The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City (16 page)
Read The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City Online
Authors: Stephen Dando-Collins
Tags: #History, #Ancient, #Rome
Across the valley, the Palatine Hill, and all the imperial palaces of Augustus, Germanicus, Tiberius, and Caligula that occupied it, and the private mansions on the same slopes, were ablaze. The city prefect had managed to rescue most of the valuables and portable works of art from the various Palatiums and the Domus Transitoria, among them the solid gold chariot used by the emperor Augustus for his triumphal processions and by Nero’s grandfather Germanicus in his Triumph of AD 17. This ceremonial quadriga was normally kept in the Temple of Apollo, which adjoined the Old Palatium, as Augustus’ original, now gutted palace on the Palatine was colloquially called.
Suetonius indicates that many of the books held in Rome’s libraries were destroyed in the fire, but a large number of the records held in the Tabularium, the state archives, a massive, 140-year-old building sitting on the lower slope of the Capitoline Mount overlooking the Forum, were removed to safety by the vigiles or City Cohorts. These rescued records, in handwritten scroll form, ranged from the
Acta Senatus
, the verbatim record of every word spoken in every single session of the Senate since the late Republic—made possible by the invention of shorthand by Cicero’s secretary Tiro—to copies of every edition of the
Acta diurna
, the government’s daily newspaper.
Acta Senatus
, the verbatim record of every word spoken in every single session of the Senate since the late Republic—made possible by the invention of shorthand by Cicero’s secretary Tiro—to copies of every edition of the
Acta diurna
, the government’s daily newspaper.
All these records Tacitus would consult, back to the reign of Augustus, when he came to write his
Annals
, three decades after the fire. The private, unpublished letters and memoirs of Augustus and the memoirs of Nero’s mother, Agrippina the Younger, were among other records preserved, for Suetonius would be able to quote from them when he wrote his biographies of the twelve Caesars half a century after the conflagration.
Annals
, three decades after the fire. The private, unpublished letters and memoirs of Augustus and the memoirs of Nero’s mother, Agrippina the Younger, were among other records preserved, for Suetonius would be able to quote from them when he wrote his biographies of the twelve Caesars half a century after the conflagration.
The fire had reached the Forum Romanum at the foot of the Palatine, where it destroyed buildings, including the House of the Vestals, the Temple of Vesta, and the Regia—once the home of the kings of Rome and, later, of the pontifex maximus. Also being assaulted by the flames was Nero’s Domus Transitoria, construction work on which had only recently been completed. It, too, burned before Nero’s eyes. Rising high into the air, orange and red, turning, curling, dancing, across mile after square mile of the city, the flames were awesome in their destructive majesty. Nero was overheard to murmur that these mesmerizing flames possessed a certain beauty.
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Making the Gardens of Maecenas his base, Nero directed that more buildings below the Esquiline be leveled, to put a vast space in front of the fire. Having noted that the Servian Walls could and should prevent the fire from spreading north to the Campus Martius, he directed that the Gardens of Agrippa and all the public buildings associated with them on the campus be thrown open, to “receive the destitute multitude,” along with all imperial gardens, which included the Gardens of Sallust on the Campus Martius and the Gardens of Caesar and the Servilian Gardens west of the Tiber. To provide shelter for those affected, Nero ordered that temporary structures be raised on the Campus Martius, which quickly became a vast and crowded refugee camp.
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Foodstuffs in the affected areas had been consumed by the fire, as had the grain warehouses on the Tiber docks in Regio XIII. Vast grain stocks were maintained at Ostia, the port at the mouth of the Tiber, so Nero ordered that supplies be brought upriver from Ostia and from all towns immediately surrounding the capital. For the time being, too, the price of grain to the city’s remaining bakeries was substantially reduced. These disaster relief measures all won widespread approval for the emperor, said Tacitus.
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All the while, the fire continued to burn and to spread until the flames reached the cleared area at the foot of the Esquiline in Regio IV, where, said Tacitus, “the violence of the fire was met by clear ground and an open sky.”
17
As dawn broke, five days after it had begun, the fire had apparently been brought under control. From their country resorts, Rome’s wealthy and their houseguests hurried back to the city to survey the damage and ascertain their losses. Apart from their city homes, many of these people also owned apartment buildings in the city. They returned to find that much of their property had been lost.
17
As dawn broke, five days after it had begun, the fire had apparently been brought under control. From their country resorts, Rome’s wealthy and their houseguests hurried back to the city to survey the damage and ascertain their losses. Apart from their city homes, many of these people also owned apartment buildings in the city. They returned to find that much of their property had been lost.
That same day, as embers glowed and smoke continued to fill the air and attempts were made to calculate the scale of the damage, the fire sprang up anew. It began in the shops of the Aemilian Basilica, the property of Tigellinus the praetorian prefect.
