Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 42

in the middle of the Syrian Desert between the Orontes and the Euphrates, a favoured status with Rome. They were considered to be the most powerful ally the armies had in the east and they had acted as a buffer against the Persians.

Even they had rebelled against Rome and Palmyra’s warrior queen Zenobia and her family actually had created their own ‘empire’ by declaring independence and seizing Egypt and its riches as their own. Aurelian swiftly and brutally dealt with the uprising and with Zenobia, who was captured and ignominiously dragged off the Rome, some said in golden chains. Alas that left the empire’s eastern flank directly exposed to the rapacious appetites of Persia again and upon Diocletian’s accession it was once more a major problem he had to try to alleviate. There were other rebellions too. Peoples from beyond the Rhine in the west to the Lower Danube on the borders of Dacia and from the Nile Valley in the south to Pontus, north of Asia Minor, were becoming restive, eager to rid themselves of what they considered the dead hand of Roman rule, not to mention wanting to be relieved of the taxes that they were all paying to Rome. You could fully understand their point of view. Tax collectors were forcibly levying dues on people which were ostensibly to pay for the Roman army to protect them, when in point of fact the legions were there to keep them in check in the first place. It must all have been very provoking.

THE JOURNEY