Some of Suetonius’ “facts” in his book
De vita Caesarium
, or Lives of the Caesars, in which he wrote the above passages about the Great Fire, are demonstrably incorrect, while others are mystifyingly jumbled, and some, obviously invented. Suetonius apparently commenced writing this book during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, when the historian had charge of the imperial records held in the Tabularium, Rome’s official archives. Suetonius seems to have only completed the first three sections of his book on the Caesars, covering Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, and Tiberius Caesar, when he fell out with the emperor and lost both his post and his access to the official records after acting impolitely toward the empress Sabina.
Up to that point, his book abounds with quotes from the letters, journals, and unpublished memoirs of the figures he wrote about. From that point on, Suetonius had to rely almost entirely on other sources for his information—mostly gossip. Consequently, in his biography about Nero, we often find attributions like “some say,” “according to my informants,” and “it is said,” as Suetonius relates one sensational and scurrilous anecdote about Nero after another. To his readers, ancient and modern, Suetonius’ revelations about Nero and his imperial subjects made for risqué reading. They do not necessarily make for reliable history.
Flavius Josephus, the Jewish rabbi, general, and author who became a favorite of the Flavian emperors, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, and who was at Rome at the time of the Great Fire, would write, some years later: “There have been a great many who have composed the history of Nero, some of whom have departed from the factual truth because of favor, having received benefits from him.” Josephus would have been referring here to the likes of Cluvius Rufus and Pliny the Elder, both of whom are known to have written about Nero, although their works, to which Tacitus several times referred, are no longer extant. “While others,” Josephus went on, “out of hatred for him [Nero], and the great ill will that they bore him, have so impudently raved against him with their lies, that they justly deserve to be condemned.”
4
One of the authors who fell into Josephus’ latter category would have been historian Fabius Rusticus. Considered the “finest of modern writers” by Tacitus, Fabius had been raised to his “position of honor” through his friendship with and patronage by Seneca, and he would subsequently have resented Seneca’s bloody end, giving him cause to hate Nero and to be among those who “impudently raved against him” after the emperor’s demise. Even Tacitus had to admit that of all his contemporaries, Fabius was the only author who claimed that Nero had lusted after his own mother, Agrippina the Younger. Every other historian of the day, said Tacitus, had written that it was Agrippina who had attempted to seduce Nero, to regain her power over him, and that this was the accepted truth of the matter.
5
Josephus himself had no reason to love Nero. It had been on Nero’s orders and in Nero’s name that Vespasian and his son Titus had gone to war against the Jews in Palestine in AD 67 and destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. Yet Josephus, who claimed that his only interest was in the truth, had no time for those who falsely vilified Nero. Suetonius fitted into the category of those “impudent liars” who wrote falsehoods about Nero. It is easy to suspect Suetonius’ fabrications, which seem far-fetched even for the political and moral climate of that time, but it is not as easy to prove them. “Nor am I surprised by those who have written lies about Nero,” Josephus continued, “since in their writings they have not preserved the historical truth regarding those events that took place in prior times, even when the subjects [of those works] could have in no way incurred their hatred, since those writers lived long after their day.” Josephus may have died before Suetonius published his Lives of the Caesars, with its sensational claims about the habits, lifestyles, and peccadilloes of earlier Caesars, as well as those of Nero. So, other authors were equally scurrilous. “As far as those authors who have no interest in the truth are concerned,” Josephus went on, “they can write what they like, for that is what they delight in doing.”
6
The question of veracity in the works of Roman authors brings us to the widespread modern belief that in an effort to find scapegoats for the fire, Nero martyred the Christians of Rome, a belief that has become embodied in Christian legend. Where did that belief originate? In Suetonius’
Nero
, we find the brief reference in his description of Nero’s overall life and career: “Punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief.”
7
This lone sentence appears out of context and without any reference to or connection with the Great Fire and can almost certainly be dismissed as a later fictitious insertion in Suetonius’ original text by a Christian copyist.
Surprisingly, Tacitus, in his
Annals
, claims that Nero specifically punished the Christians at Rome for the Great Fire, though the
Annals
can be regarded as an otherwise quite reliable work in terms of historical fact. As typified by the listing for “Nero” in recent editions of
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, many modern-day historians believe that this tale of Christian persecution was apocryphal and was inserted in Tacitus’
Annals
by a Christian copyist, centuries later.
8
None of the copies of the great Roman books such as the
Annals
that exist today are originals. All are later copies, often created centuries after the first edition, in the laborious, handwritten production process that all books went through prior to the invention of the printing press, making the insertion of invented interpolations simple and, unless a reader was in possession of the original text, undetectable. These copies of ancient Roman works were found, over the past several hundred years, in the libraries of Christian monasteries and institutions (the task of writing books by hand became the province of monks in Christian society) and in the private libraries of devout Christian aristocrats.
