Odaenathus

Septimius Odaenathus ( Palmyrene Aramaic: , , vocalized as ; ar, أذينة, translit=Uḏaina; 220 – 267) was the founder king ( ''Mlk'') of the Palmyrene Kingdom who ruled from Palmyra, Syria. He elevated the status of his kingdom from a regional center subordinate to Rome into a formidable state in the Near East. Odaenathus was born into an aristocratic Palmyrene family that had received Roman citizenship in the 190s under the Severan dynasty. He was the son of Hairan, the descendant of Nasor. The circumstances surrounding his rise are ambiguous; he became the lord (''ras'') of the city, a position created for him, as early as the 240s and by 258, he was styled a ''consularis'', indicating a high status in the Roman Empire.

The defeat and captivity of Emperor Valerian at the hands of the Sassanian emperor Shapur I in 260 left the eastern Roman provinces largely at the mercy of the Persians. Odaenathus remained on the side of Rome; assuming the title of king, he led the Palmyrene army, fell upon the Persians before they could cross the Euphrates to the eastern bank, and inflicted upon them a considerable defeat. He took the side of Emperor Gallienus, the son and successor of Valerian, who was facing the attempted usurpation of Fulvius Macrianus. The rebel declared his sons emperors, leaving one in Syria and taking the other with him to Europe. Odaenathus attacked the remaining usurper and quelled the rebellion. He was rewarded with many exceptional titles by the Emperor, who formalized his self-established position in the East. In reality, the Emperor may have done little but accept the declared nominal loyalty of Odaenathus.

In a series of rapid and successful campaigns starting in 262, Odaenathus crossed the Euphrates and recovered Carrhae and Nisibis. He then took the offensive into the heartland of Persia, and arrived at the walls of its capital, Ctesiphon. The city withstood the short siege but Odaenathus reclaimed the entirety of the Roman lands occupied by the Persians since the beginning of their invasions in 252. Odaenathus celebrated his victories and declared himself " King of Kings", crowning his son Herodianus as co-king. By 263, Odaenathus was in effective control of the Levant, Roman Mesopotamia and Anatolia's eastern region.

Odaenathus observed all due formalities towards the Emperor, but in practice ruled as an independent monarch. In 266, he launched a second invasion of Persia but had to abandon the campaign and head north to Bithynia to repel the attacks of Germanic raiders besieging the city of Heraclea Pontica. He was assassinated in 267 during or immediately after the Anatolian campaign, together with Herodianus. The identities of the perpetrator or the instigator are unknown and many stories, accusations and speculations exist in ancient sources. He was succeeded by his son Vaballathus under the regency of his widow Zenobia, who used the power established by Odaenathus to forge the Palmyrene Empire in 270.

Name, family and appearance

"Odaenathus" is the Latin transliteration of the king's name; or ), and the Latin ones ( la, Odaenathus, , or ), are more or less corrupted transliterations of the Palmyrene and the Arabic respectively., group=note he was born Septimius Odainat in . His name is written in transliterated Palmyrene as . "" (Septimius), which means "born in September", was Odaenathus' family ''gentilicium'' (Roman surname), adopted as an expression of loyalty to the Roman Severan dynasty and the emperor Septimius Severus who had granted the family Roman citizenship in the late second century. (Odainat) is the Palmyrene diminutive for ear, related to in Arabic and in Aramaic. Odaenathus' genealogy is known from a stone block in Palmyra with a sepulchral inscription that mentions the building of a tomb and records the genealogy of the builder: Odaenathus, son of Hairan, son of Wahb Allat, son of Nasor. In Rabbinic sources, Odaenathus is named "Papa ben Nasor" (Papa son of Nasor); the meaning of the name "Papa" and how Odaenathus earned it is unclear.

The King appears to be of mixed Arab and Aramean descent: his name, the name of his father, Hairan, and that of his grandfather, Wahb-Allat, are Arabic; while Nasor, his great-grandfather, has an Aramaic name. Nasor might not have been the great-grandfather of Odaenathus, but a more distant ancestor; the archaeologist Frank Edward Brown considered Nasor to be Odaenathus' great-great or great-great-great grandfather. This has led some scholars, such as Lisbeth Soss Fried and Javier Teixidor, to consider the origin of the family to be Aramean. In practice, the citizenry of Palmyra were the result of Arab and Aramaean tribes merging into a unity with a corresponding consciousness; they thought and acted as Palmyrenes.

