The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City

by Dando-Collins, Stephen

  So Silvanus galloped back to the villa, where he instructed his centurion to stanch Paulina’s bleeding. The centurion led several of his men into the house and found Paulina lying in a separate room, alive but weak, surrounded by her fretting servants. The centurion ordered Paulina’s staff to bandage up her arm at once, which they did. Some reports would later claim that Paulina was unconscious by this time and knew nothing about the saving of her life. Tacitus wrote that others claimed that Paulina was still conscious when the troops reached her, and once she knew that Nero did not want her punished, “she yielded to the charms of life” and made no attempt to resist or to further harm herself.18 Either way, Seneca was denied the dramatic statement he had envisioned with Paulina joining him in death. Paulina would recover.

  In a nearby room, apparently unaware that he had been robbed of his double sacrifice, Seneca had been spending the time dictating to his two secretaries as he continued to slowly bleed to death. He did not write a new will as he previously intended; the will of Seneca which was later published had been written when he was still in power, some time prior to his retirement in AD 62. Instead, thinking his end near, Seneca thought of posterity and his reputation and dictated an account of his own end, giving his final words to his wife and friends for the edification of the public at large. It was from this account, published after Seneca’s death by his friends, Tacitus said, that the historian was able to describe Seneca’s last hours in such vivid detail and with verbatim quotations.

  Well into the night, Seneca clung to life, even though he had chosen to part with it. His prolonged exit forced him to beg his physician, Statius, a friend of many years and whose medical skill he esteemed, to prepare poison for him. For at any moment, the centurion could stride in with a drawn sword and take matters into his own hands. Tacitus wrote that the drug that Seneca asked for “he had provided himself some time before,” without explaining how Seneca had previously obtained the poison, nor for what purpose.

  This lethal poison was, said Tacitus, “the same drug which extinguished the life of those who were condemned by a public sentence of the people of Athens.”19 The “public sentence” referred to the jury system practiced by the Athenians, and the drug in question was hemlock. Statius hurried to his baggage and his medical chest. Physicians in Roman times carried a variety of drugs with them. Administered in small quantities, some otherwise deadly drugs were used to treat a variety of ailments.

  Statius mixed the poison, a powder ground from the leaf of the toxic hemlock plant when it was in flower, with water and wine, and this he brought to Seneca, who gulped it down. There are two types of hemlock, water hemlock and poison hemlock. The former, common throughout the temperate parts of Europe, produces vomiting and diarrhea among its symptoms. Poison hemlock, native to North Africa, produces muscular weakness, paralysis of the extremities, and blindness, followed by respiratory difficulties and heart failure. Seneca was not vomiting or producing diarrhea, but he did complain of feeling chilled throughout his limbs, indicating that it was poison hemlock he had taken. Despite the poison, still Seneca did not die.

  His host, Priscus, ordered his staff to heat several baths in the villa’s bathhouse, and as soon as he was informed that the fires had done their jobs, bloody Seneca was carried to the bathhouse and lowered into a warm pool. His words echoing around him, he sprinkled some water on his nearest slaves and recited the words normally uttered during a religious sacrifice: “I offer this liquid as a libation to Jupiter the Deliverer.”20

  The warm pool made little difference to his blood flow, so Seneca was carried to the hot bath. Steam filled the room as Seneca was lowered into this water. The slaves and Seneca’s friends withdrew. Seneca died of suffocation in the steam-filled room. A little later, when the water cooled and Seneca’s body was removed, the centurion appeared, drew his sword, and lopped off his head. While the head was sent to Rome to prove to Nero that the man who had guided him for more than half his life was dead, the corpse was placed on a pyre in the villa garden. In his will, Seneca, who had never been religious, had specified that he be burned without any religious rites. And so Lucius Annaeus Seneca passed from this world, the latest, but not the last victim of the plot to kill Nero.

  XVII

  THE PURGE

  As the sun rose over the Praetorian barracks on April 20, the day following the discovery of the conspiracy to murder the emperor at Rome, the inquisitors of the prisoner Epicharis prepared to resume their questioning of the woman. After her unproductive torture the previous day, Epicharis had spent an agonizing night on a cell floor. Now, the guards came for her. Because her legs had been dislocated on the rack and she could not walk, she was tied to an ordinary chair, which was dragged from the cell and along a corridor toward the torture chamber.

