All regard for the dignity of law, for family ties, for difference of position, had ceased. Gladiators drunk with wine seized in the Emporium, gathered in crowds and ran with wild shouts through the neighboring squares, trampling, scattering, and robbing the people. A multitude of barbarian slaves, exposed for sale in the city, escaped from the booths. For them the burning and ruin of Rome were at once the end of slavery and the hour of revenge; so that when the permanent inhabitants, who had lost all they owned in the fire, stretched their hands to the gods in despair, calling for rescue, these slaves with howls of delight scattered the crowds, dragged clothing from people's backs, and bore away the younger women. They were joined by other slaves serving in the city from of old, wretches who had nothing on their bodies save woollen girdles around their hips, dreadful figures from the alleys, who were hardly ever seen on the streets in the daytime, and whose existence in Rome it was difficult to suspect.

Men of this wild and unrestrained crowd—Asiatics, Africans, Greeks, Thracians, Germans, Britons—howling in every language of the earth, raged, thinking that the hour had come in which they were free to reward themselves for years of misery and suffering. In the midst of that surging throng of humanity, in the glitter of day and of fire, shone the helmets of praetorians, under whose protection the more peaceable population had taken refuge, and who in hand-to-hand battle had to meet the raging multitude in many places. Vinicius had seen captured cities, but never had his eyes beheld a spectacle in which despair, tears, pain, groans, wild delight, madness, rage, and license were mingled together in such immeasurable chaos. Above this heaving, mad human multitude roared the fire, surging up to the hill-tops of the greatest city on earth, sending into the whirling throng its fiery breath, and covering it with smoke, through which it was impossible to see the blue sky.

The young tribune with supreme effort, and exposing his life every moment, forced his way at last to the Appian Gate; but there he saw that he could not reach the city through the division of the Porta Capena, not merely because of the throng, but also because of the terrible heat from which the whole atmosphere was quivering inside the gate. Besides, the bridge at the Porta Trigenia, opposite the temple of the Bona Dea, did not exist yet, hence those who wished to go beyond the Tiber had to pass through to the Pons Sublicius—that is, to pass around the Aventine through a part of the city covered now with one sea of flame. That was an impossibility. Vinicius understood that he must return toward Ustrinum, turn from the Appian Way, cross the river below the city, and go to the Via Portuensis, which led straight to the Trans-Tiber.

That was not easy because of the increasing disorder on the Appian Way. At the fountain of Mercury, however, he saw a centurion who was known to him. This man, at the head of a few tens of soldiers, was defending the precinct of the temple; he commanded him to follow. Recognizing a tribune and an Augustian, the centurion did not dare to disobey the order.

He and his men were followed by curses and a shower of stones; but to these he gave no heed, caring only to reach freer spaces at the earliest. Still he advanced with the greatest effort. People who had encamped would not move, and heaped loud curses on Caesar and the praetorians. The throng assumed in places a threatening aspect. Thousands of voices accused Nero of burning the city. He and Poppaea were threatened with death. Shouts of "Buffoon, actor, matricide!" were heard round about. Some shouted to drag him to the Tiber; others that Rome had shown patience enough. It was clear that were a leader found these threats could be changed into open rebellion which might break out any moment.

Meanwhile the rage and despair of the crowd turned against the praetorians, who for another reason could not make their way out of the crowd: the road was blocked by piles of goods, borne from the fire previously, boxes, barrels of provisions, furniture the most costly, vessels, infants' cradles, beds, carts, hand-packs. Here and there they fought hand-to-hand; but the praetorians conquered the weaponless multitude easily. After they had ridden with difficulty across the Viae Latina, Numitia, Ardea, Lavinia, and Ostia, and passed around villas, gardens, cemeteries, and temples, Vinicius reached at last a village called Vicus Alexandri, beyond which he crossed the Tiber. There was more open space at this spot and less smoke. From fugitives, of whom there was no lack even there, he learned that only certain alleys of the Trans-Tiber were burning, but that surely nothing could resist the fury of the conflagration, since people were spreading the fire purposely, and permitted no one to quench it, declaring that they acted at command.

The young tribune had not the least doubt then that Caesar had given command to burn Rome; and the vengeance which people demanded seemed to him just and proper. What more could Mithradates or any of Rome's most inveterate enemies have done? The measure had been exceeded; his madness had grown to be too enormous, and the existence of people too difficult because of him. All believed that Nero's hour had struck, that those ruins into which the city was falling should and must overwhelm the monstrous buffoon together with all those crimes of his. Should a man be found of courage sufficient to stand at the head of the despairing people, that might happen in a few hours. Here vengeful and daring thoughts began to fly through his head. But if he should do that?

The family of Vinicius, which till recent times counted a whole series of consuls, was known throughout Rome. The crowds needed only a name. Once, when four hundred slaves of the prefect Pedanius Secundus were sentenced, Rome reached the verge of rebellion and civil war. What would happen to-day in view of a dreadful calamity surpassing almost everything which Rome had undergone in the course of eight centuries? Whoever calls the quirites to arms, thought Vinicius, will overthrow Nero undoubtedly, and clothe himself in purple.

The Trans-Tiber was full of smoke, and crowds of fugitives made it more difficult to reach the interior of the place, since people, having more time there, had saved greater quantities of goods. The main street itself was in many parts filled completely, and around the Naumachia Augusta great heaps were piled up. Narrow alleys, in which smoke had collected more densely, were simply impassable. The inhabitants were fleeing in thousands. On the way Vinicius saw wonderful sights. More than once two rivers of people, flowing in opposite directions, met in a narrow passage, stopped each other, men fought hand-to-hand, struck and trampled one another. Families lost one another in the uproar; mothers called on their children despairingly. The young tribune's hair stood on end at thought of what must happen nearer the fire.

Amid shouts and howls it was difficult to inquire about anything or understand what was said. At times new columns of smoke from beyond the river rolled toward them, smoke black and so heavy that it moved near the ground, hiding houses, people, and every object, just as night does. The fervor of a July day, increased by the heat of the burning parts of the city, became unendurable. Smoke pained the eyes; breath failed in men's breasts. Even the inhabitants who, hoping that the fire would not cross the river, had remained in their houses so far, began to leave them, and the throng increased hourly. The praetorians accompanying Vinicius were in the rear. In the crush some one wounded his horse with a hammer; the beast threw up its bloody head, reared, and refused obedience. The crowd recognized in Vinicius an Augustian by his rich tunic, and at once cries were raised round about, "Death to Nero and his incendiaries!" This was a moment of terrible danger; hundreds of hands were stretched toward Vinicius; but his frightened horse bore him away, trampling people as he went, and the next moment a new wave of black smoke rolled in and filled the street with darkness. Vinicius, seeing that he could not ride past, sprang to the earth and rushed forward on foot, slipping along walls, and at times waiting till the fleeing multitude passed him. He said to himself in spirit that these were vain efforts.

At times he stopped and rubbed his eyes. Tearing off the edge of his tunic, he covered his nose and mouth with it and ran on. As he approached the river the heat increased terribly. Vinicius, knowing that the fire had begun at the Circus Maximus, thought at first that that heat came from its cinders and from the Forum Boarium and the Velabrum, which, situated near by, must be also in flames. But the heat was growing unendurable. One old man on crutches and fleeing, the last whom Vinicius noticed, cried: "Go not near the bridge of Cestius! The whole island is on fire!" It was, indeed, impossible to be deceived any longer. At the turn toward the Vicus Judaeorum the young tribune saw flames amid clouds of smoke. Not only the island was burning, but the Trans-Tiber and the other end of the street on which he ran.

The thunder of the flames was more terrible than the roar of wild beasts, and the hour had come now in which he must think of his own safety, for the river of fire was flowing nearer and nearer from the direction of the island, and rolls of smoke covered the alley almost completely. The taper which he carried was quenched from the current of air. Vinicius rushed to the street, and ran at full speed toward the Via Portuensis, whence he had come; the fire seemed to pursue him with burning breath, now surrounding him with fresh clouds of smoke, now covering him with sparks, which fell on his hair, neck, and clothing. The tunic began to smoulder on him in places; he cared not, but ran forward lest he might be stifled from smoke. He had the taste of soot and burning in his mouth; his throat and lungs were as if on fire. The blood rushed to his head, and at moments all things, even the smoke itself, seemed red to him.

Then he thought: "This is living fire! Better throw myself upon the ground and quickly perish." The running tortured him more and more. His head, neck, and shoulders were streaming with sweat, which scalded like boiling water.

