10.
Epilogue. Leontopolis, August 26th 274 AD. Execution site outside the gate to Callinicum.
On the second hour after sunrise, Bat-Zabbai got crucified. I did not want to miss the spectacle, wondering how she would behave.
She arrived at the site, escorted by soldiers, and chained the same way as when she had left the courtroom, and also dressed the same way! And also still looking proud the same way.
A bailiff loudly read the court’s verdict : “… for rebellion, conspiracy, taking up arms against the Emperor, treason, breaking of a given word, abuse of power, war crimes, and murder…!”
Bat-Zabbai heard it without emotion.
“Make her ready!”
The soldiers released the chains.
There was a moment of hesitation. Obviously, like all condemned to the cross, Bat-Zabbai should be naked. But apparently, her aura was still so strong, that the soldiers seemed reluctant to strip her. Bat-Zabbai surveyed the crowd as if she was looking for eye-contact, as if she intended to speech. Spontaneously, a woman and her about 20 years old daughter stepped forward from the crowd. Looking like ‘what must be done, should be done’, Bat-Zabbai released the belt of her chiton and gave it to the mother. Then she unclipped the shoulder buttons with one hand, and handed them over to the daughter, while she held up the chiton at her breast level with the other hand. Then she dropped it, stepped out of it, where upon the daughter took it up.
Bat-Zabbai nodded to the mother, who released her breastband, making her breasts fall free. Finally, after a slightly deeper take of breath, Bat-Zabbai detached herself the loincloth, now revealing her total nudity. She stepped forward, kicking out her sandals.
‘By Jupiter and all gods of the Pantheon!’ I thought! ‘From her long black hair, her goddess-like face, her perfect round breasts, her waist and hips, centered into a gorgeous black bush! These legs! Queen Zenobia, either fully dressed or stark naked, what a graceful appearance!’
Bat-Zabbai nodded to the centurion to make clear that she was ready! Soldiers shackled her to a flogging pole. Standing up, she received the thirty lashes, moaning on each stroke! Although, I had the impression, that the whipper did not hit her with the fullest possible force, and that he was neither summoned to do so! Were the Roman holding back, because of Bat-Zabbai’s support in town, or did they spare her at the whipping post, to lengthen her struggle on the cross?
Anyway, in contrast to many victims before her, Bat-Zabbai kept her composure, did not beg for mercy, and kept up some pride. At the end, she showed red stripes allover her back, down to her thighs, but not the welts with trickling blood, as is often the case after thirty lashes, she did not hang almost limp to the pole, and she did not have to be dragged to her cross.
Instead, she could walk to it, a bit uneasy and in pain, but still, she could take the opportunity of having her wrists unshackled, to correct her hair.
“Crucify her!”
Still, there was some hesitation. The mother and daughter, who had assisted Bat-Zabbai with her preparations, helped her lay down on the cross. She thanked them for their assistance. The clothes were to be left on the site, but the women were given the shoulder buttons as a reward for their help.
The executioners started tying Bat-Zabbai to her cross. She was given a mouthpiece of wood to bite on during the nailing.
With the execution imminent, the crowd moved forward, as much as allowed. I lost sight of Bat-Zabbai. The hammering started. I heard her uttering shrieks of intense pain, muffled by the mouthpiece. Even a former empress is not immune for that intense pain! Four times, there was hammering. Moments later, the cross was raised, and I saw her again, her eyes full of pain and fear, as she struggled against the torture now inflicted by her own body weight. Her face was distorted and she uttered uncontrolled shrieks. She looked ten years older than moments before. Her haircut had gone completely wild.
As the cross had been fixed, Bat-Zabbai came to a calm, and let herself hang down by her arms. But not for long! With a tormented roar, she pulled herself up by her arms, and stayed in that position, heavy breathing! It was clearly a heavy effort she had to make.
Just now, some spectators started to mock her! Bat-Zabbai, despite her peril, replied, but with great difficulty. She was clearly already in another world, the world of those who will die, but still are fighting it!
A guard put a ladder against the crossbeam and added a titulus. It mentioned : ‘murder’, ‘high treason’ and ‘war crimes.’ In Latin, Greek and Aramese.