The fifth-century historian Zosimus asserted that Odaenathus descended from "illustrious forebears", but the position of the family in Palmyra is debated; it was probably part of the wealthy mercantile class. Alternatively, the family may have belonged to the tribal leadership which amassed a fortune as landowners and patrons of the Palmyrene caravans. The historians Franz Altheim and Ruth Stiehl suggested that Odaenathus was part of a new elite of Bedouins driven from their home east of the Euphrates by the aggressive Sassanian dynasty after 220. However, it is certain that Odaenathus came from a family which had belonged to the upper class of the city for several generations; in Dura-Europos, a relief dated to 159/158 (470 of the Seleucid era, SE) was commissioned by Hairan son of Maliko son of Nasor. This Hairan might have been the head of the Palmyrene trade colony in Dura-Europos and probably belonged to the same family as Odaenathus. According to Brown, it is plausible, based on the occurrence of the name Nasor in both Dura-Europos and Palmyra (where it was a rare name), that Odaenathus and Hairan son of Maliko belonged to the same family.

No definite images of Odaenathus have been discovered, hence, there is no information about his appearance; all sculptures identified as Odaenathus lack any inscriptions to confirm whom they represent. Two sculpted heads from Palmyra, one preserved in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum and the other in the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, were identified by the archaeologist as representing Odaenathus based on their monumentality and regal style. The academic consensus does not support Ingholt's view, and the heads he ascribed to the king can be dated to the end of the second century. More likely, two marble heads, one depicting a man wearing a royal tiara, the crown of Palmyra, and the other depicting a man in a royal Hellenistic diadem, are depictions of the king. In addition, a Palmyrene clay tessera, depicting a bearded man wearing a diadem, could be a portrait of the king.

Odaenathus I

Traditional scholarship, based on the sepulchral inscription from Odaenathus' tomb, believed the builder to be an ancestor of the king and he was given the designation “Odaenathus I“. The name of King Odaenathus' father is Hairan as attested in many inscriptions. In an inscription dated to 251, the name of the ''ras'' (“lord”) of Palmyra, Hairan, son of Odaenathus, is written, and he was thought to be the son of Odaenathus I. Prior to the 1980s, the earliest known inscription attesting King Odaenathus was dated to 257, leading traditional scholarship to believe that Hairan, ''ras'' of Palmyra, was the father of the king and that Odaenathus I was his grandfather. However, an inscription published in 1985 by the archaeologist Michael Gawlikowski and dated to 252 mentions King Odaenathus as a ''ras'' and records the same genealogy found in the sepulchral inscription, confirming the name of King Odaenathus' grandfather as Wahb Allat; thus, he cannot be a son of Hairan son of Odaenathus (I). Therefore, it is certain that King Odaenathus was the builder of the tomb, ruling out the existence of “Odaenathus I”. The ''ras'' Hairan mentioned in the 251 inscription is identical with Odaenathus' elder son and co-ruler, Prince Hairan I.

Rise

Palmyra was an autonomous city within the Roman Empire, subordinate to Rome and part of the province of Syria Phoenice. Odaenathus descended from an aristocratic family, albeit not a royal one as the city was ruled by a council and had no tradition of hereditary monarchy. For most of its existence, the Palmyrene army was decentralized under the command of several generals, but the rise of the Sasanian Empire in 224, and its incursions, which affected Palmyrene trade, combined with the weakness of the Roman Empire, probably prompted the Palmyrene council to elect a lord for the city in order for him to lead a strengthened army:

''Ras'' of Palmyra

The Roman emperor, Gordian III, died in 244 during a campaign against Persia and this might have been the event which led to the election of a lord for Palmyra to defend it:Odaenathus, whose elevation, according to the historian Udo Hartmann, can be explained by Odaenathus probably being a successful military or caravan commander, and his descent from one of the most influential families in the city. Odaenathus' title as lord was ''ras'' in Palmyrene and exarchos in Greek as revealed by bilingual inscriptions from Palmyra. The ''ras'' title enabled the bearer to effectively deal with the Sassanid threat, in that it probably vested in him supreme civil and military authority; an undated inscription refers to Odaenathus as a ''ras'' and records the gift of a throne to him by a Palmyrene citizen named "Ogeilu son of Maqqai Haddudan Hadda", which confirms the supreme character of Odaenathus' title. The office was created for Odaenathus, and was not a usual title in the Roman Empire, and not a part of Palmyrene government traditions.

