Septimius Odaenathus

Septimius Odaenathus (died 267/268) was a prince of the Roman colony of Palmyra (q.v.), in what is now Syria, who prevented the Sāsānian Persians from permanently conquering the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.

A Roman citizen and a member of Palmyra’s ruling family, Odaenathus had by 258 attained consular rank and become ruler of Palmyra. When the Roman emperor Valerian was captured by the Sāsānian king Shāpūr I (260), Odaenathus remained loyal to the Romans in order to prevent his city from falling under Sāsānian control. In 260 he inflicted a severe defeat on Shāpūr’s army as it was returning home after sacking Antioch. When he then defeated the usurping emperor Quietus at Emesa (now Homs, Syria), Valerian’s son and successor, Gallienus, rewarded the Palmyrene ruler with the title corrector totius Orientis (“governor of all the East”); in addition, Odaenathus styled himself king of Palmyra and, eventually, king of kings. Beginning in 262 he drove the Persians from the Roman provinces of Mesopotamia and Osroëne, and he probably also brought Armenia back into the empire. Although he failed to seize the Sāsānian capital of Ctesiphon, he had managed to restore Roman rule in the East. Odaenathus was preparing to drive Gothic invaders from the Roman province of Cappadocia in eastern Asia Minor when he and his eldest son, Herodes, were assassinated. After his death, his wife, Zenobia (q.v.), made Palmyra an independent kingdom before she was subjugated by the Romans in 272.