I noticed meanwhile the clothes she had worn, tossed in front of her cross. A symbol that she was no longer among the living, but already outcast of this world. A symbol, she knew very well, and now she had to watch herself it all the time.
While the guard was up the ladder, she exchanged a brief word with him. With the consent of the head of the guard, a second ladder was raised, and both attached a rope under her armpits, easing her breathing somewhat.
“Give the bitch a cornu!” a spectator shouted, receiving approval from others. “Yes! Give her a throne that suits her!” Bat-Zabbai had to endure several minutes of taunting for that rope.
I kept staring at her. At her gorgeous body, that slowly moved up and down, left to right. It was an exciting view, it made me hard. On the other hand, I strange enough felt some pity for her. She was clearly struggling, that was already hard enough for her, but she had to do so in front of tens, maybe hundreds of spectators. Sometimes, she caught the attention of the crowd, sometimes she turned away from it, struggling with her own hopeless agony. She may have been a tyrant as a ruler, responsible for the death of numerous innocent people, she deserved to be executed for that, but in this way? And alone? They should at least have given her a companion, fellow sufferer, next to her, to give each other mutual support.
“Come, Loxurus, let’s go to the boss!” said Quietus, who had accompanied me to watch the execution.
So, we returned to the inn, and went upstairs to our private meeting room.
“So, there goes Zenobia!?” I said to that legionary – in civil clothing – who let me in.
“Not that name here! Bat-Zabbia will do!”
“Is Valabathus not too harsh for her!? She is his mother after all!?”
“Harsh!? Me!? Not at all!” a voice replied. Valabathus’ voice!
Valabathus, her own son, had betrayed her! With the help of the Bedouins that had escorted her to Leontopolis Why? Very obvious! First of all, because he wanted to become the ruler of Palmyra himself. Likely not by rebellion, but by a trajectory that would make him a temporary ally of Aurelian. This would help crushing the current rebellion, in which he had no interest to help succeed. But also his own mother was a competitor he wanted out of the way! Valabathus knew, as long as Bat-Zabbai lived, she would strive to become Septimia Zenobia again! Even though he was the real, official heir, she would always try to take and keep control over him either! He knew that, even if he could seize power in Palmyra, she would always be there to dominate him, and keep him in a subordinate role! He wanted to get rid of her, and of her dominance!
Valabathus had developed a deep grunt against Bat-Zabbai! Most of all, he hated her for having been compelled to march next to her during Aurelian’s victory parade in Rome. He had experienced that as a huge humiliation and dishonouring, and he blamed Bat-Zabbai for that! From the first step of the parade, behind Aurelian’s chariot, Valabathus knew, he would never forgive his mother for having brought him into that humiliating situation! Somehow, Bat-Zabbai had managed to be allowed to march in the parade fully dressed and made up as a queen! A queen, nevertheless with golden chains from wrist to wrist and another one attached to a neck collar, held by some gladiator, whom she had to follow like a pet dog at the leech. The view of her, wearing expensive clothing and jewels, pathetically posing, looking merely like an ornated tart, a fancy trophy, had filled Valabathus with disgust for her! He was of the opinion that she should have killed herself instead, after the fall of Palmyra. He also hated it that she had accepted to live in Rome, thereby even allowing to become the submissive wife of some lewd old pervert senator, who only treated her as a sex toy, one of the many he had, by the way! Valabathus could not live with the idea that his mother had chosen for the easy, wealthy life, meanwhile giving herself to the carnal lusts of that man, anytime he wanted her! Worse, the senator treated him, the heir of the Palmyrene Empire, as a mere servant, and even had abused him also from time to time, without objection by Bat-Zabbai!
Valabathus had already had plans to kill that lewd senator, to stab him to death, and even her too, for the sake of the family’s honour! In his eyes, Bat-Zabbai, once an inspiring example of leadership for him, who had raised him harshly, and always had warned him to never show weakness, had turned out herself to be a weak, submissive creature, hiding her cowardness behind her dominant and arrogant stance! Yet, when the news of the new rebellion in Palmyra had reached Rome, Valabathus changed his plans, and traveled to Syria – but to his horror, he soon learned that Bat-Zabbai had left Rome and was following him.
