Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 130, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1917 — Tadmor in the Wilderness [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Tadmor in the Wilderness

IN the East, the eyes of Europe have been centered on Bagdad. For myself, the big event recalls a small personal experience, a visit I paid some years ago to the city of the Caliphs, via Damascus and Palmyra, says a writer in the London Graphic. Except for the caravans that halt there on their way to Bagdad, Palmyra has but few visitors. The journey there entails many difficulties and dangers; but we were anxious to see this city, “noble in situation, in wealth, in sunshine and pleasant waters,” as Pliny calls it, and, having made all necessary arrangements for a camp and escort of soldiers, we started early one morning from Damascus by the road which is still called the Zenobian Way. Palmyra, or “Tadmor in the Wilderness,” was built by Solomon, as we read in the Book of Kings, and there can be little doubt that the ruins now before us occupy the site, as they bear the name of the city founded by the great King of Israel. But it is to a woman —Zenobia, the Queen of the East—that Palmyra owes its high position in the annals of antiquity. The virtue, the wisdom, and the heroic spirit of that extraordinary woman have never been surpassed. Her end was tragic: the Romans invaded her country in 270, defeated her, and carried her a prisoner to Rome — there, covered with jewels, she was led by a golden chain along the Via Sacra,

been put into the barracks out of harm’s way: one is a very fine torso of the God of Wine holding a drinking Cup, and another impart of a sarcophagus with four heads on It. Near the colonnade lying in a mingled heap were some beautiful specimens of cornices and capitals. The modern village is built of miserable mud huts inside the Temple of the Sun, and much disfigures it; but this is of little concern to the Bedouin. Should the spirit of Zenobia still haunt her ruined city, one can imagine her standing beside the lonely column, watching the steady advance of the British troops across the Arabian desert, and inviting them to halt and be refreshed at her springs, and then speeding them on to the fertile lands beyond; there they can hope for a warm welcome from the Syrian people, who have long wished toll veinpeace and freedom under British rule.