or PALMIRA (Gr. Παλμύρα, Ptol. Appian; Ἡσαίου, Joseph.), "The City of Palm Trees," is the name given by Greek and Roman authors to an ancient city of Syria, which is called by the sacred historians Tadmor or Todmor (Heb. תַּדְמוֹר, 1 Kings ix. 18; יָדְמוֹר, 2 Chron. viii. 4—words having the same signification), and which is still known by the Arabs under the name Todmor. The identity of Tadmor with Palmyra is not only inferred from the similarity of the names, but rests also on the authority of Josephus. It stands in an oasis in the Syrian desert, about half-way between the Euphrates and the Orontes, and about 140 E.N.E. of Damascus; N. Lat. 34° 24', E. Long. 38° 20'. Tadmor is said in the passages of Scripture already cited to have been built by Solomon; but it cannot be thence inferred that no city had previously existed on this site. On the contrary, there are considerations which lead us to suppose that Solomon only enlarged, and, as Josephus informs us, fortified, the more ancient town of Tadmor. It is plain that the site of the town must always have been important as a station in the desert while any route of travel led across this region; and that this existed at a very early period, appears not only from the communication between Mesopotamia and Palestine, as early as the time of Abraham, but from the mention by Moses of Indian products, such as cinnamon (Exod. xxx. 25), which were probably conveyed by this route to the West. The object of the Hebrew monarch in taking possession and increasing the size of Tadmor evidently was, to retain in his own hands the profitable traffic with India by means of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; and the place is accordingly described by ancient writers as inhabited chiefly by merchants, and proverbial for its wealth and luxury. This Indian trade is with much probability conjectured by Volney to have been the cause of many of the wars and revolutions of the East in ancient times, and it was probably as much as any other motive that directed the continual efforts of the Assyrian and Babylonian emperors against Palestine and Phoenicia, until both of these once powerful nations were reduced under their supremacy. As long as Jerusalem and Tyre continued to flourish, Palmyra occupied a very subordinate position, and it is not mentioned in the history either of the expedition of the younger Cyrus or of the campaigns of Alexander. The decline of its rivals, however, under the successors of Alexander, paved the way for the subsequent accession of power acquired by Palmyra.

It is first mentioned by the Roman historians as a place which Marcus Antonius attempted to plunder, upon pretence that it had not observed a just neutrality between the Romans and Parthians. Under the early Roman emperors, Palmyra was an independent city, and a place of some importance, holding a position between the two great empires of that time, the Roman and the Parthian. In 130 A.D. Palmyra submitted to Adrian, and from this period rapidly increased in wealth and power. Though nominally subject to Rome, it had a senate and popular assembly of its own, as is seen from the inscriptions found among the ruins. In the middle of the third century, when the Roman empire was weakly governed by Gallienus and Valerian, Palmyra rose to its highest degree of power. When the defeat and captivity of Valerian by the Persians, in 260 A.D., had so much weakened the empire that its adversaries seemed to be in a fair way of becoming masters of all the eastern provinces, Odenathus, a noble of Palmyra, took up arms against Sapor, the Persian monarch, whom he defeated, and expelled from Syria and Mesopotamia. For these services he was rewarded by Gallienus with the title of Augustus, and acknowledged as his colleague in the empire.

Odenathus enjoyed his sovereignty but a very short time, being murdered about the year 266 by his nephew, who was soon afterwards put to death by Zenobia, the wife of Odenathus. This celebrated woman, who assumed the title of Queen of the East, was not more remarkable for her bold and martial achievements than for her intellectual acquirements, and for the patronage she bestowed on literature, particularly in the person of Longinus, the greatest philosopher of his age. By his advice, she wrote a letter to Aurelian, who had assumed the purple in 270, declaring her independence,—a step which did not fail to provoke the hostility of that emperor. He accordingly passed over into Asia, and routed the forces of the Queen of the East, under the command of Zahlas, in two separate engagements fought near the gates of Antioch, and under the walls of Emesa. Zenobia finding it impossible to collect a third army, withdrew to Palmyra as her last resource, and prepared for a desperate resistance.