But he ran on as if drunk, staggering from one side of the street to the other. Meanwhile something changed in that monstrous conflagration which had embraced the giant city. Everything which till then had only glimmered, burst forth visibly into one sea of flame; the wind had ceased to bring smoke. That smoke which had collected in the streets was borne away by a mad whirl of heated air. That whirl drove with it millions of sparks, so that Vinicius was running in a fiery cloud, as it were. But he was able to see before him all the better, and in a moment, almost when he was ready to fall, he saw the end of the street. That sight gave him fresh strength. Passing the corner, he found himself in a street which led to the Via Portuensis and the Codetan Field. The sparks ceased to drive him. He understood that if he could run to the Via Portuensis he was safe, even were he to faint on it.

At the end of the street he saw again a cloud, as it seemed, which stopped the exit. "If that is smoke," thought he, "I cannot pass." He ran with the remnant of his strength. On the way he threw off his tunic, which, on fire from the sparks, was burning him like the shirt of Nessus, having only a capitium around his head and before his mouth. When he had run farther, he saw that what he had taken for smoke was dust, from which rose a multitude of cries and voices.

"The rabble are plundering houses," thought Vinicius. But he ran toward the voices. In any case people were there; they might assist him. In this hope he shouted for aid with all his might before he reached them. But this was his last effort. It grew redder still in his eyes, breath failed his lungs, strength failed his bones; he fell.

They heard him, however, or rather saw him. Two men ran with gourds full of water. Vinicius, who had fallen from exhaustion, but had not lost consciousness, seized a gourd with both hands and emptied one-half of it.

"Thanks," said he; "place me on my feet; I can walk on alone."

The other laborer poured water on his head; the two not only placed him on his feet, but raised him from the ground and carried him to the others, who surrounded him and asked if he had suffered seriously. This tenderness astonished Vinicius.

"People, who are ye?" asked he.

"We are breaking down houses, so that the fire may not reach the Via Portuensis," answered one of the laborers.

"Ye came to my aid when I had fallen. Thanks to you."

"We are not permitted to refuse aid," answered a number of voices.

Vinicius, who from early morning had seen brutal crowds slaying and robbing, looked with more attention on the faces around him and said:

"May Christ reward you."

"Praise to his name!" exclaimed a whole chorus of voices.

It was evening, but one could see as in daylight, for the conflagration had increased. It seemed that not single parts of the city were burning, but the whole city through the length and the breadth of it. The sky was red as far as the eye could see it, and that night in the world was a red night.

The light from the burning city filled the sky as far as human eye could reach. The moon rose large and full from behind the mountains, and, inflamed at once by the glare, took on the color of heated brass. It seemed to look with amazement on the world-ruling city which was perishing. In the rose-colored abysses of heaven rose-colored stars were glittering; but in distinction from usual nights the earth was brighter than the heavens. Rome, like a giant pile, illuminated the whole Campania.

In the bloody light were seen distant mountains, towns, villas, temples, monuments, and the aqueducts stretching toward the city from all the adjacent hills; on the aqueducts were swarms of people who had gathered there for safety or to gaze at the burning. Meanwhile the dreadful element was embracing new divisions of the city. It was impossible to doubt that criminal hands were spreading the fire, since new conflagrations were breaking out all the time in places remote from the principal fire.

From the heights on which Rome was founded the flames flowed like waves of the sea into the valleys densely occupied by houses—houses of five and six stories, full of shops, booths, movable wooden amphitheatres, built to accommodate various spectacles; and finally storehouses of wood, olives, grain, nuts, pine cones, the kernels of which nourished the more needy population, and clothing, which through Caesar's favor was distributed from time to time among the rabble huddled into narrow alleys. In those places the fire, finding abundance of inflammable materials, became almost a series of explosions, and took possession of whole streets with unheard-of rapidity. People encamping outside the city or standing on the aqueducts knew from the color of the flame what was burning. The furious power of the wind carried forth from the fiery gulf thousands and millions of burning shells of walnuts and almonds, which, shooting suddenly into the sky, like countless flocks of bright butterflies, burst with a crackling, or, driven by the wind, fell in other parts of the city, on aqueducts and fields beyond Rome.

All thought of rescue seemed out of place; confusion increased every moment, for on one side the population of the city was fleeing through every gate to places outside; on the other the fire had lured in thousands of people from the neighborhood, such as dwellers in small towns, peasants, and half-wild shepherds of the Campania brought in by hope of plunder. The shout, "Rome is perishing!" did not leave the lips of the crowd; the ruin of the city seemed at that time to end every rule and loosen all bonds which hitherto had joined people in a single integrity. The mob, in which slaves were more numerous, cared nothing for the lordship of Rome. Destruction of the city could only free them; hence here and there they assumed a threatening attitude.

Violence and robbery were extending. It seemed that only the spectacle of the perishing city arrested attention, and restrained for the moment an outburst of slaughter, which would begin as soon as the city was turned into ruins. Hundreds of thousands of slaves, forgetting that Rome, besides temples and walls, possessed some tens of legions in all parts of the world, appeared merely waiting for a watchword and a leader. People began to mention the name of Spartacus; but Spartacus was not alive. Meanwhile citizens assembled and armed themselves each with what he could. The most monstrous reports were current at all the gates. Some declared that Vulcan, commanded by Jupiter, was destroying the city with fire from beneath the earth; others that Vesta was taking vengeance for Rubria. People with these convictions did not care to save anything, but, besieging the temples, implored mercy of the gods. It was repeated most generally, however, that Caesar had given command to burn Rome, so as to free himself from odors which rose from the Subura, and build a new city under the name of Neronia. Rage seized the populace at thought of this; and if, as Vinicius believed, a leader had taken advantage of that outburst of hatred, Nero's hour would have struck whole years before it did.

It was said also that Caesar had gone mad, that he would command praetorians and gladiators to fall upon the people and make a general slaughter. Others swore by the gods that wild beasts had been let out of all the vivaria at Bronze-beard's command. Men had seen on the streets lions with burning manes, and mad elephants and bisons, trampling down people in crowds. There was even some truth in this; for in certain places elephants, at sight of the approaching fire, had burst the vivaria, and, gaining their freedom, rushed away from the fire in wild fright, destroying everything before them like a tempest. Public report estimated at tens of thousands the number of persons who had perished in the conflagration. In truth a great number had perished. There were people who, losing all their property, or those dearest their hearts, threw themselves willingly into the flames from despair. Others were suffocated by smoke. In the middle of the city, between the Capitol on one side, and the Quirinal, the Viminal, and the Esquiline on the other, as also between the Palatine and the Caelian hill, where the streets were most densely occupied, the fire began in so many places at once that whole crowds of people, while fleeing in one direction, struck unexpectedly on a new wall of fire in front of them, and died a dreadful death in a deluge of flame.

In terror, in distraction and bewilderment, people knew not where to flee. The streets were obstructed with goods and in many narrow places were simply closed. Those who took refuge in those markets and squares of the city where the Flavian Amphitheatre stood afterward, near the temple of the Earth, near the Portico of Silvia, and higher up, at the temples of Juno and Lucinia, between the Clivus Virbius and the old Esquiline gate, perished from heat, surrounded by a sea of fire. In places not reached by the flames were found afterward hundreds of bodies burned to a crisp, though here and there unfortunates tore up flat stones and half buried themselves in defence against the heat. Hardly a family inhabiting the centre of the city survived in full; hence along the walls, at the gates, on all roads were heard howls of despairing women, calling on the dear names of those who had perished in the throng or the fire.

And so, while some were imploring the gods, others blasphemed them because of this awful catastrophe. Old men were seen coming from the temple of Jupiter Liberator, stretching forth their hands and crying, "If thou be a liberator, save thy altars and the city!" But despair turned mainly against the old Roman gods, who, in the minds of the populace, were bound to watch over the city more carefully than others. They had proved themselves powerless; hence were insulted. On the other hand, it happened on the Via Asinaria that when a company of Egyptian priests appeared conducting a statue of Isis, which they had saved from the temple near the Porta Caelimontana, a crowd of people rushed among the priests, attached themselves to the chariot, which they drew to the Appian gate, and seizing the statue placed it in the temple of Mars, overwhelming the priests of that deity who dared to resist them.

In other places people invoked Serapis, Baal, or Jehovah, whose adherents, swarming out of the alleys in the neighborhood of the Subura and the Trans-Tiber, filled with shouts and uproar the fields near the walls. In their cries were heard tones as if of triumph; when, therefore, some of the citizens joined the chorus and glorified "the Lord of the World," others, indignant at this glad shouting, strove to repress it by violence. Here and there hymns were heard, sung by men in the bloom of life, by old men, by women and children—hymns wonderful and solemn, whose meaning they understood not, but in which were repeated from moment to moment the words "Behold the Judge cometh in the day of wrath and disaster." Thus this deluge of restless and sleepless people encircled the burning city, like a tempest-driven sea. But neither despair nor blasphemy nor hymn helped in any way.