One of the reasons for suspecting the authenticity of the Christian reference in Tacitus, and the reference in Suetonius, is that the term
Christian
makes no other appearance in Roman literature of the first century. Tellingly, neither Saint Paul nor Saint Peter, who are believed to have died during Nero’s reign, describe their followers as Christians in their Gospel letters. Neither does the New Testament’s Acts of the Apostles, thought to have been written by Saint Luke. Many early followers of Jesus Christ, a Jew, were Jewish, like Paul and Peter. To the Roman masses, this religion based around the Nazarene was nothing more than a Jewish cult, and so its followers were, for a long time, labeled Jews.
Cassius Dio, writing in the third century, described how, in AD 95, the emperor Domitian had a number of people arrested, including the emperor’s own cousin Flavius Clemens, and Clemens’ wife Flavia Domitilla—who was also related to the emperor, being the daughter of Domitian’s sister. “The charge brought against them both was that of atheism, a charge on which many others who drifted into Jewish ways were condemned,” said Dio.
9
Many later Christian scholars believed that “Jewish ways” was a reference to the Christian faith. They cited the case of another leading Roman arrested at this same time—according to Dio, on the same charge—and who, like Clemens, was executed. The man in question was Manius Acilius Glabrio. In support of Glabrio’s supposed adherence to Christianity, some scholars have claimed that his remains were found in a Christian catacomb at Rome. Critics of this supposition point out that this catacomb was only first used several centuries after Glabrio’s death.
Nowhere in Dio’s text are these people referred to as Christians, a term in common use by Dio’s time in the third century. To further erode the claim that Glabrio was a Christian, and a Christian martyr at that, Suetonius, who was a man of twenty-six or so and living at Rome at the time of Glabrio’s execution, makes no reference to any charge of atheism against the man. In fact, according to Suetonius, Glabrio was one of three former consuls executed by Domitian because they were “accused of conspiracy,” not for atheism or “drifting into Jewish ways,” as Dio wrote more than a century later. Suetonius did, however, write that Glabrio was initially exiled before being executed in exile for conspiracy.
10
As was the case in the reign of Nero, frequently a person initially exiled for conspiracy would ultimately be executed as a consequence of the original charge.
Less important, perhaps, is that passages in the
Annals
refer to Pontius Pilatus (Pilate) as a “procurator,” a title always accorded Pilate in Christian literature. Pilate actually held the lesser rank of prefect in Judea, something that Tacitus, who had access to the official records at Rome’s Tabularium and frequently quoted from them in his
Annals
, should have known.
After explaining that there was a widespread “sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order” from the emperor, the
Annals
go on:
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populous. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular.
Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty. Then, on their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft in a chariot. Hence even for the criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion. For, it was not, as it was portrayed, for the public good, but to satisfy one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.
11
That “an immense multitude” was arrested is another cause to doubt that these people were Christians. Even the Christian Church acknowledges that the Christian community at Rome in AD 64 would have been quite small. The Apostle Paul, in his letters, usually listed the many leading Christians of the city or town where he was staying; in his letters from Rome of AD 60-62, he named not a single local Christian. In a letter apparently written in AD 66, while he was incarcerated at Rome for the second time, he specifically named just three male and one female Christians living at Rome; from their names, those four appear to have been noncitizens, probably former slaves.
12
That there were indeed Christians at Rome at the time is affirmed by Acts of the Apostles, which referred to a small party of Christians coming out of the city to meet Paul at his last stop outside Rome while on his way to the capital in the spring of AD 60.
13
But for Tacitus to describe this small community as a “class” at Rome does not ring true. The observation that some of these people were executed on crosses by Nero following the Great Fire tells us not that they were Christians, but that they were not Roman citizens. Crucifixion was the regular method of execution for noncitizens convicted of a crime throughout the Roman empire, for centuries before and after the crucifixion of Christ. The use of crosses for these particular prisoners’ executions was not a deliberate allusion to, or a mockery of, Christianity. It had nothing to with Christianity.
Was this entire section of the
Annals
text a forgery, as some believe? Or did the person responsible for the interpolation merely change a word here and add a sentence there to distort Tacitus’ original, for religious propaganda purposes? What if, for example, the original text had described those arrested and executed for starting the fire as followers of the Egyptian goddess Isis, and not as Christians? In that instance, all the interpolator had to do was replace “Egyptians,” as followers of Isis were known, with the word “Christians.”
The worship of Isis was among the most popular of the religious cults followed at Rome by noncitizens during the first century. The first altars to Isis appeared on the Capitoline Mount early in the first century BC. Destroyed by the Senate in 58 BC, they were soon replaced by a temple to Isis, the Iseum, which was leveled on Senate orders eight years later. The so-called First Triumvirate, Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus, had a new temple to Isis and her consort Serapis erected in 43 BC—the Iseum Campense—on the Campus Martius, on Rome’s northern outskirts. Other large Isea, or temples to Isis, would eventually be built at Rome—one on the Capitoline Mount and another in Regio III, with smaller ones on the Caelian, Aventine, and Esquiline hills.