"The Roman people," says Aurelian, in an original letter, "speak with contempt of the war which I am waging against a woman. They are ignorant both of the character and of the power of Zenobia. It is impossible to enumerate her warlike preparations of stones, of arrows, and of every species of missile weapons. Every part of the walls is provided with two or three balistas, and artificial fires are thrown from her military engines. The fear of punishment has armed her with a desperate courage. Yet I trust still in the protecting deities of Rome, who have hitherto been favourable to all my undertakings." The courage of the queen was supported by the hope of aid from Sapor of Persia. That monarch died, however, during the course of the siege, and the unfortunate heroine, driven to the last extremity, resolved to fly. Mounting her fleetest dromedary, she scoured the desert for 60 miles, but was overtaken and captured by Aurelian's light horse on the banks of the Euphrates. She was brought a captive to the feet of the emperor, and her capital soon afterwards surrendered.

After the surrender of Palmyra, Zenobia was conveyed as a captive to Rome, to grace the conqueror's triumph; while many of her advisers, and among the rest Longinus, were put to death. Aurelian had hardly set foot on the shores of Europe, when intelligence reached him of the massacre of the governor and garrison he had left at Pal- Palmyra. Without a moment's deliberation, he turned his face eastward, and the fated city felt the full weight of his resentment. The destruction of Palmyra took place in 273 A.D.; but, in pity for the remnant of the inhabitants, permission was granted to rebuild and occupy it. (See Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. ii., chap. xi.) After this period, however, the city gradually declined. It was indeed enlarged by Diocletian, in whose reign it was a military station, and Justinian strengthened its fortifications; but the decline of the Roman empire seems to have soon led to the abandonment of the place. It was taken by the Saracens under the caliph Abu Bekr, the successor of Mohammed, and was a place of some importance in the wars between the different factions of the Prophet's followers.

In the twelfth century Palmyra was visited by Benjamin of Tudela, who states that it was then surrounded with a wall, and inhabited by 2000 Jews. In 1400 it was plundered by Tamerlane; but after this period Palmyra is not again mentioned in history. Until nearly the end of the seventeenth century the magnificent ruins of Palmyra were known only to the Arabs, by whom, in 1678, an expedition by certain English merchants at Aleppo was rendered abortive; and after the success of a second attempt in 1691, the description they gave of the remains received little credit. These earlier reports were, however, confirmed by Wood and Dawkins, who visited Palmyra in 1751, and published a full account of the ruins they found there. But these descriptions were regarded as somewhat exaggerated by Irby and Mangles, who examined the place in 1816. Since that period several other travellers have visited Palmyra, and given accounts of its remains.