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From there, flames spread up onto the Capitoline Mount. The Capitol had been spared the ravages of the fire prior to this because the walls and colonnades on the sacred hill had proven a barrier to the flames, which had swept over the neighboring Palatine. In addition, the direction of the wind on the second day of the original fire had pushed the flames past the Capitol’s ancient walls. But now the flames advanced up the Capitoline, too. Fire destroyed the sanctuary’s wooden gates, then swept on, at terrifying speed.
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From there, flames spread up onto the Capitoline Mount. The Capitol had been spared the ravages of the fire prior to this because the walls and colonnades on the sacred hill had proven a barrier to the flames, which had swept over the neighboring Palatine. In addition, the direction of the wind on the second day of the original fire had pushed the flames past the Capitol’s ancient walls. But now the flames advanced up the Capitoline, too. Fire destroyed the sanctuary’s wooden gates, then swept on, at terrifying speed.
The pace at which the fire had advanced uphill since the first outbreak on level ground had taken the Romans by surprise. Logic told them that flames would travel over the flat more rapidly than when they had to climb a hill. Even today, in modern times, we still have much to learn about the behavior of fires. New research in Australia on wildfires, or “bush fires,” as they are known in Australia, where massive, death-dealing fires blacken thousands of acres every summer, has shown that a fire can travel up to eight times more quickly going up a hill than on flat ground. The greater the incline, the faster the burn.
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The soldiery of the capital had by now been thrown into the task of attempting to stem the flames and to remove the treasures kept in the Capitoline temples—an untold fortune in gold in trophies from wars waged and won hundreds of years past against the Carthaginians, the Gauls, and the city-states of Italy. Then, too, there were priceless relics such as the Sibylline Books, three books of ancient prophesies from the time of the Roman king Tarquinus Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud, seventh and last king of Rome. These books were normally kept under lock and key in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, to be consulted by the Senate in emergencies. Many treasures were only just rescued in time.
Soon, Rome’s most sacred temples were tasting the flames. The historic Temple of Jupiter the Stayer, which had been vowed by Romulus, founder of Rome, was engulfed, as the fire reached the ancient timbers that supported the roof, burned them through, and brought the terracotta roof crashing down. The same fate was met by a six-hundred-year-old temple to Luna dedicated by Servius Tullus, sixth king of Rome, and the Temple of Hercules, another of the “historical monuments of men of genius,” in the words of Tacitus, which was left a blackened ruin.
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Priceless frescoes within these temples were likewise destroyed.
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Priceless frescoes within these temples were likewise destroyed.
The fire continued on down the steep reverse slope of the Capitoline, leaping the Servian Walls at this point and setting alight several large public buildings at the foot of the Capitoline on the southern fringe of the Campus Martius, soon bringing rafters and roofs crashing down. One of the buildings gutted here was a basilica; another, the Theater of Taurus, was a medium-sized amphitheater of stone, brick, and timber erected only thirty-five years before by the immensely wealthy Sisena Statilius Taurus, a consul in AD 16, who had used the spoils of war to finance its erection. Here, too, the flames reached “the porticos which were dedicated to enjoyment,” in the words of Tacitus.
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It was only when the wind dropped, it seems, that a broad, protective expanse of stone colonnades beyond these buildings prevented the fire from spreading further across the Campus Martius, which was now home to hundreds of thousands of traumatized refugees.
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It was only when the wind dropped, it seems, that a broad, protective expanse of stone colonnades beyond these buildings prevented the fire from spreading further across the Campus Martius, which was now home to hundreds of thousands of traumatized refugees.
Two days after the second outbreak and a week since the first flames had taken hold at the Circus Maximus, the Great Fire of Rome finally ended. The destruction across the city had been immense. Of the fourteen regios or districts of the city of Rome originally delineated by the emperor Augustus, three had been totally leveled by the fire and by fire-fighting measures. In another seven regios, “a few shattered, half-burnt” residences remained standing. Only four precincts had escaped the fire altogether.
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One of the latter was Regio XIV, on the west bank of the Tiber, for the waterway had held the fire back. The three other precincts where hearth and home had been preserved were mostly located north of the Servian Walls—Regios VII and IX, which between them covered the Campus Martius, and Regio VI, which included the Quirinal Hill residential district, home to Martial and Vespasian and his brother Sabinus. Regio VI was also the site, in the northeast of the city and beyond the walls, of the Castra Praetoria, barracks of the Praetorian and City Cohorts.
Now that the destruction and the dying had ended, the time had come for the recriminations.
