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

by Dando-Collins, Stephen

  “My days are nearing their end,” said Thrasea forlornly, “and I must not now abandon a scheme of life (Stoicism) with which I have persevered for so many years.” The followers of the Stoic philosophy believed in calmly accepting their fate, whatever it might be. “You are at the beginning of a career in office, and your future is uncertain,” Thrasea told the young tribune. “Before you act in a crisis such as this, carefully consider the path to political life that lies ahead.”20

  Thrasea thanked all his friends for their advice, but in the end, he said, he would reserve for his own judgment the question of whether it was becoming of him to enter the Senate on the day of his trial.

  XXI

  THE TRIAL OF THRASEA AND SORANUS

  The next morning, prior to sunrise, most of the senators of Rome made their way from their city homes to the Curia, the Senate House, in answer to the consul’s summons. In the Forum, they encountered a group of ordinary citizens who blocked their path. These surly men were armed with swords on sword-belts, which they did not conceal, despite the law that banned the carrying of arms within the city by anyone other than the military—and even then, there were restrictions on what the troops could ordinarily carry within the city walls. The armed men parted to let the senators pass, but followed their passage with threatening expressions. Who had sent them, no one knew, but the fact that they were not challenged by the authorities suggested they were there to intimidate the senators with the encouragement of someone connected with the Palatium.

  Then, adjacent to the Curia, in the Forum of Caesar, the arriving senators saw swarms of armed Praetorian troops. Two thousand men from two of the Praetorian Cohorts were scattered in various bodies through the colonnades and courtyards of the Temple of Venus Genetrix. This temple had been erected by Julius Caesar in response to the vow he had made to his patron deity, the goddess Venus, on the eve of the Battle of Pharsalus. If he was given victory over Pompey the Great, he had vowed, he would build this temple. Ironically, Venus was also Pompey’s patron deity. Inside the temple, in addition to a statue of the goddess herself, there were statues of Caesar and of his mistress Cleopatra, queen of Egypt.

  Obviously sent by the Praetorian prefects Tigellinus and Nymphidius, the Praetorians eyed the arriving senators with menacing looks and with their hands resting in the hilts of their swords. It was another unspoken message to the senators that they should do the emperor’s bidding this day. As dawn broke, inside the Senate House the presiding consul, seated in his curule chair, looked around the crowded wooden benches in front of him and noted that Thrasea was absent, having failed to answer his summons. Thrasea had in fact decided to sit out the Senate session with Stoic resolve, relaxing in his gardens while he waited to learn from others the outcome of the debate on his fate. The consul called the House to order, then, when silence reigned, nodded to the emperor’s quaestor.

  The quaestor came to his feet and read out a speech written by Nero and addressed to the members of the Senate. Nero condemned unnamed senators for neglecting their duties and providing a poor example to their inferiors, then went on: “What wonder is it that men don’t come from remote provinces when many, after obtaining the consulate or some sacred office, choose to give all their thoughts to the beauty of their gardens?” 1 There could be no doubt to whom the emperor was referring.

  The conclusion of the imperial address was the consul’s cue to call on Cossutianus Capito. Tigellinus’ son-in-law came to his feet, then gave a speech in which, as expected, he vilified Thrasea. When he had finished, the consul called on another senator, Marcellus Eprius, who used his “pungent eloquence,” in Tacitus’ words, to also denounce Thrasea. It was a speech that clearly had Palatium endorsement. “We senators have been too lenient in the past in allowing him [the emperor] to be mocked with impunity by Thrasea,” Marcellus said, in part.2

  Marcellus, with the “savage and menacing look he usually wore,” then sent shivers of dread around the chamber by unexpectedly implicating three more members of the House in Thrasea’s “crimes”—Thrasea’s son-in-law Gaius Helvidius Priscus and two others, Agrippinus, whose father had been exiled by Tiberius, and Montanus, a poet guilty of “abominable verses,” according to his accuser.3 When Priscus had served as a tribune of the Plebeians several years earlier, he had gained a reputation for good acts, showing particular attention to the needs of the poor. But now Priscus was being accused of a treasonous association with his fatherin-law, an indicted enemy of the emperor. Tacitus characterized the relationship of Priscus and Thrasea as an innocent alliance, but Priscus was, like Thrasea, a Stoic, and like Thrasea, too, Priscus could sometimes be brutally frank.