The ruins stand at the eastern foot of a chain of hills extending north and south, and they present, on the first view, an extremely fine appearance,—contrasting by the pure whiteness of their innumerable columns with the yellow sand of the desert. The Arabian village of Tedmor consists merely of a collection of mud hovels in the court of the great Temple of the Sun; but all the rest of the ruins are free from the incumbrance of any modern structures. The inhabitants of both sexes are well shaped, and the women, though very swarthy, have good features. They are veiled, but do not so scrupulously conceal their faces as the eastern women generally do. They stain the ends of their fingers and the palms of their hands red, their lips blue, and their eyebrows and eyelashes black. They have large rings of gold or brass in their ears and nostrils, and appear to be healthy and robust. The numbers of the inhabitants are continually fluctuating. Mr Addison, who visited the ruins in 1835, states that there were then only twelve or fifteen families in the village; while in 1851, when the Rev. J. L. Porter was there, the place contained seventy or eighty families, though since that time he states that it is reported to have been deserted by nearly half the people, on account of a private quarrel. They live chiefly by trading with the Bedouins and the people of Damascus, to which city they convey large quantities of salt, obtained from the desert south of Palmyra. A few small gardens are cultivated, producing vegetables and corn; and in these still flourish a number of the palm trees that once gave its name to the city. As the whole of the ruins are covered to some height with drifting sand, which seems to have come down from the eminences to the S.W. of the town, it is probable that some change has taken place in the surface of the country; for the splendid buildings and colonnades would scarcely have been erected in a position where it would require constant labour to keep them clear of sand. Although some travellers have represented the buildings of Palmyra as constructed of marble, the material almost universally employed is white limestone from the adjacent hills, which are of that formation. Several shafts, however, are of Syenite granite, one of which, 30 feet long and 3 in diameter, must have been conveyed with immense labour and difficulty from Upper Egypt, a distance of nearly 200 miles. The ruins of Palmyra cannot properly be compared with those of Ba'albek, for, though less gigantic, they are far more extensive and various. The ancient walls, which may still be traced, and which are supposed to be those of Justinian, have a circumference of 3 miles; while we have reason to believe that the ancient city extended far beyond these limits, and if we may believe the Arabs, covered an area 10 miles in circumference. "Here," says Addison, "over an immense area, we wander through the ruins of long porticoes leading up to ruined temples and unknown buildings. Now we see a circular colonnade sweeping round, with its ruined gateway at either end; now we come to the prostrate walls or ruined chambers of a temple or a palace; anon we explore the recesses of a bath or the ruins of an aqueduct; then we mount the solitary staircases, and wander through the silent chambers of the tombs, ornamented with busts, inscriptions, and niches for the coffins stored with mouldering bones; and from the summits of funeral towers, five storeys in height, we look down upon this mysterious assemblage of past magnificence, and beyond them upon the vast level surface of the desert, silent and solitary, stretching away like the vast ocean, till it is lost in distance." (Vol. ii., p. 296.) The capitals of the columns, and the more delicate sculptures, have been much injured by the scirocco wind of the desert; but those parts which have been sheltered from its corroding influence present the most beautiful and minute carving.

