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such a siege have been found. Surrender, as in the case of Trajan, meant temporary occupation by the enemy who apparently evacuated the city soon after its occupation. Dura was certainly not in the hands of the Persians in the years A.D. 254-256.

The reason for the early evacuation of Dura may have been the activity of Odenath after the first invasion of Syria and the defeat of Shapuhr's southern army near Hemesa at the hands of Sampsiceramus. I have mentioned above that according to DomninusMalalas Odenath attacked the army of Shapuhr somewhere near the Euphrates. This fact is reported by Malalas with many legendary details, but the kernel of Malalas' report may be true, just as is the kernel of his report on Hemesa. In order better to understand the activity of Odenath at this time let me say a few words of the situation of Palmyra in mid-third century A.D.

The rich caravan city of Palmyra with its large agricultural and grazing territory studded with villages and Bedouin tent-camps, and inhabited by a large population of settled peasant-agriculturists, horsebreeders, and nomadic shepherds and camel breeders, always occupied a peculiar position in the Roman Empire, of which it was de iure a constituent part. It never became a regular city of the Greek type, one of the many of the province of Syria, though its constitution appears at the first glance to conform to the regular constitution of a Greek polis. The Greek constitution was a mere façade behind which Palmyra remained what it used to be before its hellenization - a Semitic city or rather state under the rule of a few rich and influential families. In such a city a partial return to the pre-Greek traditions was a natural thing. In times of danger the population entrusted its safety to the richest, ablest and bravest sheikh, keeping at the same time the Greek constitutional frame. "Tyrannies" were of frequent occurrence in Greco-Semitic cities of Syria and Mesopotamia in the hellenistic period, especially in times of political anarchy,69 and "tyrannies" naturally sprang up again in the troubled period of the third century A.D., when the Syrian part of the Roman Empire lived in conditions somewhat similar to those which prevailed in Syria under the later Seleucids, Returns to "tyrannies" based on hellenistic precedents are known in many places. I may remind the reader of Hemesa, the sister city of Palmyra, in the time of Alexander Severus and again in A.D. 253/4 (above, pp. 31 and 39) and of Edessa and the Abgari. 70

The situation in Palmyra was similar. 71 Here it was the family to which Odenath belonged which gradually became the de facto ruling family of Palmyra. Though Pal-

69. M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, ch. VI, pp. 842 and 852, notes 121 and 122. Tyrannies in the Parthian Kingdom, CAH, XI, p. 115.
70. On Hemesa, Benzinger, PW, V, 2596 f.; Stähelin, art. Sampsigeramus, ibid. IA, 2226; A. H. M. Jones, Eastern Cities, pp. 258, 261 f, ; A. T. Olmstead, op. cit. pp. 407 ff. Hemesa was in its development very similar to Palmyra. It became important and flourishing at the same time as Palmyra, that is to say in the late second or early first century B.C. and owed its prosperity, again like Palmyra, to its fertile territory and its role in the caravan trade. In the hellenistic and early Roman times it was ruled by

   

an Arab dynasty. From Pompey to the Flavians it was a vassal state of Rome. It was probably Domitian who made it one of the cities of the province Syria and its aristocracy became strongly hellenized and romanized. Its short glory under Septimius Severusl Elagabalus and Alexander Severus is well known. In the time of Alexander Severus and later in the third century (about A.D. 253/4) Hemesa produced two pretenders to the Roman throne, scions in all probability of its former rulers (above, p. 31). Similar in many respects is the history of Edessa; see CAH, XI, p. 115 and bibliography, p. 881.
71. No good up-to-date bibliography of works dealing with Palmyra is in existence. A short one will

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