The destruction seemed as irresistible, perfect, and pitiless as Predestination itself. Around Pompey's Amphitheatre stores of hemp caught fire, and ropes used in circuses, arenas, and every kind of machine at the games, and with them the adjoining buildings containing barrels of pitch with which ropes were smeared. In a few hours all that part of the city beyond which lay the Campus Martius was so lighted by bright yellow flames that for a time it seemed to the spectators, only half conscious from terror, that in the general ruin the order of night and day had been lost, and that they were looking at sunshine. But later a monstrous bloody gleam extinguished all other colors of flame. From the sea of fire shot up to the heated sky gigantic fountains, and pillars of flame spreading at their summits into fiery branches and feathers; then the wind bore them away, turned them into golden threads, into hair, into sparks, and swept them on over the Campania toward the Alban hills. The night became brighter; the air itself seemed penetrated, not only with light, but with flame. The Tiber flowed on as living fire. The hapless city was turned into one pandemonium. The conflagration seized more and more space, took hills by storm, flooded level places, drowned valleys, raged, roared, and thundered.

The city burned on. The Circus Maximus had fallen in ruins. Entire streets and alleys in parts which began to burn first were falling in turn. After every fall pillars of flame rose for a time to the very sky. The wind had changed, and blew now with mighty force from the sea, bearing toward the Caelian, the Esquiline, and the Viminal rivers of flame, brands, and cinders. Still the authorities provided for rescue. At command of Tigellinus, who had hastened from Antium the third day before, houses on the Esquiline were torn down so that the fire, reaching empty spaces, died of itself. That was, however, undertaken solely to save a remnant of the city; to save that which was burning was not to be thought of. There was need also to guard against further results of the ruin. Incalculable wealth had perished in Rome; all the property of its citizens had vanished; hundreds of thousands of people were wandering in utter want outside the walls. Hunger had begun to pinch this throng the second day, for the immense stores of provisions in the city had burned with it. In the universal disorder and in the destruction of authority no one had thought of furnishing new supplies. Only after the arrival of Tigellinus were proper orders sent to Ostia; but meanwhile the people had grown more threatening.

Besides flour, as much baked bread as possible was brought at his command, not only from Ostia, but from all towns and neighboring villages. When the first instalment came at night to the Emporium, the people broke the chief gate toward the Aventine, seized all supplies in the twinkle of an eye, and caused terrible disturbance. In the light of the conflagration they fought for loaves, and trampled many of them into the earth. Flour from torn bags whitened like snow the whole space from the granary to the arches of Drusus and Germanicus. The uproar continued till soldiers seized the building and dispersed the crowd with arrows and missiles.

Never since the invasion by the Gauls under Brennus had Rome beheld such disaster. People in despair compared the two conflagrations. But in the time of Brennus the Capitol remained. Now the Capitol was encircled by a dreadful wreath of flame. The marbles, it is true, were not blazing; but at night, when the wind swept the flames aside for a moment, rows of columns in the lofty sanctuary of Jove were visible, red as glowing coals. In the days of Brennus, moreover, Rome had a disciplined integral people, attached to the city and its altars; but now crowds of a many-tongued populace roamed nomad-like around the walls of burning Rome, people composed for the greater part of slaves and freedmen, excited, disorderly, and ready, under the pressure of want, to turn against authority and the city.

But the very immensity of the fire which terrified every heart disarmed the crowd in a certain measure. After fire might come famine and disease; and to complete the misfortune the terrible heat of July had appeared. It was impossible to breathe air inflamed both by fire and the sun. Night brought no relief; on the contrary, it presented a hell. During daylight an awful and ominous spectacle met the eye. In the centre a giant city on heights was turned into a roaring volcano; round about as far as the Alban hills was one boundless camp, formed of sheds, tents, huts, vehicles, bales, packs, stands, fires, and all covered with smoke and dust, lighted by sun rays reddened by passing through smoke—everything filled with roars, shouts, threats, hatred, and terror, a monstrous swarm of men, women, and children. Mingled with quirites were Greeks, shaggy men from the North with blue eyes, Africans, and Asiatics; among citizens were slaves, freedmen, gladiators, merchants, mechanics, servants, and soldiers—a real sea of people, flowing around the island of fire.

Various reports moved this sea as wind does a real one. These reports were favorable and unfavorable. People told of immense supplies of wheat and clothing to be brought to the Emporium and distributed gratis. It was said, too, that provinces in Asia and Africa would be stripped of their wealth at Caesar's command, and the treasures thus gained be given to the inhabitants of Rome, so that each man might build his own dwelling.

But it was noised about also that water in the aqueducts had been poisoned; that Nero intended to annihilate the city, destroy the inhabitants to the last person, then move to Greece or to Egypt, and rule the world from a new place. Each report ran with lightning speed, and each found belief among the rabble, causing outbursts of hope, anger, terror, or rage. Finally a kind of fever mastered those nomadic thousands. The belief of Christians that the end of the world by fire was at hand spread even among adherents of the gods and extended daily. People fell into torpor or madness. In clouds lighted by the burning, gods were seen gazing down on the ruin; hands were stretched toward those gods then to implore pity or send them curses.

Meanwhile soldiers, aided by a certain number of inhabitants, continued to tear down houses on the Esquiline and the Caelian, as also in the Trans-Tiber; these divisions were saved therefore in considerable part. But in the city itself were destroyed incalculable treasures accumulated through centuries of conquest—priceless works of art, splendid temples, the most precious monuments of Rome's past and Rome's glory. They foresaw that of all Rome there would remain barely a few parts on the edges, and that hundreds of thousands of people would be without a roof. Some spread reports that the soldiers were tearing down houses, not to stop the fire, but to prevent any part of the city from being saved. Tigellinus sent courier after courier to Antium, imploring Caesar in each letter to come and calm the despairing people with his presence. But Nero moved only when fire had seized the domus transitoria and he hurried so as not to miss the moment in which the conflagration should be at its highest.

Meanwhile fire had reached the Via Nomentana, but turned from it at once with a change of wind toward the Via Lata and the Tiber. It surrounded the Capitol, spread along the Forum Boarium, destroyed everything which it had spared before, and approached the Palatine a second time.

Tigellinus, assembling all the praetorian forces, despatched courier after courier to Caesar with an announcement that he would lose nothing of the grandeur of the spectacle, for the fire had increased.

But Nero, who was on the road, wished to come at night, so as to sate himself all the better with a view of the perishing capital. Therefore he halted, in the neighborhood of Aqua Albana, and, summoning to his tent the tragedian Aliturus, decided with his aid on posture, look, and expression; learned fitting gestures, disputing with the actor stubbornly whether at the words, "O sacred city, which seemed more enduring than Ida," he was to raise both hands, or, holding in one the forminga, drop it by his side, and raise only the other. This question seemed to him then more important than all others. Starting at last about nightfall, he took counsel of Petronius also whether to the lines describing the catastrophe he might add a few magnificent blasphemies against the gods, and whether, considered from the standpoint of art, they would not have rushed spontaneously from the mouth of a man in such a position, a man who was losing his birthplace.

At length he approached the walls about midnight with his numerous court, composed of whole detachments of nobles, senators, knights, freedmen, slaves, women, and children. Sixteen thousand praetorians, arranged in line of battle along the road, guarded the peace and safety of his entrance, and held the excited populace at a proper distance. The people cursed, shouted, and hissed on seeing the retinue, but dared not attack it. In many places, however, applause was given by the rabble, which, owning nothing, had lost nothing in the fire, and which hoped for a more bountiful distribution than usual of wheat, olives, clothing, and money. Finally, shouts, hissing, and applause were drowned in the blare of horns and trumpets, which Tigellinus had caused to be sounded.

Nero, on arriving at the Ostian gate, halted, and said: "Houseless ruler of a houseless people, where shall I lay my unfortunate head for the night?"

After he had passed the Clivus Delphini, he ascended the Appian aqueduct on steps prepared purposely. After him followed the Augustians and a choir of singers, bearing citharae, lutes, and other musical instruments.

And all held the breath in their breasts, waiting to learn if he would say some great words, which for their own safety they ought to remember. But he stood solemn, silent, in a purple mantle and a wreath of golden laurels, gazing at the raging might of the flames.

When Terpnos gave him a golden lute, he raised his eyes to the sky, filled with the conflagration, as if he were waiting for inspiration. The people pointed at him from afar as he stood in the bloody gleam. In the distance fiery serpents were hissing. The ancient and most sacred edifices were in flames; the temple of Hercules, reared by Evander, was burning; the temple of Jupiter Stator was burning, the temple of Luna, built by Servius Tullius, the house of Numa Pompilius, the sanctuary of Vesta with the penates of the Roman people; through waving flames the Capitol appeared at intervals; the past and the spirit of Rome were burning. But Caesar was there with a lute in his hand and a theatrical expression on his face, not thinking of his perishing country, but of his posture and the prophetic words with which he might describe best the greatness of the catastrophe, rouse most admiration, and receive the warmest plaudits.

