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Since Valerian’s son and co-emperor Gallienus was held up by operations in the West, Odaenathus of Palmyra showed himself to be an indispensable ally because Palmyra was the only city of the empire to have kept an armed militia to maintain peace and safety along the desert routes used by caravans. Thanks to these troops and mobilizing only a part, at least, of the Roman troops in Syria, Odaenathus of Palmyra fought against the usurpers Macrianus and Quietus (260 ce), and managed to stop the Persians by handing them a defeat in the Orontes river valley. He brought war to Mesopotamia, taking Ctesiphon twice, it seems, in 262 ce and then in 267 or 268.

Odaenathus of Palmyra, thanks to his success against the Persians, had gained the upper hand over all of Syria and had accumulated some very special titles (exarch of the Palmyrenes, “King of Kings”) with Gallienus’s permission. This did not prevent Palmyra from remaining fully a city of the empire, a Roman colony under the classic administration of the duumvirate. For unknown reasons, Odaenathus was assassinated along with his eldest son Hairan/Herodes in 268 ce. Odaenathus’s widow Zenobia refused to recognize Quintillus when Claudius II died in the summer of 270 ce and declared her son Vaballathus imperator while recognizing Aurelian as Augustus. Nevertheless, troops placed under Palmyrene authority immediately endeavored to take control of the Roman provinces of the Near East. Then fell, one after the other, Coele Syria, Syria Phoenice, Arabia (not without a fight, since the temple of Jupiter Hammon in Bostra was destroyed by the Palmyrenes), Egypt, and probably Syria-Palaestina. The coins issued by Vaballathus in Alexandria still bore the effigy of Aurelian with the name of Vaballathus. But by the summer or fall of 271 ce, Vaballathus finally became Augustus and Zenobia Augusta. Troops marched toward Asia Minor with the goal of firmly asserting Vaballathus’s power over the entire empire or at least the largest possible part of it. Did they go as far as Ancyra as Zosimus states? No one knows.