by F. W. Farrar
CHAPTER L
_A CITY IN FLAMES_
‘Hoc incendium e turri Mæcenatiana prospectans, lætusque _flammæ_, ut aiebat, _pulchritudine_, ?????? Ilii in illo suo scenico habitu decantavit.’--SUET. _Nero_, 38.
??????? ??????? ??? ????? ??? ???????? ?????--Apoc. xviii. 9.
Nero set out for Antium on July 17. Two days afterwards Rome was in asea of surging flame. Men noticed that it was the anniversary of theday on which, four and a half centuries earlier, the city had beenburnt by the Gauls. The fire had burst forth in the neighbourhoodof the Circus Maximus. The shops and storehouses which surroundedthat huge structure were full of combustible materials, includingthe machinery and properties used in the public spectacles. Here theflames seized a secure hold, and, raging about the Cœlian, rolledtoward the eastern front of the Palatine. Checked by the steep sidesof the hill and its cyclopean architecture, the fire swept down thevalleys on either side--to the right, along the Via Nova; to theleft, along the Triumphal Way. It ravaged the Velabrum and the Forum;it consumed the temple and altar reared to Hercules by the ArcadianEvander, the palace of Numa, and the circular Temple of Vesta, whichenshrined the ever-burning hearth and Penates of the Roman people.Sweeping into the Carinæ, which was crowded by consular palaces, itdevoured those stately structures, and the many trophies of ancientvictories with which they were enriched. On the Aventine it destroyedthe temple which Servius Tullius had erected to the Moon, and in itthe priceless relics of Greek art which L. Mummius had brought fromCorinth. Rolling back to the Palatine with more victorious violence,it reduced to a blackened ruin the venerable temple which Romulushad vowed to Jupiter Stator. Then, licking up everything which lay inits path, it rioted with voluptuous fury in the more densely crowdedregions of the city, raging and crackling among the old, tortuouspurlieus and crazy habitations of the Subura. With its hot breathit purged the slums and rookeries, foul with a pauper population ofOriental immigrants, who were massed round the ill-famed shrines ofIsis and Serapis. When it had acquired irresistible volume in theselower regions, it again rushed up the hills as with the rage ofa demon, to sweep down once more in tumultuous billows over thehelpless levels. For six days and seven nights it maintained itshorrible and splendid triumph--now bounding from street to streetwith prodigious rapidity, now seeming to linger luxuriously in somecrowded district, flinging up to heaven great sheets of flame, andturning the nightly sky into a vault of suffocating crimson.
No words can paint the horror of a scene which transformed intoa Gehenna of destruction a city enriched with the magnificence ofnearly eight centuries of victory. There were districts in whichthe heat was so intense that they were unapproachable, and therarefaction of the atmosphere, joined to a strong breeze which seemedin league with the destroying element, filled the air with a roar asof ten thousand wild beasts. Here stores of resinous material madethe consuming flames white with intensity; and there the burning andsmouldering _débris_, which for a time half choked the conflagration,poured forth black volumes of smoke, which hid its progress under apall of midnight. Here an _insula_, many stories high, collapsed witha crash which was heard for miles; and there whole streets, fallingsimultaneously on both sides, caused continuous bursts of sound likethe long roll of incessant thunder.