He detested that city, he detested its inhabitants, he loved only his own songs and verses; hence he rejoiced in heart that at last he saw a tragedy like that which he was writing. The poet was happy, the declaimer felt inspired, the seeker for emotions was delighted at the awful sight, and thought with rapture that even the destruction of Troy was as nothing if compared with the destruction of that giant city. What more could he desire? There was world-ruling Rome in flames, and he, standing on the arches of the aqueduct with a golden lute, conspicuous, purple, admired, magnificent, and poetic. Down below, somewhere in the darkness, the people are muttering and storming; let them mutter! Ages will elapse, thousands of years will pass, but mankind will remember and glorify the poet who that night sang the fall and the burning of Troy. What was Homer compared with him? What Apollo himself with his hollowed-out lute?

Here he raised his hands, and, striking the strings, with an exaggerated theatrical gesture pronounced the words of Priam:

"O nest of my fathers, O dear cradle!" His voice in the open air, with the roar of the conflagration, and the distant murmur of crowding thousands, seemed marvellously weak, uncertain, and low, and the sound of the accompaniment like the buzzing of insects. But senators, dignitaries, and Augustians, assembled on the aqueduct, bowed their heads and listened in silent rapture. He sang long, and his motive was ever sadder. At moments, when he stopped to catch breath, the chorus of singers repeated the last verse; then Nero cast the tragic syrma from his shoulder with a gesture learned from Aliturus, struck the lute, and sang on. When he had finished the lines composed, he improvised, using grandiose comparisons in the spectacle unfolded before him. His face began to change. He was not moved, it is true, by the destruction of his country's capital; but he was delighted and moved with the pathos of his own words to such a degree that his eyes filled with tears on a sudden.

At last he dropped the lute to his feet with a clatter, and, wrapping himself in the syrma, stood as if petrified, like one of those statues of Niobe which ornamented the courtyard of the Palatine. Soon a storm of applause broke the silence. But in the distance this was answered by the howling of multitudes. No one doubted then that Caesar had given command to burn the city, so as to afford himself a spectacle and sing a song at it.

TACITUS

There followed a dreadful disaster, whether fortuitously or by the wicked contrivance of the prince is not determined, for both are asserted by historians; but of all the calamities which ever befell this city from the rage of fire, this was the most terrible and severe. It broke out in that part of the Circus which is contiguous to mounts Palatine and Caelius, where, by reason of shops in which were kept such goods as minister aliment to fire, the moment it commenced it acquired strength, and, being accelerated by the wind, it spread at once through the whole extent of the Circus: for neither were the houses secured by enclosures nor the temples environed with walls, nor was there any other obstacle to intercept its progress; but the flame, spreading every way impetuously, invaded first the lower regions of the city, then mounted to the higher; then again ravaging the lower, it baffled every effort to extinguish it, by the rapidity of its destructive course, and from the liability of the city to conflagration, in consequence of the narrow and intricate alleys, and the irregularity of the streets in ancient Rome.

Add to this the wailings of terrified women, the infirm condition of the aged, and the helplessness of childhood; such as strove to provide for themselves and those who labored to assist others; these dragging the feeble, those waiting for them; some hurrying, others lingering; altogether created a scene of universal confusion and embarrassment: and while they looked back upon the danger in their rear, they often found themselves beset before and on their sides; or, if they had escaped into the quarters adjoining, these, too, were already seized by the devouring flames; even the parts which they believed remote and exempt were found to be in the same distress. At last, not knowing what to shun or where to seek sanctuary, they crowded the streets and lay along in the open fields. Some, from the loss of their whole substance, even the means of their daily sustenance, others, from affection for their relations whom they had not been able to snatch from the flames, suffered themselves to perish in them, though they had opportunity to escape. Neither dared any man offer to check the fire, so repeated were the menaces of many who forbade to extinguish it; and because others openly threw firebrands, with loud declarations "that they had one who authorized them"; whether they did it that they might plunder with the less restraint or in consequence of orders given.

Nero, who was at that juncture sojourning at Antium, did not return to the city till the fire approached that quarter of his house which connected the palace with the gardens of Maecenas; nor could it, however, be prevented from devouring the house and palace and everything around. But for the relief of the people, thus destitute and driven from their dwellings, he opened the field of Mars and the monumental edifices erected by Agrippa, and even his own gardens. He likewise reared temporary houses for the reception of the forlorn multitude, and from Ostia and the neighboring cities were brought, up the river, household necessaries, and the price of grain was reduced to three sesterces the measure. All which proceedings, though of a popular character, were thrown away, because a rumor had become universally current "that at the very time when the city was in flames, Nero, going on the stage of his private theatre, sang The Destruction of Troy, assimilating the present disaster to that catastrophe of ancient times."

At length, on the sixth day, the conflagration was stayed at the foot of Esquiliae, by pulling down an immense quantity of buildings, so that an open space, and, as it were, void air, might check the raging element by breaking the continuity. But ere the consternation had subsided the fire broke out afresh, with no little violence, but in regions more spacious, and therefore with less destruction of human life; but more extensive havoc was made of the temples and the porticoes dedicated to amusement. This conflagration, too, was the subject of more censorious remark, as it arose in the AEmilian possessions of Tigellinus, and Nero seemed to aim at the glory of building a new city and calling it by his own name; for, of the fourteen sections into which Rome is divided, four were still standing entire, three were levelled with the ground, and in the seven others there remained only here and there a few remnants of houses, shattered and half consumed.

It were no very easy task to recount the number of tenements and temples which were lost; but the following, most venerable for antiquity and sanctity, were consumed: that dedicated by Servius Tullius to the Moon; the temple and great altar consecrated by Evander the Arcadian to Hercules while present; the chapel vowed by Romulus to Jupiter Stator; the palace of Numa with the temple of Vesta, and in it the tutelar gods of Rome. Moreover, the treasures accumulated by so many victories, the beautiful productions of Greek artists, ancient writings of authors celebrated for genius, and till then preserved entire, were consumed; and though great was the beauty of the city, in its renovated form, the older inhabitants remembered many decorations of the ancient which could not be replaced in the modern city. There were some who remarked that the commencement of this fire showed itself on the fourteenth before the calends of July, the day on which the Senones set fire to the captured city. Others carried their investigation so far as to determine that an equal number of years, months, and days intervened between the two fires.

To proceed: Nero appropriated to his own purposes the ruins of his country,[27] and founded upon them a palace; in which the old-fashioned, and, in those luxurious times, common ornaments of gold and precious stones, were not so much the objects of attraction as lands and lakes; in one part, woods like vast deserts; in another part, open spaces and expansive prospects. The projectors and superintendents of this plan were Severus and Celer, men of such ingenuity and daring enterprise as to attempt to conquer by art the obstacles of nature and fool away the treasures of the prince. They had even undertaken to sink a navigable canal from the lake Avernus to the mouth of the Tiber, over an arid shore or through opposing mountains; nor indeed does there occur anything of a humid nature for supplying water except the Pomptine marshes; the rest is either craggy rock or a parched soil; and had it even been possible to break through these obstructions, the toil had been intolerable and disproportioned to the object. Nero, however, who longed to achieve things that exceeded credibility, exerted all his might to perforate the mountains adjoining to Avernus, and to this day there remain traces of his abortive project.

But the rest of the old site not occupied by his palace was laid out, not as after the Gallic fire without discrimination and regularity, but with the lines of streets measured out, broad spaces left for transit, the height of the buildings limited, open areas left, and porticoes added to protect the front of the clustered dwellings: these porticoes Nero engaged to rear at his own expense, and then to deliver to each proprietor the areas about them cleared. He, moreover, proposed rewards proportioned to every man's rank and private substance, and fixed a day within which, if their houses, single and clustered, were finished, they should receive them. He appointed the marshes of Ostia for a receptacle of the rubbish, and that the vessels which had conveyed grain up the Tiber should return laden with rubbish; that the buildings themselves should be raised a certain portion of their height without beams, and arched with stone from the quarries of Gabii or Alba, that stone being proof against fire; that over the water springs, which had been improperly intercepted by private individuals, overseers should be placed, to provide for their flowing in greater abundance, and in a greater number of places, for the supply of the public; that every housekeeper should have in his yard means for extinguishing fire, neither should there be party walls, but every house should be enclosed by its own walls.[28]

These regulations, which were favorably received, in consideration of their utility, were also a source of beauty to the new city; yet some there were who believed that the ancient form was more conducive to health, as from the narrowness of the streets and the height of the buildings the rays of the sun were more excluded; whereas now, the spacious breadth of the streets, without any shade to protect it, was more intensely heated in warm weather.

