt. The news reached the emperor when he had just crossed the Hellespont. He returned at once, and stood, earlier than friend or foe had anticipated, once more before the walls of the insurgent city. The rebels had not been prepared for this; there was this time no resistance, but also no mercy. Palmyra was destroyed, the commonwealth dissolved, the walls razed, the ornaments of the glorious temple of the sun transferred to the temple which, in memory of this victory, the emperor built to the sun-god of the East in Rome; only the forsaken halls and walls remained, as they still stand in part at the present day. This occurred in the year 273.[116] The flourishing of Palmyra was artificial, produced by the routes assigned to traffic and the great public buildings dependent on it. Now the government withdrew its hand from the unhappy city. Traffic sought and found other paths; as Mesopotamia was then viewed as a Roman province and soon came again to the empire, and the territory of the Nabataeans as far as the port of Aelana was in Roman hands, this intermediate station might be dispensed with, and the traffic may have betaken itself instead to Bostra or Beroea (Aleppo). The short meteor-like splendour of Palmyra and its princes was immediately followed by the desolation and silence which, from that time down to the present day, enwrap the miserable desert-village and the ruins of its colonnades. [Sidenote: Persian war of Carus.]