Like many other ancient cities of Syria, Palmyra contains a grand colonnade, which extends from S.E. to N.W., and is intersected near the middle by another at right angles to it. At the S.E. extremity is a triumphal gateway, with three arches; and at the intersection of the two colonnades are four stone platforms, which once supported as many statues. The avenue consisted of four rows of columns, of which it must have contained upwards of 1500, more than 150 still remaining. They are 57 feet high, including the bases and capitals, and finely proportioned, though the details are not so tasteful as those of the great temple. A richly-sculptured entablature surmounted the columns, and must have added to the magnificent appearance of the whole when entire. This colonnade seems to have been one of the places set apart by the Palmyreians for monuments to their distinguished citizens, as most of the pillars have brackets projecting from them for supporting statues, and inscriptions below containing the name of the individual. One of these inscriptions is important, as establishing, by its date and the historical persons mentioned, the fact that the era in use at Palmyra was that of Seleucus, B.C. 312. The dates found on the various columns, however, cannot be taken as fixing the period when the colonnade itself was erected; but they give evidence that this must have been previous to 238 A.D. From the grand avenues many smaller colonnades diverge in various directions, leading to the numerous temples and other buildings that occupy the space around the avenues. This seems to have been an ornamental part of the town, kept quite distinct from the rest, which lay more to the north. It is impossible to describe all the various buildings which crowd the site of the city of Zenobia, and which are, many of them, remarkable for elegance and beauty. The most magnificent of these, however, the great Temple of the Sun, deserves a more particular account. It stands on a rising ground near the south-eastern end of the town, and must have presented, when entire, a most splendid appearance. The outer court, a perfect square, 740 feet every way, was inclosed by a lofty wall pierced with numerous richly-carved windows, between which, on both sides, are Corinthian pilasters surmounted by a frieze and cornice. On the west side was Palmyra, the grand entrance, consisting of a portico of ten pillars, 138 feet in length, approached by a magnificent staircase. All this, however, has been disfigured by a huge square tower, built by the Saracens, who used the temple as a fortress. The central door, whose sides and lintel are composed of single blocks of stone, is 32 feet in height and 15 in breadth; and is surrounded with beautifully-carved vine branches and clusters of grapes; while the two side doorways are half the size of the central one. The interior area, which was paved with large square stones, was surrounded on every side but the west, where there was a single row, by a double range of pillars 37 feet high, each having on a bracket the statue of some distinguished individual. The number of the columns was 390; but of these only about 60 now remain. In the centre of the area, on a raised platform, stood the temple itself, towering above the adjacent edifices. It stands north and south, having its door on the west side, facing the grand entrance; and it is surrounded by a row of Corinthian columns 64 feet high, and a cornice running all round, with boldly-carved wreaths of flowers and fruit. The door is 33 feet high by 15 wide, and has over it an eagle with outspread wings, similar to that in the temple at Ba'albek. The roof of the temple is entirely gone, and the interior has been much defaced by the fanaticism of the Mohammedans, who employ the southern end as a mosque. At each extremity of the building, which is 134 feet long, exclusive of the colonnade, is a semicircular vaulted chamber, with a richly-sculptured roof, that at the north end having representations of the signs of the zodiac. This magnificent temple is considered by Porter, as a whole, to be scarcely surpassed by any in the world. "The temple of Minerva at Athens, and a few of its fellows,—the chief d'œuvre of ancient Greece,—are undoubtedly more beautiful in their stern simplicity, and in the brilliancy of their marble columns. Ba'albek, not less chaste in its sculpture, is more gigantic in its proportions; but the cloistered court at Palmyra, with its long lines of statues, and the temple itself towering high over all, formed a picture unique and unequalled by any of these." (Vol. i., p. 238.) Besides the temples and colonnades, there are at Palmyra numerous tombs, many of which are curious and interesting. There seem to have been two cemeteries near the town, one of which, supposed to be the more ancient, as it contains no Greek inscriptions, lies in the plain to the S.W., while the other occupies the sides of the valley through which the road leads westward. Some of the tombs are hewn out of the rock; others are towers several storeys in height. They generally contain receptacles for coffins, arranged in tiers; most of them have inscriptions, and many are adorned with sculpture. One of the aqueducts that supplied the city with water runs through the valley in the west from a source in the northern mountains. It is built of hewn stones, and is 8 feet high by 4 broad. There was also another aqueduct, the source of which is not known, but of which traces have been observed to the N. of the great temple. From a fountain, near which is an ancient altar of Jupiter, to the S.W. of the city, flows a sulphureous stream, which supplies the modern inhabitants, and waters their few gardens. The inscriptions on the various columns and buildings of Palmyra are numerous, and are written both in Greek and in the Palmyrene characters, which have a considerable resemblance to the Hebrew. The earliest date that has been found in Greek is 314 of the Seleucian era (A.D. 2); but the Palmyrene inscriptions are believed to be much more ancient. As many of the tombs have never been opened, and as the Palmyrene tongue has not yet been deciphered, it is possible that some additions to our knowledge of ancient history may be derived from these inscriptions, though most of the Greek ones contain little more than names and dates. Of the more modern buildings at Palmyra, the only one that deserves notice is the Saracen's castle, which stands on the hills to the N.W. of the town, commanding a fine view of the whole of the ruins. It is said by the Arabs to have been built by Man Ogle, a Druse prince; but it is now entirely deserted.

Such is the present condition of the renowned city of "Palmyra, central in the desert;" a city which was once the seat of wealth and of learning—the capital of a nation that defied the power of Rome—the chief emporium on a route by which of old the wealth of India was conveyed to the West—and which, though now traversed only by the wandering Bedouin or the adventurous traveller, seems likely to become again the highway to the East. The wretched huts of the present inhabitants, contrasting with the splendour of the ancient remains, show how fatal to Palmyra has been its conquest by the followers of the Prophet. (See Damascus and Palmyra, by Charles G. Addison, London, 1838; Five Years in Damascus, by the Rev. J. L. Porter, A.M., F.R.S.L., London, 1855.)