Such were the provisions made by human counsels. The gods were next addressed with expiations, and recourse had to the sibyl's books. By admonition from them to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpina, supplicatory sacrifices were made, and Juno propitiated by the matrons, first in the Capitol, then upon the nearest shore, where, by water drawn from the sea, the temple and image of the goddess were besprinkled; the ceremony of placing the goddess in her sacred chair, and her vigil, were celebrated by ladies who had husbands. But not all the relief that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration. Hence, to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt and punished with the most exquisite tortures the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities.

Christus, the founder of that name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the reign of Tiberius; but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, whither all things horrible and disgraceful flow from all quarters as to a common receptacle and where they are encouraged. Accordingly first those were seized who confessed they were Christians; next on their information a vast multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city as of hating the human race. And in their deaths they were also made the subjects of sport, for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and when day declined, burned to serve for nocturnal lights. Nero offered his own gardens for that spectacle, and exhibited a Circensian game, indiscriminately mingling with the common people in the habit of a charioteer, or else standing in his chariot. Whence a feeling of compassion arose toward the sufferers, though guilty and deserving to be made examples of by capital punishment, because they seemed not to be cut off for the public good, but victims to the ferocity of one man.

In the mean time, in order to supply money all Italy was pillaged, the provinces ruined, both the people in alliance with us and the states which are called free. Even the gods were not exempt from plunder on this occasion, their temples in the city being despoiled, and all the gold conveyed away which the Roman people, in every age, either in gratitude for triumphs or in fulfilment of vows, had consecrated, in times of prosperity, or in seasons of dismay. Through Greece and Asia, indeed, the gifts and oblations and even the statues of the deities were carried off.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] According to Suetonius, Nero turned the public calamity to his own private advantage. He promised to remove the bodies that lay amid the ruins, and to clear the ground at his own expense. By that artifice he secured all the remaining property of the unhappy sufferers for his own use. To add to his ill-gotten store, he levied contributions in the provinces, and by those means collected an immense sum.

[28] By a law of the Twelve Tables, it was provided that a space of something more than two feet was to be left between all new-built houses.



PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS UNDER NERO

A.D. 64-68

FREDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR

Down to the reign of Nero Christians in the Roman Empire were regarded by the ruling powers merely as a Jewish sect, harmless and guilty of nothing which could call for the interference of the State with their ways of life or of worship. They were therefore unmolested. But during the reign of the infamous Emperor in whom they saw antichrist and the actual embodiment of the symbolic monstrosities of the Apocalypse, the Christians began to be recognized as a separate people, and from milder persecutions at first, under cover of legal procedure, they were soon subjected to outrages, tortures, and deaths than which history has none more revolting and pitiful to record. In Kaulbach's great painting of Nero's persecution there is enough of portrayal and suggestion to add a terrible vividness to the ordinary historian's word-pictures. The Emperor, surrounded by his boon companions, stands on his garden terrace to receive divine honors, while a group of suffering Christians—among them St. Peter, crucified head down, and St. Paul, passionately protesting against the diabolical work—move to compassion a company of elderly men and a body of German soldiers who look upon the horrible spectacle of martyrdom.

This, the first persecution of the Christians, reached its culminating point of ferocity in A.D. 64, after Nero had been accused of kindling, or conniving at the work of those who did kindle, the great fire in Rome. In order to divert attention, even if he could not turn suspicion, from himself, having charged the Christians with causing the conflagration, he ordered the atrocities which added a still darker stain to his personal and imperial record of shameless crime and savage inhumanity. First such as confessed themselves to be Christians were dealt with, and from these information was extorted on which vast numbers were convicted, "not so much on the charge of burning the city as of hating the human race."

Nero's character and acts have been depicted by many writers and in famous works of art, but not even the pencil of Kaulbach can make more keen the realization of those scenes enacted in this persecution than the thrilling narration of Farrar, which for picturesque eloquence, fired with dramatic intensity, has seldom been surpassed in English literature.

Nero was so secure in his absolutism, he had hitherto found it so impossible to shock the feelings of the people or to exhaust the terrified adulation of the senate, that he was usually indifferent to the pasquinades which were constantly holding up his name to execration and contempt. But now[29] he felt that he had gone too far, and that his power would be seriously imperilled if he did not succeed in diverting the suspicions of the populace. He was perfectly aware that when the people in the streets cursed those who set fire to the city they meant to curse him. If he did not take some immediate step, he felt that he might perish, as Gaius had perished before him, by the dagger of the assassin.

It is at this point of his career that Nero becomes a prominent figure in the history of the Church. It was this phase of cruelty which seemed to throw a blood-red light over his whole character and led men to look on him as the very incarnation of the world-power in its most demoniac aspect, as worse than the Antiochus Epiphanes of Daniel's Apocalypse, as the Man of Sin whom—in language figurative indeed, yet awfully true—the Lord should slay with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming, for Nero endeavored to fix the odious crime of having destroyed the capital of the world upon the most innocent and faithful of his subjects—upon the only subjects who offered heartfelt prayers on his behalf—the Roman Christians. They were the defenceless victims of this horrible charge, for though they were the most harmless, they were also the most hated and the most slandered of living men.

Why he should have thought of singling out the Christians has always been a curious problem, for at this point St. Luke ends the Acts of the Apostles, perhaps purposely dropping the curtain, because it would have been perilous and useless to narrate the horrors in which the hitherto neutral or friendly Roman government began to play so disgraceful a part. Neither Tacitus, nor Suetonius, nor the Apocalypse, helps us to solve this particular problem. The Christians had filled no large space in the eye of the world. Until the days of Domitian we do not hear of a single noble or distinguished person who had joined their ranks. That the Pudens and Claudia of Rom. xvi. were the Pudens and Claudia of Martial's Epigrams seems to me to be a baseless dream. If the "foreign superstition" with which Pomponia Graecina, wife of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, was charged, and of which she was acquitted, was indeed, as has been suspected, the Christian religion, at any rate the name of Christianity was not alluded to by the ancient writers who had mentioned the circumstance. Even if Rom. xvi. was addressed to Rome, and not, as I believe, to Ephesus, "they of the household of Narcissus which were in the Lord" were unknown slaves, as also were "they of Caesar's household."

The slaves and artisans, Jewish and Gentile, who formed the Christian community at Rome, had never in any way come into collision with the Roman government. They must have been the victims rather than the exciters of the messianic tumults—for such they are conjectured to have been—which led to the expulsion of the Jews from Rome by the futile edict of Claudius. Nay, so obedient and docile were they required to be by the very principles on which their morality was based, so far were they removed from the fierce independence of the Jewish zealots, that, in writing to them a few years earlier, the greatest of their leaders had urged upon them a payment of tribute and a submission to the higher powers, not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake, because the earthly ruler, in his office of repressing evil works, is a minister of God. That the Christians were entirely innocent of the crime charged against them was well known both at the time and afterward. But how was it that Nero sought popularity and partly averted the deep rage which was rankling in many hearts against himself, by torturing men and women, on whose agonies he thought that the populace would gaze not only with a stolid indifference, but even with fierce satisfaction?

Gibbon has conjectured that the Christians were confounded with the Jews, and that the detestation universally felt for the latter fell with double force upon the former. Christians suffered even more than the Jews because of the calumnies so assiduously circulated against them, and from what appeared to the ancients to be the revolting absurdity of their peculiar tenets. "Nero," says Tacitus, "exposed to accusation, and tortured with the most exquisite penalties, a set of men detested for their enormities, whom the common people called 'Christians.' Christus, the founder of this sect, was executed during the reign of Tiberius, by the procurator Pontius Pilate, and the deadly superstition, suppressed for a time, began to burst out once more, not only throughout Judea, where the evil had its root, but even in the city, whither from every quarter all things horrible or shameful are drifted, and find their votaries."

The lordly disdain which prevented Tacitus from making any inquiry into the real views and character of the Christians is shown by the fact that he catches up the most baseless allegations against them. He talks of their doctrines as savage and shameful when they breathed the very spirit of peace and purity. He charges them with being animated by a hatred of their kind when their central tenet was a universal charity. The masses, he says, called them "Christians"; and while he almost apologizes for staining his page with so vulgar an appellation,[30] he merely mentions in passing that, though innocent of the charge of being turbulent incendiaries, on which they were tortured to death, they were yet a set of guilty and infamous sectaries, to be classed with the lowest dregs of Roman criminals.

