pikes," he said. " 'T is easier and more profitable to sap the
Roman's gold than to shed the Roman's blood."

But this submission to Rome only angered Odhainat, and to such a
conflict of opinion did it lead that at last Hairan drove his
younger brother from the home of his fathers, and the lad, "an
Esau among the Jacobs of Tadmor," so the record tells us, spent
his youth amid the roving Bedaween of the Arabian deserts and the
mountaineers of the Armenian hills, waiting his time.

But, though a homeless exile, the dark-eyed Bath Zabbai did not
forget him. In the palace of another kinsman, Septimus Worod, the
"lord of the markets," she gave herself up to careful study, and
hoped for the day of Palmyra's freedom. As rich in powers of mind
as in the graces of form and face, she soon became a wonderful
scholar for those distant days--mistress of four languages:
Coptic, Syriac, Latin, and Greek, while the fiery temper of the
girl grew into the nobler ambitions of the maiden. But above all
things, as became her mingled Arabic and Egyptian blood--for she
could trace her ancestry back to the free chiefs of the Arabian
desert, and to the dauntless Cleopatra of Egypt,--she loved the
excitement of the chase, and in the plains and mountains beyond
the city she learned to ride and hunt with all the skill and
daring of a young Diana.

And so it came to pass that when the Emperor Valerian sent an
embassy from Rome to Ctesiphon, bearing a message to the Great
King, as Sapor, the Persian monarch, was called, the embassy
halted in Palmyra, and Septimus Hairan, now the head-man of the
city, ordered, "in the name of the senate and people of Palmyra,"