However, the arrangement she had proposed, sending him to Egypt suited his intentions. If she had really been so stupid to travel to Syria, it would be an opportunity to get rid of her! Instead of going to Egypt, he secretly took contact with Marcellinus, the Roman prefect of Mesopotamia. At the time, Marcellinus pretended to support the cause of Septimius Apsaios in Palmyra, but in fact, he tried to gain time for Aurelian. For Valabathus, Septimius Apsaios was an usurper either, whom he wanted to be defeated, so he choose to join those he could not beat at the moment, the Romans. Everyone of course knew, that this alliance was temporal.
While Aurelian was dealing with the rebellion of Septimius Apsaios, and on the winning hand, Valabathus could gain time too. As soon as he had heard of his mother’s intentions and whereabouts, he had immediately sailed from Alexandria to Laodicea in Syria, and hurried to Leontopolis. There, he arranged her downfall, while she was still underway to the city. It was just a matter of bribing the right people. He lobbied to have her brought to death, and as an ultimate vengeance for the victory parade and the senator, he had lobbied to execute her by the most humiliating and agonizing way : the cross!
“Tell me, Sir!? Is your name Loxurus?” the legionary then asked me.
“Yes, why!?”
“I was on guard, that night, two years ago, after the fall of Palmyra, when her advisors, the so-called Philosophers, had been crucified. There was a Loxurus among them!”
“Coincidence!” I remark.
“These Philosophers!?” Valabathus said, mockingly “with that guy Gaius Longinus!? Such a band of loosers! Pathetic middle aged men, obediently serving Bat-Zabbai, hoping they would have been rewarded with a fuck with her!? Thinking they could build an empire on culture and philosophy? She better had surrounded herself with a council of real men! Perhaps then, the Palmyran Empire would have had a chance to succeed!”
No one replied to that.
“And let us not forget, that she has commanded the murder of my father and my half-brother!” Valabathus added. “That alone makes her deserve the cross!”
“My Lord, may I remark that there is no proof for that!? It is just a rumor!” I cautiously replied.
“Sure Loxurus! Everybody may think his own of the assassination, but I am convinced that she had ordered it! But gentlemen, I am a merciful man! So I have ordered that she will get a decent burial after her demise! Her body must be dressed again with the clothes she was wearing, so I insist, everything must be done to prevent them from getting stolen. Then she will get a tomb in the basements of the temple, where she can rest in peace for eternity! On condition that the burial chamber will be firmly bricked up! You see!? I still care about my mother’s afterlife!”
“Euh.. My Lord Valabathus!?”
“What is it Loxurus!?”
“Before getting crucified, she has given the shoulder buttons of her chiton to a mother and a daughter, as a reward for their assistance with her preparations!”
Valabathus sighed.
“Quietus! Go back there and find these two! Summon some guards if needed, to help you! I want those buttons back!” Valabathus ordered.
“Yes My Lord! That cannot be a problem! I know who they are and where they live!”
“Good! And, Quietus!?”
“My Lord?”
“See to it, that those two women get a public flogging for theft! Stripped! At least twenty lashes each! In front of Bat-Zabbai’s cross!”
“At your orders, My Lord!” Quietus said.
“Just wait a minute before you go, Quietus! Loxurus, about you!?”
“Yes, My Lord!?”
“You did what you were ordered to do in court, as a witness for the prosecution! With good success!”
“Thank you, My Lord!”
“But, euh… after all, you committed perjury, since everything you told there was from hearsay, as you had fled Palmyra already some time, from the first arrests on!”
“That’s true My Lord, but, like we had a deal about that..?”
“Yes, I know, I promised you a reward for that, at the level of the efficiency of your testimony! What had you expected?”
“Honestly, My Lord, with all respect, a certain sum, for compensation…”
“As I understand, Loxurus, you agree to get bribed to commit perjury in court!?
“Yes… No!! My Lord Valabathus, we had a deal…?”
“Quietus! Crucify him, next to her! Then you will be at the level of the efficiency of your testimony! Valabathus always keeps His promises! Enjoy the view and her company! After all, it would be harsh from me to let her suffer alone! You see! I still care about my mother’s wellbeing, even when she is crucified!”
“At your orders, My Lord”, Quietus replied, apparently eager to carry out the order.
“But…”
“And bring her my greetings, Loxurus!”
THE END
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