  In the night, Epicharis had managed to strip a strong length of ribbon from the bosom of her gown, and when the guards came for her, she kept the rolled-up ribbon concealed in one hand. As she was being dragged along on the chair by her careless jailers, Epicharis was able to loop the ribbon over the arched back of the chair, forming a noose. Into this noose she placed her neck. Then, straining against the noose with all her might, she strangled the breath from her body. It would be reported that, only after the guards had deposited Epicharis in the torture chamber, was it discovered that the prisoner was a corpse. Tacitus uncharacteristically praised the freedwoman for her courage; she had not given up the name of a single conspirator to save herself, “protecting strangers and those whom she hardly knew.”1 Freeborn men, including Equestrians and senators, in the meantime, were giving up names galore, without even facing the torturers.

  Outside the gates to the Servilian Gardens, west of the Tiber River in Regio XIV, long lines of accused men and their servants, all in chains, awaited interrogation. Some had been arrested in the city; others had been tracked down to country retreats and brought in for questioning. Seneca was dead, and so too were Piso and Lateranus. But many more conspirators and their sympathizers remained. Not the least of these were the officers of the Praetorian Cohorts who were party to the plot; not a single one of them had yet been exposed or, conversely, had taken a step to aid the accused.

  In the gardens, Nero, with a massive bodyguard from the German Cohorts by the name of Cassius standing at his shoulder, was accompanied by both Praetorian prefects, Tigellinus and Faenius Rufus. Beside Rufus stood the military tribune and Praetorian cohort commander Subrius Flavus, who, unbeknownst to the emperor, was a committed conspirator and whose troops formed part of the guard of the prisoners. Both these men were armed. Conspirators had been convinced that this pair—Prefect Rufus and Tribune Flavus—would come out for them once the ringleaders launched their coup, but to this point, neither the prefect nor the tribune had made a move.

  Palatium secretaries writing in wax and using shorthand were noting down every confession, every accusation, every hint of disloyalty from men desperate to shift blame to others. Tigellinus was now in his savage element. As each man who was named by confessed conspirators was brought forward and denied his complicity in the plot, the prefect was able to throw accusations at them—this man was seen entering a banquet or a show with one of the known conspirators; that man was known to have had an unexpected meeting with a conspirator; or, even, a man had once been seen to smile at a conspirator.

  While this questioning was taking place, Prefect Rufus frowned fiercely at his accomplices, who did not name him as one of them, and he even threatened them if they failed to speak up when questioned. This was an extremely dangerous course for Rufus. Tribune Flavus, standing at Rufus’ elbow and bemused by his superior’s actions, thought that Rufus was simply playing for time. The tribune caught the prefect’s eye and motioned as if to draw his sword and strike Nero then and there, while they had the opportunity—he was just feet away. Rufus, shaking his head, discreetly reached over and took Flavus’ arm as the centurion’s hand rested on the hilt of the sword sheathed on his left side and checked him
. Had the tribune gone ahead with his intent to assassinate Nero at that moment, Roman history may have turned out very differently.

  Prefect Rufus, meanwhile, was clearly hoping that none of the suspects would mention his name. It was a futile hope. Scaevinus had been brought back to confront the accused men. He may have been hoping that Rufus and the six other Praetorian officers who were complicit in the plot would take up arms to help him, and that was why he had not named them. But Scaevinus, seeing Rufus playing the hard man while he himself was being browbeaten by Tigellinus, who demanded more information and more names, produced a smile, looked directly at Rufus, and said, “No one knows more than he does.”2

  All eyes turned to Prefect Rufus, who paled.

  “Show Nero Caesar how grateful you have been that he is a good prince, Rufus,” said Scaevinus sarcastically.3

  Rufus was visibly terror-stricken and could only respond haltingly and unconvincingly that he was Nero’s loyal subject. There were several accused men in the room at the time, among them, Cervarius Proculus, one of the seven Equestrians who had embraced the plot from its early days. Proculus knew that Rufus had been involved, and he became angry that Rufus was trying to act the part of one of his judges. Now, in support of Scaevinus, Proculus also pointed his finger at the prefect. Others in the line of prisoners followed suit. Rufus was doomed.