But the haughty historian throws no light on one difficulty—namely, the circumstances which led to the Christians being thus singled out. The Jews were in no way involved in Nero's persecution. To persecute the Jews at Rome would not have been an easy matter. They were sufficiently numerous to be formidable, and had overawed Cicero in the zenith of his fame. Besides this, the Jewish religion was recognized, tolerated, licensed. Throughout the length and breadth of the empire no man, however much he and his race might be detested and despised, could have been burned or tortured for the mere fact of being a Jew. We hear of no Jewish martyrdoms or Jewish persecutions till we come to the times of the Jewish War, and then chiefly in Palestine itself. It is clear that a shedding of blood—in fact, some form or other of human sacrifice—was imperatively demanded by popular feeling as an expiation of the ruinous crime which had plunged so many thousands into the depths of misery. In vain had the sibylline books been once more consulted, and in vain had public prayer been offered, in accordance with their directions to Vulcan and the goddesses of Earth and Hades. In vain had the Roman matrons walked in procession in dark robes, and with their long hair unbound, to propitiate the insulted majesty of Juno, and to sprinkle with sea-water her ancient statue. In vain had largesses been lavished upon the people, and propitiatory sacrifices offered to the gods. In vain had public banquets been celebrated in honor of various deities. A crime had been committed, and Romans had perished unavenged. Blood cried for blood before the sullen suspicion against Nero could be averted or the indignation of heaven appeased.

Nero had always hated, persecuted, and exiled the philosophers, and no doubt, so far as he knew anything of the Christians—so far as he saw among his own countless slaves any who had embraced this superstition, which the elite of Rome described as not only new, but "execrable" and "malefic"—he would hate their gravity and purity, and feel for them that raging envy which is the tribute that virtue receives from vice. Moreover, St. Paul, in all probability, had recently stood before his tribunal, and though he had been acquitted on the special charges of turbulence and profanation, respecting which he had appealed to Caesar, yet during the judicial inquiry Nero could hardly have failed to hear from the emissaries of the Sanhedrim many fierce slanders of a sect which was everywhere spoken against. The Jews were by far the deadliest enemies of the Christians, and two persons of Jewish proclivities were at this time in close proximity to the person of the Emperor. One was the pantomimist Aliturus, the other was Poppaea, the harlot-empress.[31] The Jews were in communication with these powerful favorites, and had even promised Nero that if his enemies ever prevailed at Rome he should have the kingdom of Jerusalem.[32]

It is not even impossible that there may have been a third dark and evil influence at work to undermine the Christians, for about this very time the unscrupulous Pharisee Flavius Josephus had availed himself of the intrigues of the palace to secure the liberation of some Jewish priests. If, as seems certain, the Jews had it in their power during the reign of Nero more or less to shape the whisper of the throne, does not historical induction drive us to conclude with some confidence that the suggestion of the Christians as scapegoats and victims came from them? St. Clement says in his Epistle that the Christians suffered through jealousy. Whose jealousy? Who can tell what dark secrets lie veiled under that suggestive word? Was Acte a Christian, and was Poppaea jealous of her? That suggestion seems at once inadequate and improbable, especially as Acte was not hurt. But there was a deadly jealousy at work against the new religion.

To the pagans, Christianity was but a religious extravagance—contemptible, indeed, but otherwise insignificant. To the Jews, on the other hand, it was an object of hatred, which never stopped short of bloodshed when it possessed or could usurp the power, and which, though long suppressed by circumstances, displayed itself in all the intensity of its virulence during the brief spasm of the dictatorship of Barcochebas. Christianity was hateful to the Jews on every ground. It nullified their law. It liberated all Gentiles from the heavy yoke of that law, without thereby putting them on a lower level. It even tended to render those who were born Jews indifferent to the institutions of Mosaism. It was, as it were, a fatal revolt and schism from within, more dangerous than any assault from without. And, worse than all, it was by the Gentiles confounded with the Judaism which was its bitterest antagonist. While it sheltered its existence under the mantle of Judaism, as a religio licita, it drew down upon the religion from whose bosom it sprang all the scorn and hatred which were attached by the world to its own special tenets, for however much the Greeks and Romans despised the Jews, they despised still more the belief that the Lord and Saviour of the world was a crucified malefactor who had risen from the dead.

I see in the proselytism of Poppaea, guided by Jewish malice, the only adequate explanation of the first Christian persecution. Hers was the jealousy which had goaded Nero to matricide; hers not improbably was the instigated fanaticism of a proselyte which urged him to imbrue his hands in martyr blood. And she had her reward. A woman of whom Tacitus has not a word of good to say and who seems to have been repulsive even to a Suetonius, is handed down by the renegade Pharisee as "a devout woman"—as a worshipper of God!

And, indeed, when once the Christians were pointed out to the popular vengeance, many reasons would be adduced to prove their connection with the conflagration. Temples had perished—and were they not notorious enemies of the temples? Did not popular rumor charge them with nocturnal orgies and Thyestaean feasts? Suspicions of incendiarism were sometimes brought against Jews; but the Jews were not in the habit of talking, as these sectaries were, about a fire which should consume the world, and rejoicing in the prospect of that fiery consummation.[33] Nay, more, when pagans had bewailed the destruction of the city and the loss of the ancient monuments of Rome, had not these pernicious people used ambiguous language, as though they joyously recognized in these events the signs of a coming end? Even when they tried to suppress all outward tokens of exultation, had they not listened to the fears and lamentations of their fellow-citizens with some sparkle in the eyes, and had they not answered with something of triumph in their tones? There was a satanic plausibility which dictated the selection of these particular victims. Because they hated the wickedness of the world, with its ruthless games and hideous idolatries, they were accused of hatred of the whole human race.

The charge of incivisme, so fatal in this reign of terror, was sufficient to ruin a body of men who scorned the sacrifices of heathendom and turned away with abhorrence from its banquets and gayeties. The cultivated classes looked down upon the Christians with a disdain which would hardly even mention them without an apology. The canaille of pagan cities insulted them with obscene inscriptions and blasphemous pictures on the very walls of the places where they met.[34] Nay, they were popularly known by nicknames, like Sarmenticii and Semaxii—untranslatable terms of opprobrium derived from the fagots with which they were burned and the stakes to which they were chained. Even the heroic courage which they displayed was described as being sheer obstinacy and stupid fanaticism.

But in the method chosen for the punishment of these saintly innocents Nero gave one more proof of the close connection between effeminate aestheticism and sanguinary callousness. As in old days, "on that opprobrious hill," the temple of Chemosh had stood close by that of Moloch, so now we find the spoliarium beside the fornices—Lust hard by Hate. The carnificina of Tiberius, at Capreae, adjoined the sellariae. History has given many proofs that no man is more systematically heartless than a corrupted debauchee. Like people, like prince. In the then condition of Rome, Nero well knew that a nation, "cruel, by their sports to blood inured," would be most likely to forget their miseries and condone their suspicions by mixing games and gayety with spectacles of refined and atrocious cruelty, of which, for eighteen centuries, the most passing record has sufficed to make men's blood run cold.

Tacitus tells us that "those who confessed were first seized, and then on their evidence a huge multitude[35] were convicted, not so much on the charge of incendiarism as for their hatred to mankind." Compressed and obscure as the sentence is, Tacitus clearly means to imply by the "confession" to which he alludes the confession of Christianity, and though he is not sufficiently generous to acquit the Christians absolutely of all complicity in the great crime, he distinctly says that they were made the scapegoats of a general indignation. The phrase—"a huge multitude"—is one of the few existing indications of the number of martyrs in the first persecution, and of the number of Christians in the Roman Church. When the historian says that they were convicted on the charge of "hatred against mankind" he shows how completely he confounds them with the Jews, against whom he elsewhere brings the accusation of "hostile feelings toward all except themselves."

Then the historian adds one casual but frightful sentence—a sentence which flings a dreadful light on the cruelty of Nero and the Roman mob. He adds: "And various forms of mockery were added to enhance their dying agonies. Covered with the skins of wild beasts, they were doomed to die by the mangling of dogs, or by being nailed to crosses, or to be set on fire and burned after twilight by way of nightly illumination. Nero offered his own garden for this show, and gave a chariot race, mingling with the mob in the dress of a charioteer, or actually driving about among them. Hence, guilty as the victims were, and deserving of the worst punishments, a feeling of compassion toward them began to rise, as men felt that they were being immolated not for any advantage to the Commonwealth, but to glut the savagery of a single man."

Imagine that awful scene, once witnessed by the silent obelisk in the square before St. Peter's at Rome! Imagine it, that we may realize how vast is the change which Christianity has wrought in the feelings of mankind! There, where the vast dome now rises, were once the gardens of Nero. They were thronged with gay crowds, among whom the Emperor moved in his frivolous degradation—and on every side were men dying slowly on their cross of shame. Along the paths of those gardens on the autumn nights were ghastly torches, blackening the ground beneath them with streams of sulphurous pitch, and each of those living torches was a martyr in his shirt of fire. And in the amphitheatre hard by, in sight of twenty thousand spectators, famished dogs were tearing to pieces some of the best and purest of men and women, hideously disguised in the skins of bears or wolves. Thus did Nero baptize in the blood of martyrs the city which was to be for ages the capital of the world!

