Which queen of Palmyra defied Rome in the 3rd century?

Zenobia ruled Palmyra, an oasis city that had grown rich taxing the caravan trade between the Mediterranean and the East. She took power as regent for her small son when her husband Odaenathus was assassinated in 267, at the exact moment Rome was least able to object - the empire was in the middle of the Crisis of the Third Century, with emperors lasting months and the frontiers collapsing.

She did not rebel so much as expand into the vacuum. Within three years Palmyrene forces held Egypt, which fed Rome, and much of Asia Minor; at its greatest extent her territory ran from central Anatolia to the Nile. She claimed descent from Cleopatra, kept the philosopher Cassius Longinus at her court, and had coins struck showing her son and then herself with imperial titles - the point at which the fiction of loyalty to Rome ran out.

Aurelian, one of the few competent emperors of the period, beat her armies at Antioch and Emesa in 272 and besieged Palmyra, and she was caught trying to reach Persia. The city rose again the following year, and that time he destroyed it.