Hairan I was apparently elevated to co-lordship by his father, as an inscription from 251 testifies. As early as the 240s, Odaenathus bolstered the Palmyrene army, recruiting desert nomads and increasing the number of the Palmyrene heavy cavalry (clibanarii). In 252, the Persian emperor, Shapur I, started a full-scale invasion of the Roman provinces in the east. During the second campaign of the invasion, Shapur I conquered Antioch on the Orontes, the traditional capital of Syria, and headed south, where his advance was checked in 253 by a noble from Emesa, Uranius Antoninus. The events of 253 were mentioned in the works of the sixth-century historian John Malalas who also mentioned a leader by the name "Enathus" inflicting a defeat upon the retreating Shapur I near the Euphrates. "Enathus" is probably identical with Odaenathus, and while Malalas' account indicates that Odaenathus defeated the Persians in 253, there is no proof that the Palmyrene leader engaged Shapur I before 260 and Malalas' account seems to be confusing Odaenathus' future actions during 260 with the events of 253.

Shapur I destroyed the Palmyrene trade colonies along the Euphrates, including the colonies at Anah in 253 and at Dura-Europos in 256. The sixth-century historian Peter the Patrician wrote that Odaenathus approached Shapur I to negotiate Palmyrene interests but was rebuffed and the gifts sent to the Persians were thrown into the river. The date for the attempted negotiations is debated: some scholars, including John F. Drinkwater, set the event in 253; while others, such as Alaric Watson, set it in 256, following the destruction of Dura-Europos.

Governor of Syria Phoenice

Several inscriptions dating to the end of 257 or early 258 show Odaenathus bearing the Greek title (; la, clarissimus consularis, link=no). This title was usually bestowed on Roman senators who held the consulship. The title was also mentioned in Odaenathus' undated tomb inscription and Hairan I was mentioned with the same title in the 251 inscription. Scholarly opinions vary on the exact date of Odaenathus' elevation to this position. Gawlikowski and the linguist Jean Starcky maintained that the senatorial rank predates the ''ras'' elevation. Hartmann concluded that Odaenathus first became a ''ras'' in the 240s, then a senator in 250. Another possibility is that the senatorial rank and lordship occurred simultaneously; Odaenathus was chosen as a ''ras'' following Gordian's death, then, after Emperor Philip the Arab concluded a peace treaty with the Persians, the Emperor ratified Odaenathus' lordship and admitted him to the senate to guarantee Palmyra's continued subordination.

The ''clarissimus consularis'' title could be a mere honorific or a sign that Odaenathus was appointed as the legatus of Phoenice. However, the title () was sometimes used in Syria to denote the provincial governor and the archaeologist William Waddington proposed that Odaenathus was indeed the governor of Phoenice. Five of the inscriptions mentioning Odaenathus as consul are dated to 569 SE (258) during which no governor for Phoenice is attested, which might indicate that this was Odaenathus' year of governorship. In Phoenice's capital city Tyre, the lines "To Septimius Odaenathus, the most illustrious. The Septimian colony of Tyre" were found inscribed on a marble base; the inscription is not dated and if it was made after 257 then it indicates that Odaenathus was appointed as the governor of the province. These speculations cannot be proven, but as a governor Odaenathus would have been the highest authority in the province, above legionary commanders and provincial officials; this would make him commander of the Roman forces in the province. Whatever the case may be, starting from 258 Odaenathus strengthened his position and extended his political influence in the region. By 260, Odaenathus held the rank, credibility and power to pacify the Roman East following the Battle of Edessa.

Reign

Faced with Shapur I's third campaign, the Roman emperor Valerian marched against the Persian monarch but was defeated near Edessa in late spring 260 and taken prisoner. The Persian emperor then ravaged Cappadocia and Cilicia, and claimed to have captured Antioch on the Orontes. Taking advantage of the situation, Fulvius Macrianus, the commander of the imperial treasury, declared his sons Quietus and Macrianus Minor as joint emperors in August 260, in opposition to Valerian's son Gallienus. Fulvius Macrianus took Antioch on the Orontes as his center and organized the resistance against Shapur I; he dispatched Balista, his praetorian prefect, to Anatolia. Shapur I was defeated in the region of Sebaste at Pompeiopolis, prompting the Persians to evacuate Cilicia while Balista returned to Antioch on the Orontes. Balista's victory was only partial: Shapur I withdrew east of Cilicia, which Persian units continued to occupy. A Persian force took advantage of Balista's return to Syria and headed further west into Anatolia. According to the '' Augustan History'', Odaenathus was declared king of Palmyra as soon as the news of the Roman defeat at Edessa reached the city. It is not known if Odaenathus contacted Fulvius Macrianus and there is no evidence that he took orders from him.

Persian war of 260 and pacifying Syria

Odaenathus assembled the Palmyrene army and Syrian peasants, then marched north to meet the Persian emperor, who was returning to Persia. The Palmyrene monarch fell upon the retreating Persian army between Samosata

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