  “Seize him!” Nero commanded.4

  For just a moment, a heartbeat, there was hesitation in the ranks of Rufus’ Praetorians. But then Cassius, the emperor’s massive German bodyguard, stepped forward and took hold of Rufus. As the prefect was being put in chains, Rufus looked ruefully but silently at the tribune Flavus. This was Flavus’ last chance to change the course of history, but he lacked the courage to act. In a flash, he could have drawn his sword, slashed the throat of Cassius to free Rufus, and then, in almost the same movement, struck down Nero. But it could be argued that most tribunes of the Praetorian Guard were men of talk, not men of action. Unlike the soldiers serving in the legions on the empire’s frontiers, the Praetorians had not seen action, real action, since two of their cohorts had fought under Nero’s grandfather Germanicus when he led a Roman army in defeating German tribes deep inside Germany, fifty years back.

  Besides, Piso, the man initially singled out to replace Nero, was now dead, and so too was Flavus’ choice as emperor, Seneca. Flavus did not have the imagination to conceive of a third alternative. Either that, or perhaps, without an alternative leader waiting in the wings, Flavus was actually brighter than his action, or lack of it, makes him appear to modern eyes. Perhaps the centurion could see that without an obvious alternative to Nero on the spot, the only other option, with Nero’s death, was chaos—of the kind that had befallen Rome after the death of Julius Caesar following the Ides of March a century earlier. If this was the case, then Flavus was remarkably perceptive, for this would indeed be Rome’s fate once Nero was eventually removed, several years from now. But Flavus’ actions suggest that he was nothing more than a coward.

  With Rufus’ arrest, the fate of Tribune Flavus and all the Praetorian officers implicated in the plot was sealed. Seeing that the Praetorians had failed to keep their part of the conspiratorial bargain, the embittered Scaevinus—whose own unguarded actions had been the catalyst for the discovery of the plot—now also pointed out the tribune as a fellow conspirator. Proculus the Equestrian backed him up. Tribune Flavus, too, was now arrested by his own men and disarmed.

  “I am innocent, Caesar,” the tribune protested. “I cannot be compared to my accusers. How can it be thought that I, a soldier, would combine with such traitors as these?”5

  But Scaevinus and Proculus declared that Flavus had been the most ardent of the plotters, and one of the first. As Tigellinus pressed him and as Scaevinus and Proculus offered to testify about meetings that Flavus had conducted with them and Prefect Rufus, Flavus at last admitted his guilt.

  “But why?” Nero asked, astonished that a Praetorian tribune could betray his emperor and his oath of allegiance. Nero, despite all his faults, believed totally in keeping his word once he gave his sacred oath. “What could have led you to forget your oath of allegiance to me?”6

  “I hated you!” Flavus replied, flushed with honesty at last.

  “You hated me?” said Nero, in disbelief.

  “I did. Yet, not a soldier could have been more loyal to you, while you deserved to be loved. I began to hate you when you became the murderer of your mother and your wife, a charioteer, an actor, and an incendiary.”7

  Nero’s eyes flashed with anger. Here were all the “crimes” that his worst critics had accused him of since the Great Fire, crimes stretching back years. It was likely that Flavus had been one of those behind the incessant rumors that put the blame for the fire at Nero’s door. It was also possible that this tribune had sent men through the burning city on the first night of the fire to discourage firefighting, tossing burning brands into buildings and claiming that they were acting on the authority of a certain individual. Flavus may even have set the second fire on Tigellinus’ property, so that the despised Tigellinus received blame and was removed from his post as Flavus’ superior.

  Nero turned to Veianius Niger, the tribune of another of the Praetorian Cohorts, and ordered him to take Flavus away and to personally deal with him at once. Flavus, in chains and stripped of his weapons, expensive armor, helmet, and white tribune’s cloak, was left in just his white, purple-bordered tunic. He was hustled from the Servilian Gardens by a large body of men from Niger’s cohort, to a field outside the garden walls. As Flavus watched, several of Niger’s men dug a pit for his body. When they had finished digging and were clambering from the pit, Flavus shook his head. “It’s too shallow, and too narrow,” he scornfully declared. He looked at the soldiers all around him. “Even this is not according to military regulation.”8

  With his hands chained behind his back, he was pressed to his knees beside his grave. His fellow tribune drew his sword and stood over him.