The specific atrocity of such spectacles—unknown to the earlier ages which they called barbarous—was due to the cold-blooded selfishness, the hideous realism of a refined, delicate, aesthetic age. To please these "lisping hawthorn buds," these debauched and sanguinary dandies, art, forsooth, must know nothing of morality; must accept and rejoice in a "healthy animalism"; must estimate life by the number of its few wildest pulsations; must reckon that life is worthless without the most thrilling experiences of horror or delight! Comedy must be actual shame, and tragedy genuine bloodshed. When the play of Afranius, called The Conflagration, was put on the stage, a house must be really burned and its furniture really plundered. In the mime called Laureolus an actor must really be crucified and mangled by a bear, and really fling himself down and deluge the stage with blood. When the heroism of Mucius Scaevola was represented, a real criminal must thrust his hand without a groan into the flame and stand motionless while it is being burned. Prometheus must be really chained to his rock, and Dirce in very fact be tossed and gored by the wild bull; and Orpheus be torn to pieces by a real bear; and Icarus must really fly, even though he fall and be dashed to death; and Hercules must ascend the funeral pyre and there be veritably burned alive; and slaves and criminals must play their parts heroically in gold and purple till the flames envelop them.

It was the ultimate romance of a degraded and brutalized society. The Roman people, "victors once, now vile and base," could now only be amused by sanguinary melodrama. Fables must be made realities, and the criminal must gracefully transform his supreme agonies into amusements for the multitude by becoming a gladiator or a tragedian. Such were the spectacles at which Nero loved to gaze through his emerald eye-glass. And worse things than these—things indescribable, unutterable. Infamous mythologies were enacted, in which women must play their part in torments of shamefulness more intolerable than death. A St. Peter must hang upon the cross in the Pincian gardens, as a real Laureolus upon the stage. A Christian boy must be the Icarus, and a Christian man the Scaevola or the Hercules or the Orpheus of the amphitheatre; and Christian women, modest maidens, holy matrons, must be the Danaids or the Proserpine or worse, and play their parts as priestesses of Saturn and Ceres, and in blood-stained dramas of the dead. No wonder that Nero became to Christian imagination the very incarnation of evil; the antichrist; the Wild Beast from the abyss; the delegate of the great red Dragon, with a diadem and a name of blasphemy upon his brow. No wonder that he left a furrow of horror in the hearts of men, and that, ten centuries after his death, the church of Sta. Maria del Popolo had to be built by Pope Pascal II to exorcise from Christian Rome his restless and miserable ghost!

And it struck them with deeper horror to see that the antichrist, so far from being abhorred, was generally popular. He was popular because he presented to the degraded populace their own image and similitude. The frog-like unclean spirits which proceeded, as it were, out of his mouth were potent with these dwellers in an atmosphere of pestilence. They had lost all love for freedom and nobleness; they cared only for doles and excitement. Even when the infamies of a Petronius had been superseded by the murderous orgies of Tigellinus, Nero was still everywhere welcomed with shouts as a god on earth and saluted on all coins as Apollo, as Hercules, as "the savior of the world." The poets still assured him that there was no deity in heaven who would not think it an honor to concede to him his prerogatives; that if he did not place himself well in the centre of Olympus, the equilibrium of the universe would be destroyed. Victims were slain along his path, and altars raised for him—for this wretch, whom an honest slave could not but despise and loathe—as though he was too great for mere human honors. Nay, more, he found adorers and imitators of his execrable example—an Otho, a Vitellius, a Domitian, a Commodus, a Caracalla, a Heliogabalus—to poison the air of the world. The lusts and hungers and furies of the world lamented him, and cherished his memory, and longed for his return.

And yet, though all bad men—who were the majority—admired and even loved him, he died the death of a dog. Tremendous as was the power of imperialism, the Romans often treated their individual emperors as Nero himself treated the Syrian goddess, whose image he first worshipped with awful veneration and then subjected to the most grotesque indignities, for retribution did not linger, and the vengeance fell at once on the guilty Emperor and the guilty city.

"Careless seems the Great Avenger: History's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt false systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."[36]

The air was full of prodigies. There were terrible storms; the plague wrought fearful ravages. Rumors spread from lip to lip. Men spoke of monstrous births; of deaths by lightning under strange circumstances; of a brazen statue of Nero melted by the flash; of places struck by the brand of heaven in fourteen regions of the city; of sudden darkenings of the sun. A hurricane devastated Campania; comets blazed in the heavens; earthquakes shook the ground. On all sides were the traces of deep uneasiness and superstitious terror. To all these portents, which were accepted as true by Christians as well as by pagans, the Christians would give a specially terrible significance. They strengthened their conviction that the coming of the Lord drew nigh. They convinced the better sort of pagans that the hour of their deliverance from a tyranny so monstrous and so disgraceful was near at hand.

In spite of the shocking servility with which alike the senate and the people had welcomed him back to the city with shouts of triumph, Nero felt that the air of Rome was heavy with curses against his name. He withdrew to Naples, and was at supper there on March 19, A.D. 68, the anniversary of his mother's murder, when he heard that the first note of revolt had been sounded by the brave C. Julius Vindex, prefect of Farther Gaul. He was so far from being disturbed by the news that he showed a secret joy at the thought that he could now order Gaul to be plundered. For eight days he took no notice of the matter. He was only roused to send an address to the senate because Vindex wounded his vanity by calling him Ahenobarbus[37] and "a bad singer." But when messenger after messenger came from the provinces with tidings of menace, he hurried back to Rome. At last, when he heard that Virginius Rufus had also rebelled in Germany, and Galba in Spain, he became aware of the desperate nature of his position.

On receiving this intelligence he fainted away, and remained for some time unconscious. He continued, indeed, his grossness and frivolity, but the wildest and fiercest schemes chased each other through his melodramatic brain. He would slay all the exiles; he would give up all the provinces to plunder; he would order all the Gauls in the city to be butchered; he would have all the senators invited to banquets, and would then poison them; he would have the city set on fire, and the wild beasts of the Amphitheatre let loose among the people; he would depose both the consuls and become sole consul himself, since legend said that only by a consul could Gauls be conquered; he would go with an army to the province, and when he got there would do nothing but weep, and when he had thus moved the rebels to compassion would next day sing with them at a great festival the ode of victory which he must at once compose. Not a single manly resolution lent a moment's dignity to his miserable fall.

Sometimes he talked of escaping to Ostia and arming the sailors; at others of escaping to Alexandria and earning his bread by his "divine voice." Meanwhile he was hourly subjected to the deadliest insults, and terrified by dreams and omens so sombre that his faith in the astrologers who had promised him the government of the East and the kingdom of Jerusalem began to be rudely shaken. When he heard that not a single army or general remained faithful to him, he kicked over the table at which he was dining, dashed to pieces on the ground two favorite goblets embossed with scenes from the Homeric poems, and placed in a golden box some poison furnished to him by Locusta.

The last effort which he contemplated was to mount the Rostra, beg pardon of the people for his crimes, ask them to try him again, and, at the worst, to allow him the prefecture of Egypt. But this design he did not dare to carry out, from fear that he would be torn to pieces before he reached the Forum. Meanwhile he found that the palace had been deserted by his guards, and that his attendants had robbed his chamber even of the golden box in which he had stored his poison. Rushing out, as though to drown himself in the Tiber, he changed his mind, and begged for some quiet hiding-place in which to collect his thoughts. The freedman Phaon offered him a lowly villa about four miles from the city. Barefooted, and with a faded coat thrown over his tunic, he hid his head and face in a kerchief and rode away with only four attendants. On the road he heard the tumult of the praetorians cursing his name. Amid evil omens and serious perils he reached the back of Phaon's villa, and, creeping toward it through a muddy reed-bed, was secretly admitted into one of its mean slave-chambers by an aperture through which he had to crawl on his hands and feet.

There is no need to dwell on the miserable spectacle of his end, perhaps the meanest and most pusillanimous which has ever been recorded. The poor wretch who, without a pang, had caused so many brave Romans and so many innocent Christians to be murdered could not summon up resolution to die. He devised every operatic incident of which he could think. When even his most degraded slaves urged him to have sufficient manliness to save himself from the fearful infamies which otherwise awaited him, he ordered his grave to be dug, and fragments of marble to be collected for its adornment, and water and wood for his funeral pyre, perpetually whining, "What an artist to perish!"