But the physical horrors of the scene, as it was witnessed by amillion or more spectators who thronged from every town of Latiumand Campania to behold it, were nothing compared with the prodigiesof human agony and the multiform images of death and crime. Atfirst there had been wild efforts on the part of many to save theirhomes. But their efforts were rendered futile by many causes. Theconflagration seemed to break forth, not in one spot, but fromvarious quarters, which rolled together their concurrent seas offlame. No means were adequate to resist a foe which seemed to beubiquitous. The scorching heat drove back the boldest firemen. Thebuckets, from which the police derived their nickname of _sparteoli_,were ludicrously inadequate for an emergency so tremendous. Thesupplies of water were not available in the wild confusion. Itwas rumoured on every side that slaves and agents of the imperialhousehold were seen with tow and torches in their hands, which theyflung into the houses of the nobles; and, if any attempted to checkthem, they menacingly declared that they had authority for theirdoings. If a senator tried to organise his slaves to quench theflames or impede their advance, he was bidden to take care whathe was about. Burglary and rapine were let loose. The criminalpopulation of the city seized the opportunity to plunder everyburning palace into which they could force their way. Nor was itlong before self-preservation became the one absorbing passion ofthe multitude, surprised by the ever-swelling dimensions of thecatastrophe. Here a group of women, as they stood shrieking andtearing their hair, unwilling to leave their homes or unable to savetheir little ones, were trampled down under the hurrying rush ofsome group of fugitives. Here the father of a family, hindered inhis flight by the helplessness of age or childhood, found himselfswept along by reckless pillagers, and with unutterable anguish wascompelled to abandon some little child or decrepit grandsire whohad been flung down on the pavement with bruised or broken limbs. Asthe inhabitants of regions which the fire had freshly invaded rushedto escape, they plunged into winding alleys overarched by meetingflames, or their flight was impeded by smouldering ruins, or theywere overwhelmed by the thunderous fall of some huge building, many,losing their heads altogether, stood stupefied with despair, andthe smoke stifled them, or the fire scorched them, until the streetswere filled with charred corpses. Others in raging defiance, seeingthemselves reduced to penury by the loss of all they possessed, orwith hearts lacerated by the death of their beloved, leapt madly intothe flames. Rome during all that week was a pandemonium of horror, inwhich, amid shrieks and yells and every sound of ruin, were witnessedthe wrath of the elements, the passions of devils, and tragedies ofdespair, and anguish which no heart can conceive, no tongue describe.
At the first news that Rome was in flames, and that they were alreadyapproaching his Domus Transitoria, Nero hurried back from Antium.Now indeed he had a sensation to his heart’s content. At first hewas shocked by the magnitude of a catastrophe more overwhelming thanhad ever before happened to Rome or any other city. He mounted thetower of Mæcenas, and gazed for hours upon the scene--thrillingwith excitement which was not without its delicious elements.Safe himself, he was looking down on a storm of tempestuous[*14]agony, which he could regard in the light of a spectacle. He wasaccustomed to gaze unmoved on human pangs in the bloody realism ofthe amphitheatre, and to see slave after slave flung to the lions,with their arms bound in chains concealed with flowers. But whatscene of the circus, when the gilded chariots were reduced to acrashing wreck of collisions, in which the horses kicked one anotherand their charioteers to death--what gladiatorial massacre, fillingthe air with the reek of blood, was for a moment comparable to thesight of Rome in flames? The sublime horror of the moment stimulatedin him all the genius of melodrama and artificial epic. Surrounded byhis parasites, he compared Rome, now to a virgin whom the tigers offlame devoured, now to a gladiator wrestling with troops of lions inthe arena. He was lost in admiration of the _beauty_ of the fire. Nowhe called it a splendid rose, with petals of crimson; now a diademof flaming and radiating gold; now again an enormous hydra withsmoky pinions and tongue of flickering gleam. He wrote many a quaintand fantastic phrase in the notebooks which were crowded with hismuch-lined commonplaces of poetic imagery! Here were the materialsfor many future poems before him. He could, for instance, writean Ode on Tartarus--its horrible spaces of silent anguish, itsblack vapours, its brazen gates, and iron pillars, its ghosts anddemons gibbering and shrieking in the shade, its torments and itsPyriphlegethon with cataracts of blood and fire. He felt sure thatafter these incitements of emotion and infusions of realism, his poemon the Burning of Troy would be immortal, since it could not fail tocatch from such a scene a tinge of voluptuous sublimity!
And as he gazed for hours together of the day and of the night,he endeavoured to rea
lise the aspect of the spectacle, and did notallow himself to be disturbed by the multitudinous agonies which itimplied. He did, indeed, accept some suggestions of Seneca, who,abandoning his seclusion from generous impulse, hurried to himas soon as it became evident that the fire meant wide-spreaddestitution. Nero felt a spasm of terror when the philosopherexpressed a doubt whether sullen misery might not flash up into rage,and cause a formidable rebellion. For want of houses, the peoplewere huddling into tombs and catacombs. Nero, therefore, took thehint that he should offer the Campus Martius and the monuments ofAgrippa--his porticoes, baths, gardens, and the Temple of Neptune--asa refuge for the shivering throngs whom the flames had driven fromtheir homes. But, this done, he flattered himself that the publicdisaster would redound to his popularity; and as it never occurredto him that any one would suspect his complicity, he gave himselfup once more to æsthetic enjoyment. He ordered masses of roses to bestrewn around him on the summit of the tower; he twanged his harp ashe thought of refrains and songs which he intended to write on thesubject; and he meant that Troy should stand as a transparent symbolof Rome. When he was for a time tired of watching, he induced hisminions to ask him for an opportunity of hearing once more hiscelestial voice; and putting on his tragic _syrmos_, appeared ona private stage, harp in hand, and affectedly chanted to them hisinsipid strophes and emasculate conceits.