  “Present your neck, Flavus,” said Niger, his trembling voice betraying his dread of what he must do.

  “I pray that your blow is firm, Niger,” said Flavus.9

  Niger readied his aim, then brought down his blade. But it only penetrated Flavus’ neck part of the way. As blood spurted, Niger, close to panic, raised his sword and struck again. This time, the prisoner’s head flopped to the ground and his corpse toppled over. When Niger returned to Nero and held up Flavus’ severed head by its bloodied fair hair as proof that the deed had been done, someone in Nero’s entourage must have remarked that Flavus possessed a thick neck.

  “Yes,” said Niger, laughing now. “It took a blow-and-a-half to slay him.”10

  Sulpicius Asper, a centurion in Flavus’ cohort who had initiated the assassination plot in company with Flavus earlier in the year, had also been identified by Scaevinus and Proculus, who were singing like birds by this time and no longer protecting any of the Praetorians involved in the plot. When Asper was brought before his emperor, Nero was still in shock to think that men who gave their sacred oath to serve and protect him had been planning to murder him. He also asked Asper, “Why did you want to kill me? When you swore to serve me?”

  “I could not have rendered a better service to you than to end your infamous career,” Asper spat back in answer.

  “Let him suffer the prescribed penalty,” said Nero with disgust.11

  Asper was hauled away and, like Flavus, beheaded at once. Prefect Faenius Rufus, their superior, as a man of senior rank, was granted a little time to compose his last will and testament, and then he too lost his head. Rufus, full of self-pity, wrote in his will that he desperately lamented his foolishness in becoming involved with the conspirators. When he was taken to his execution, he broke down in tears and died bemoaning his misfortune. Information was also given by convicted men against four other Praetorian centurions. All were promptly dealt with; all received the blade soldier-like and composed.

  Tw
o more Praetorian tribunes were also accused of complicity in the plot. One, Gavius Silvanus, was acquitted for lack of evidence. But the charge had a factual basis, and apparently feeling dishonored in front of his military colleagues, this Silvanus took his own life soon after. The next Praetorian tribune to be accused was Statius Proximus. When brought before Nero, Proximus openly confessed to having been involved with some conspirators, although he made no mention of the plan to replace Piso with Seneca. To Proximus’ surprise, because he had obeyed Nero’s orders and supervised Seneca’s demise, the emperor gave him a full pardon, which he gratefully accepted. But Proximus was wracked with guilt, and he too also later committed suicide.

  Three other Praetorian tribunes were said by conspirators to be known to hate Nero, although there was no evidence that any of them had been involved in the plot. To be on the safe side, Nero deprived all three of their tribuneships and removed them from his service. With the military purged of the murderous and the disloyal, Nero turned to completing the weeding out of the civilian conspirators.

  Four men in particular proved industrious in pursuing lines of inquiry on the emperor’s behalf. They set out to identify men who, if not undeniably in league with the convicted conspirators, at least had suspect loyalty to the emperor. One of these investigators was, of course, Tigellinus. Not only was he back in the emperor’s favor, but he was now rid of his rival Faenius Rufus, through Rufus’ own foolishness. Another who sought out the guilty was Nymphidius, prefect of the vigiles. The son of Nymphidia, a freedwoman seamstress who had been the lover of freedmen on the staff of the emperor Caligula, Nymphidius claimed to have been fathered by Caligula himself.

  The other two investigators were entirely different men from the widely despised Tigellinus and Nymphidius. It was almost as if Nero relied on them to counter the excesses of the first pair. One was Petronius Turpilianus, an elderly, able, and renowned general who had resigned as a consul for the year in AD 61 to take over the governorship of Britain in the chaotic days following the quashing of Boudicca’s revolt. Turpilianus gained a reputation for a wise and conciliatory administration, which enabled the province to regain its equilibrium in the wake of enormous bloodshed.