XIII
THE BLAME
B
y dawn on the morning of July 26, after the flames had consumed the city for six days and seven nights, the conflagration was at an end. Refugees from the disaster crowded the Campus Martius and the imperial gardens west of the Tiber. Other homeless Romans had taken shelter in the often massive tombs and monuments built for wealthy citizens of bygone days and which lined the numerous roads leading from the city.
y dawn on the morning of July 26, after the flames had consumed the city for six days and seven nights, the conflagration was at an end. Refugees from the disaster crowded the Campus Martius and the imperial gardens west of the Tiber. Other homeless Romans had taken shelter in the often massive tombs and monuments built for wealthy citizens of bygone days and which lined the numerous roads leading from the city.
A pall of smoke continued to hang over Rome, and the acrid stench of burnt matter and of death filled the nostrils. The destruction had been so complete that in the most devastated areas, only piles of ash and useless rubble remained, and most streets were impassible. The very marble and bricks of the city had seemed to melt in the flames. Modern experts would calculate that at its center, the Great Fire of Rome generated temperatures in the region of 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Many bodies had been entirely consumed. Nonetheless, corpses, often charred and beginning to rot in the summer heat, could be seen in the ruins. “Countless people perished,” Cassius Dio would write.
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There was no accurate way of calculating precisely how many people, free or slave, had died, although all chroniclers agreed that the old and infirm, who had been too slow to escape the flames or had remained in their lodgings and made no attempt to flee, accounted for the majority of the fatalities. It was also known that the number of deaths caused by the second eruption of the fire had been much less than that caused by the initial blaze. Compared with some of the afflictions experienced by Rome—in a single autumn one year during Nero’s reign, thirty thousand deaths from plague were registered in the city—the death toll from the fire was negligible.
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2
There was no accurate way of calculating precisely how many people, free or slave, had died, although all chroniclers agreed that the old and infirm, who had been too slow to escape the flames or had remained in their lodgings and made no attempt to flee, accounted for the majority of the fatalities. It was also known that the number of deaths caused by the second eruption of the fire had been much less than that caused by the initial blaze. Compared with some of the afflictions experienced by Rome—in a single autumn one year during Nero’s reign, thirty thousand deaths from plague were registered in the city—the death toll from the fire was negligible.
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To prevent looting, Nero issued an edict: “He offered to remove corpses and rubble free of charge, but allowed nobody to search among the ruins even of his own mansion,” said Suetonius.
4
During daylight hours, the search for bodies and the cleanup became the task of the City and Praetorian Cohorts and the thousands of imperial slaves, and, after dark, of the vigiles. That task began at once. Nero decided to remove all the rubble from the city, rather than build over the top of it, as had been the practice after past fires. Once each of the many barges regularly bringing grain upriver from Ostia was unloaded, it was piled with rubble, which it then carried down the Tiber to the marshes at Ostia. This shuttle service proceeded day in, day out, and before long the Ostian marshes would be reclaimed by the blackened fill from Rome.
4
During daylight hours, the search for bodies and the cleanup became the task of the City and Praetorian Cohorts and the thousands of imperial slaves, and, after dark, of the vigiles. That task began at once. Nero decided to remove all the rubble from the city, rather than build over the top of it, as had been the practice after past fires. Once each of the many barges regularly bringing grain upriver from Ostia was unloaded, it was piled with rubble, which it then carried down the Tiber to the marshes at Ostia. This shuttle service proceeded day in, day out, and before long the Ostian marshes would be reclaimed by the blackened fill from Rome.
Even while the fire had still been burning, the same questions had been posed again and again by the shocked citizenry.
“How did it happen?” some asked, understandably.
“Who kindled it?” others pondered.
5
Why would they ask such a question? None of the larger fires that had singed Rome earlier in the century had been blamed on arson. Kitchen fires that got out of hand, careless workmen, even lightning could be pointed at as the source of previous blazes. Still, deliberate fires were not unknown. Roman landlords had frequently been suspected of fires that had gutted their own apartment blocks. Six years from now, two businessmen in Antioch, capital of the province of Syria, would be found guilty of deliberately setting a fire that destroyed 20 percent of their handsome city. That pair only intended to destroy the city archives, which contained records of their substantial debts, but the archives fire inevitably spread to other buildings.
5
Why would they ask such a question? None of the larger fires that had singed Rome earlier in the century had been blamed on arson. Kitchen fires that got out of hand, careless workmen, even lightning could be pointed at as the source of previous blazes. Still, deliberate fires were not unknown. Roman landlords had frequently been suspected of fires that had gutted their own apartment blocks. Six years from now, two businessmen in Antioch, capital of the province of Syria, would be found guilty of deliberately setting a fire that destroyed 20 percent of their handsome city. That pair only intended to destroy the city archives, which contained records of their substantial debts, but the archives fire inevitably spread to other buildings.
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