Under the Roman emperor Tiberius (14–37 A.D.), Tadmor was incorporated into the province of Syria and assumed the name Palmyra, or “place of palms.” After the Roman annexation of Nabataea in 106 A.D., Palmyra replaced Petra as the leading Arab city in the Near East and its most important trading center. About 129 A.D., during the reign of Hadrian, Palmyra rose to the rank of a free city, and in 212 A.D. to that of a Roman colony. With the foundation of the Sasanian empire of Iran in 224 A.D., Palmyra lost control over the trade routes, but the head of a prominent Arabian family who was an ally of the Roman empire, Septimius Odaenathus, led two campaigns against the Sasanians and drove them out of Syria. When Odaenathus was murdered in 267 A.D., his Arab queen, Zenobia, declared herself Augusta (empress) and ruled in the name of her son, Vaballathus. She established Palmyra as the capital of an independent and far-reaching Roman-style empire, expanding its borders beyond Syria to Egypt and much of Asia Minor. Her rule was short-lived, however; in 272 A.D., Emperor Aurelian reconquered Palmyra and captured Zenobia, whose subsequent transport to Rome bound in chains of gold is legendary.
(source: Palmyra | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Sometimes, history is so very sad:
…the loss of Palmyra is an unmistakable tragedy for the world history that now is almost surely going to be obliterated. Believing that civilizational diversity is an affront to their ludicrous interpretation of Mohammed’s divine order, the Islamic State will now sell or shatter the vestiges of Palmyra’s ancient past. And they’ll do so with pride.
(source: The Fall of Palmyra Is a Strategic, Historical, and Human Loss | National Review Online)