But even these first-rate sensations became in time monotonous.He had seen as much as he wanted, and to his great delight theconflagration had destroyed the buildings near the Palace on whichhe had cast covetous eyes. When after a pause the fire, which hadbeen checked on the seventh night, broke out a second time from theÆmilian estate of Tigellinus, and raged fitfully for three days more,he was tired of it. There was no object in suffering the whole ofRome to be destroyed. He assented to a proposition that masses ofbuildings should be pulled down on the Esquiline, in order thatthe progress of the flames might be checked. The expedient wassuccessful. There was now time to note the extent of the devastation.Rome was divided into fourteen districts. Three of these were reducedto utter wreck and destruction. Seven more were in a conditionof desperate ruin; four alone remained untouched. The loss ofantiquities, of venerable buildings rich in historic associations,of precious manuscripts, of priceless relics of the past, above all,of works of art,
‘the hand of famed artificers In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold,’
was such as none could estimate. The rumour arose that Nero wasabout to rebuild the city with unparalleled magnificence and callit Neronia; but whatever gain might accrue to another generationfrom endless straight lines, ‘vast monumental perspectives, andsumptuosities of parade,’ those who regarded cities as somethingmore than official masses of architectural monotony were wounded tothe heart. No new Rome could ever make up to them for the loss ofthe old beloved city which sat dreaming on her seven hills among theglorious memories of the past.[93]
The name of Nero was on every lip, and it was blended with curses notloud but deep. As he wandered over the blackened areas, his lictorsaccompanying him, his head crowned with garlands and his thoughtsfull of magnificent schemes of reconstruction, he became awarethat the blank walls of the ruins were already scribbled over withinfamies with which his name was connected, and that scowling browswere bent upon him and looks of hatred mingled with terror. Hisproclamation that none were to approach the ruins of their ownhouses, since he would charge himself with the burial of the humanremains and the clearance of the _débris_, was interpreted into adesign to enrich himself with any objects of value, or uninjuredworks of art, which might be disencumbered[*15] from the generaldestruction. He found it necessary to take measures to prevent theindignation of the multitude from finding vent in furious outbreak.Inviting aid from the senators, he started a sort of patriotic fund,which did not differ greatly from a forced loan. He threw open hisgardens to the desolate paupers, who had no distant villas suchas those in which the rich took refuge; he ordered the erection ofmultitudes of temporary huts; he decreed that the necessaries ofsubsistence should be imported with all haste from Ostia and theneighbouring municipalities, and he reduced the fixed price of cornto the lowest possible limit. Under ordinary circumstances suchmeasures would have been welcomed with gratitude, as they were someyears later in the reign of Titus. As it was, they were insufficientto remove the odium with which rumour surrounded his name. The publicvoice accused him of being the author of a misery which it was beyondhis power to alleviate. It was all very well for him to lavish aliberality which cost him nothing, and came from national resources;but while he was still steeped to the lips in superhuman luxury,who could restore to that nation of ruined men their lost childrenand relatives, their lost homes and cherished possessions, their lostmaterials and opportunities for gaining an honourable livelihood?The story that he had harped and sung and poetised while the citywas crashing into ruins had first been whispered as a secret, but wasnow familiar to every lip; and it filled all hearts with execrationand contempt. The ruthless egotism of the Emperor seemed likely tocost him dear.
All that was left of religious feeling in the old Paganism wasoverwhelmed with a sense that the gods were wroth. There rose aclamour that expiations and purifications were necessary. Butlitanies, and vigils, and sacred banquets were in vain, and Romepresented the piteous scene of a starving and homeless populace whoregarded the past with horror and the future with despair, having nohope, and without God in the world.