‘The Fire of Rome, 18 July 64 AD’, painted in 1785 by French artist Hubert Robert (1733–1808), and kept today at the Musée des Beaux-Arts André Malraux in Le Havre, France. By the time the fire was truly out, more than a week after it began, two thirds of the city had been destroyed. According to Suetonius, Nero took the opportunity to announce a free government cleanup in the expectation that his men would clean up anything valuable into his collection.
Part 1 of 2
WHEN someone in a general conversation said: “When I am dead, be earth consumed by fire,” he rejoined “Nay, rather while I live,” and his action was wholly in accord. For under cover of displeasure at the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets, he set fire to the city so openly that several ex-consuls did not venture to lay hands on his chamberlains although they caught them on their estates with tow and firebrands, while some granaries near the Golden House,* whose room he particularly desired, were demolished by engines of war and then set on fire, because their walls were of stone. For six days and seven nights destruction raged,* while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs.
* Tacitus was more cautious. “Whether it was accidental or purposely contrived by the Emperor, remains uncertain: for on this point authorities are divided.” Annals, XV 38.
* At the time, the estate was named the House of Passage (Domus Transitoria). Following the Great Fire, Nero took advantage of the devastation to expand it into The Golden House (Domus Aurea). “Its vestibule” Suetonius tells us “was large enough to contain a colossal statue of the emperor a hundred and twenty feet high.” This is some 22 feet higher than the UK’s tallest sculpture, ‘The Kelpies’ in Falkirk, and almost twice the height of ‘The Angel of the North’. “There was a pond too, like a sea, surrounded with buildings to represent cities, besides tracts of country, varied by tilled fields, vineyards, pastures and woods, with great numbers of wild and domestic animals.” The many interiors were suitably magnificent: there was gold and mother of pearl, the dome of the dining hall revolved like the heavens and there were salt and sulphur spa baths. “When the edifice was finished in this style and he dedicated it, he deigned to say nothing more in the way of approval than that he was at last beginning to be housed like a human being.”
* The fire was brought under control on the sixth day, but broke out afresh and the whole event lasted nine days.
Précis
In 64, the Great Fire of Rome broke out — started by Nero, Suetonius said. The Emperor had seized on some casual remark, and conceived the fire as an artistic way to clear the ground for an enlarged palace and for the prettification of Rome. The fire burned for a week, and citizens fled to what safety they could find. (59 / 60 words)
Part Two
A mural on the walls of the Domus Transitoria, later incorporated (thanks to demolition and clearances afforded by the Great Fire) into the even grander Domus Aurea, the Golden House. Suetonius was quite sure that Nero had started the fire, in part to clear space for his dream palace. Tacitus did not commit himself but he had heard the same rumour, and heard too that Nero blamed Christians for the fire in order to deflect criticism. Christianity was classed not as a state-approved ‘religion’, but as an antisocial ‘superstition’: worshipping a Jewish god was understandable for Jews, but loyal Romans were expected also to affirm the gods of Rome as recognised by the Senate, whichever deity of their own they preferred. See also The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.
AT that time, besides an immense number of dwellings, the houses of leaders of old were burned, still adorned with trophies of victory, and the temples of the gods vowed and dedicated by the kings and later in the Punic and Gallic wars,* and whatever else interesting and noteworthy had survived from antiquity. Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas* and exulting, as he said, in “the beauty of the flames” he sang the whole of the “Sack of Ilium”* in his regular stage costume.* Furthermore, to gain from this calamity too all the spoil and booty possible, while promising the removal of the debris and dead bodies free of cost he allowed no one to approach the ruins of his own property; and from the contributions which he not only received, but even demanded, he nearly bankrupted the provinces and exhausted the resources of individuals.
* The Punic Wars were a series of three wars between Rome and Carthage between 264 BC and 146 BC. The Gallic Wars were Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in 58 BC to 50 BC.
* The Gardens of Maecenas, constructed by Gaius Maecenas (?40 BC to 8 BC), was an estate on the Esquiline Hill in the Roman suburbs which included the city’s first heated swimming pool, a luxurious villa and a tall tower. It was from the safety of this tower that the fascinated Nero watched the conflagration unfold.
* Homer, of course, wrote the most famous tale of the Fall of Troy, the Iliad, and there was another epic of similar antiquity, the seventh-century BC Iliupersis, which is now almost wholly lost. But satirist Juvenal (fl. 100-127) indicates that the song was Nero’s own, and regarded it one of the Emperor’s greatest crimes. Even Orestes, he said, who murdered his own mother Clytemnestra in revenge for the murder of his father, even Orestes himself never murdered his own sister, never poisoned his own family “and never wrote an Epic upon Troy!” See Satire 8. Emperor Vitellius (who ruled from 16 April to 22 December 69, the last in the Year of the Four Emperors after Nero, Galba and Otho) had the musicians play “something from the Master’s Book”, Nero’s collected works, in tribute to his predecessor, and Suetonius tells us that he jumped for joy when the music started.
* For Tacitus this rumour — for he was not prepared to commit himself further — had undone Nero’s attempts to win back favour by lavish disbursement of aid. “Popular as these measures were, they aroused no gratitude; for a rumour had got abroad that at the moment when the city was in flames Nero had mounted upon a stage in his own house, and by way of likening modern calamities to ancient, had sung the tale of the sack of Troy. [...] To put an end therefore to this rumour, he shifted the charge on to others, and inflicted the most cruel tortures upon a body of men detested for their abominations, and popularly known by the name of Christians.”
Précis
While the city burned, Nero retired to his estate, set up a stage, put on a costume and performed a musical melodrama of his own named ‘The Sack of Troy’, which he felt artistically appropriate. After the fire abated, he looted the city’s wealth under the colour of offering a free cleanup service, and seized the assets of landowners. (59 / 60 words)
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