Meanwhile a courier arrived for Phaon. Nero snatched his despatches out of his hand and read that the senate had decided that he should be punished in the ancestral fashion as a public enemy. Asking what the ancestral fashion was, he was informed that he would be stripped naked and scourged to death with rods, with his head thrust into a fork. Horrified at this, he seized two daggers, and, after theatrically trying their edges, sheathed them again, with the excuse that the fatal moment had not yet arrived! Then he bade Sporus begin to sing his funeral song, and begged some one to show him how to die. Even his own intense shame at his cowardice was an insufficient stimulus, and he whiled away the time in vapid epigrams and pompous quotations. The sound of horses' hoofs then broke on his ears, and, venting one more Greek quotation, he held the dagger to his throat. It was driven home by Epaphroditus, one of his literary slaves. At this moment the centurion who came to arrest him rushed in. Nero was not yet dead, and under pretence of helping him the centurion began to stanch the wound with his cloak. "Too late," he said; "is this your fidelity?" So he died; and the bystanders were horrified with the way in which his eyes seemed to be starting out of his head in a rigid stare. He had begged that his body might be burned without posthumous insults, and this was conceded by Icelus, the freedman of Galbo.

So died the last of the Caesars! And as Robespierre was lamented by his landlady, so even Nero was tenderly buried by two nurses who had known him in the exquisite beauty of his engaging childhood, and by Acte, who had inspired his youth with a genuine love.

But his history does not end with his grave. He was to live on in the expectation alike of Jews and Christians. The fifth head of the Wild Beast of the Revelation was in some sort to reappear as the eighth; the head with its diadem and its names of blasphemy had been wounded to death, but in the Apocalyptic sense the deadly wound was to be healed. The Roman world could not believe that the heir of the deified Julian race could be cut off thus suddenly and obscurely and vanish like foam upon the water. The Christians felt sure that it required something more than an ordinary death stroke to destroy the antichrist, and to end the vitality of the Wild Beast from the Abyss, who had been the first to set himself in deadly antagonism against the Redeemer and to wage war upon the saints of God.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] In his behavior at the burning of Rome.

[30] There can be little doubt that the name "Christian"—so curiously hybrid, yet so richly expressive—was a nickname due to the wit of the Antiochenes, which exercised itself quite fearlessly even on the Roman emperors. They were not afraid to affix nicknames to Caracalla, and to call Julian Cecrops and Victimarius, with keen satire of his beard. It is clear that the sacred writers avoided the name, because it was employed by their enemies, and by them mingled with terms of the vilest opprobrium. It only became familiar when the virtues of Christians had shed lustre upon it, and when alike in its true form, and in the ignorant mispronunciation "Chrestians," it readily lent itself to valuable allegorical meanings.

[31] According to John of Antioch and the Chronicon Paschale, Nero was originally favorable to the Christians, and put Pilate to death, for which the Jews plotted his murder. Poppaea's Judaism is inferred from her refusing to be burned, and requesting to be embalmed; from her adopting the custom of wearing a veil in the streets; from the favor which she showed to Aliturus and Josephus; and from the fact that Josephus speaks of her as a religious woman.

[32] Tiberius Alexander, the nephew of Philo, afterward procurator of Judea, was a person of influence at Rome; but he was a renegade, and would not be likely to hate the Christians. It is, however, remarkable that legend attributed the anger of Nero to the conversion of his mistress and a favorite slave.

[33] St. Peter—apparently thinking of the fire at Rome and its consequences—calls the persecution from which the Christians were suffering when he wrote his First Epistle a "conflagration."

[34] Tertullian mentions one of these coarse caricatures—a figure with one foot hoofed, wearing a toga, carrying a book, and with long ass's ears, under which was written, "The God of the Christians, Onokoites." He says that Christians were actually charged with worshipping the head of an ass. The same preposterous calumny, with many others, is alluded to by Minucius Felix. The Christians were hence called Asinarii. Analogous calumnies were aimed at the Jews.

[35] Tertullian says that "Nero was the first who raged with the sword of Caesar against this sect, which was then specially rising at Rome."

[36] James Russell Lowell: The Present Crisis.

[37] "Bronze-beard." Ahenobarbus was the name of a plebeian family to which Nero belonged.



THE GREAT JEWISH REVOLT

SIEGE AND DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM

A.D. 70

JOSEPHUS

From A.D. 66 events of great moment occurred in Palestine. The Jews were in the throes of revolt against the Roman Government. At the same time the chief factions of the revolutionary party were constantly fighting each other. One of these factions was led by the famous John of Gischala, another by Simon bar Gioras, and a third by Eleazar. These factions of a party which—since the reduction of Judea to a Roman province soon after the death of Herod—had resisted the oppression of the procurators, were now stirred to revolt by the exactions of the procurator Gessius Florus. The revolutionary party, called the Zealots, gained power, and there were many outbreaks in Jerusalem. The counsel of the more prudent spirits was disregarded. At last Roman blood was shed. The nobility and priesthood played into the hands of the Zealots by applying to Florus to put down the revolt. Florus marched against Jerusalem and was badly beaten by the Zealots.

Open war henceforth existed. Josephus, a Jew of the lineage of Aaron, trained according to the best discipline of his race, and who had also been well received at Rome, was placed by his countrymen in command of the province of Galilee. Afterward, as a historian, he described the events of the war.

Vespasian, who was then Rome's greatest general, soon came at the head of sixty thousand Roman soldiers. He attacked Galilee. Josephus, with such followers as he could gather, took position on an almost inaccessible hill in Jotapata, which the Romans for five days stormed in vain, then besieged its brave defenders, afterward repeatedly assaulted; and finally, during the night following the forty-seventh day of the siege, Titus, serving under his father, Vespasian, gained possession of the place. Josephus, with forty of the principal citizens, hid in a cave, but their refuge was discovered through treachery.

Vespasian was anxious to take Josephus alive. He sent the tribune Nicanor, who had been his friend, to the Jewish leader to induce him with fair promises to surrender. Josephus was about to give himself up, but was prevented by his companions. "We will care for the honor of our country," they said. At the same time they offered a sword and "a hand that shall use it against thee." Josephus then proposed that they should all die together, but by the hands of one another, instead of suicide. Lots were cast. He who drew the first offered his neck to him who stood next and so forward. Finally, through marvellous fortune, Josephus and one other alone were left, and here the slaughter ended. The two survivors surrendered to the Romans. Loud cries for the death of Josephus arose, but he was spared by the intercession of Titus. The fall of Jotapata led to the subjugation of Galilee.

When captured, Josephus made to Vespasian the prophecy: "Thou shalt be emperor—thou and thy son after thee," a prediction soon to be fulfilled, for in A.D. 69 Vespasian was proclaimed emperor, and the next year went to Rome, leaving Titus to carry on the war and subdue Jerusalem. Vespasian himself, it is recorded, released Josephus, "cutting off his chains," thus relieving him from all stain of dishonor.

"The capture of Jerusalem by Titus in this campaign," says Hosmer, "is one of the most memorable events in the history of mankind. It caused the expulsion of an entire race from its home. The Roman valor, skill, and persistence were never more conspicuously displayed. No more desperate resistance was ever opposed to the eagle-emblemed mistress of the ancient world. There is no event of ancient history the details of which are more minutely known. The circumstances in all their appalling features are given to us by the eye-witness, Josephus, so that we know them as vividly as we do the events of the career of Grant."

The legions had orders to encamp at the distance of six furlongs from Jerusalem, at the mount called the Mount of Olives, which lies over against the city on the east side, and is parted from it by a deep valley, interposed between them, which is named Cedron.

Now, when hitherto the several parties in the city had been dashing one against another perpetually, this foreign war, now suddenly come upon them after a violent manner, put the first stop to their contentions one against another; and as the seditious now saw with astonishment the Romans pitching three several camps, they began to think of an awkward sort of concord, and said one to another: "What do we here, and what do we mean, when we suffer three fortified walls to be built to coop us in, that we shall not be able to breathe freely? while the enemy is securely building a kind of city in opposition to us, and while we sit still within our own walls and become spectators only of what they are doing, with our hands idle, and our armor laid by, as if they were about somewhat that was for our good and advantage. We are, it seems (so did they cry out), only courageous against ourselves, while the Romans are likely to gain the city without bloodshed by our sedition." Thus did they encourage one another when they were gotten together and took their armor immediately and ran out upon the Tenth legion and fell upon the Romans with great eagerness, and with a prodigious shout, as they were fortifying their camp. These Romans were caught in different parties, and this in order to perform their several works, and on that account had in great measure laid aside their arms, for they thought the Jews would not have ventured to make a sally upon them; and had they been disposed so to do, they supposed their sedition would have distracted them. So they were put into disorder unexpectedly; when some of them left their works they were about and immediately marched off, while many ran to their arms, but were smitten and slain before they could turn back upon the enemy. The Jews became still more and more in number, as encouraged by the good success of those that first made the attack; and while they had such good fortune, they seemed both to themselves and to the enemy to be many more than they really were.