  It was Thrasea who came in for Marcellus’ greatest condemnation, for his guilt, if proven, would be enough to destroy the others. “Thrasea openly took on the role of a traitor and an enemy,” Marcellus declared, “with rising fury.” He wondered why Thrasea had failed to take his place in the Senate, had not been seen at the theater, and had not met his obligations as a priest these past three years. The Senate House, the theater, and the temples had come to be treated as a desert by Thrasea, he said. Thrasea, Marcellus claimed, grieved at his country’s prosperity, “and is forever threatening us with exile.” What, he pondered, was Thrasea unhappy about? “Is it the peace throughout the world or victories won without loss to our armies which vex him?”4

  After Marcellus suggested, bitterly, that Thrasea “sever his life” from the country that he apparently no longer loved, the accuser took his seat.5 The consul now called for the Equestrian Ostorius Sabinus, the accuser of Barea Soranus, the second man being impeached on Nero’s orders, to be brought into the chamber. The consul’s lictors escorted Ostorius in, and the consul gave him leave to speak. Ostorius told the House that Soranus, who was present, had been an intimate friend of the previously condemned traitor Rubellius Plautus and that Soranus, when he was governor of Asia, had fostered seditious movements in the various states that made up the province.

  These were stale charges that the senators had heard before, but the accuser now added a new charge, that Soranus’ daughter Servilia had recently spent a great deal of money, obtained by selling her wedding presents and jewelry, to employ astrologers to provide horoscopes about her father and Nero. This new claim sent a ripple of low conversation through the chamber. The consul now dispatched his lictors to fetch Servilia and bring her into the Senate to address the charge.

  Twenty-year-old Servilia was soon escorted into the House and made to stand in front of the assembled senators. The previous year, her husband Annius Pollio, a member of a distinguished family and a man considerably older than Servilia, had been sent into exile. Pollio had been the best friend of Senecio, the “inside man” in the Piso Plot. When asked to name a single fellow conspirator, Senecio had named Pollio, who had subsequently been banished, leaving his wife forlorn at Rome. As Soranus, an elderly man, stood facing his daughter before the tribunal of the consuls, Servilia could not bring herself to look her father in the eye.

  “Did you sell your bridal presents or strip your neck of its ornaments to raise money for the performance of magical rites?” demanded Ostorius the accuser.6

  Instead of replying, the young woman flung herself down onto the marble floor and wept long and hard. Because Servilia was guilty of employing astrologers, she realized that in doing so, she had exacerbated her father’s peril. The Senate patiently waited for her to compose herself and answer the charge.

  When the flow of tears had ceased, Servilia crawled up the steps to the altar that stood in the chamber and on which stood a bust of Nero. Clasping the altar, Servilia cried, “I have invoked no impious gods, no enchantments, nor anything else in my unhappy prayers that you, Caesar”—she looked at the marble visage of the emperor—“and you senators, might preserve from harm this best of fathers. My jewels, my clothes, and the signs of my ranks I did give up, as I would have given up my lifeblood had it been demanded of me.”7

  Servilia looked aro
und the chamber at the faces of the senators, some charitable, most solemn, some condemning. “These men must have seen this,” she went on, referring to the astrologers and her desperation. “I did not know them previously, or the arts they practice. No mention was made by me of the emperor, except as one of the divinities. But my most unhappy father knows nothing of any of this. And if it is a crime, then I alone am guilty.”8

  Servilia was going to say more, but her father, trying to free her from any blame, interrupted. “My daughter did not go with me to Asia,” he declared. “She was too young then to have known Plautus. Nor was she involved in the charges against Pollio, her husband.” Turning to his fellow senators, he beseeched them: “Treat separately the case of one who is only guilty of excessive loyalty to her father. As for myself, let me suffer any fate.”9

  As Soranus spoke, Servilia went to run to him, and he to wrap his paternal arms around her, but the consular lictors standing close by intervened and drew them apart. The consul called for witnesses for both the prosecution and the defense to now speak. Up rose Publius Egnatius Celer, one of the architects of the rebuilding of Rome and the construction of the Golden House. Celer had been managing imperial properties in Asia at the time of Soranus’ alleged crimes there and was also a client of Soranus.

  A professed Stoic and speaking with the slow, deliberate, and virtuous eloquence of a philosopher, Celer added weight to the accusation that Soranus had stirred up revolt in the province, influenced by his friendship with Plautus. Tacitus, later claiming that Celer had been paid to betray his patron, called Celer “treacherous and cunning,” a man “wholly entangled in falsehoods and stained with every infamy.”10 In Soranus’ defense, another provincial, Cassius Asclepiodotus of Nicaea, reputedly the richest man in Bithynia, was at Rome; he stood before the House and spoke of Soranus’ good character.

  No one else spoke in favor of either Soranus or Thrasea, yet both had many friends within senatorial ranks. Vespasian, for example, was a friend to both men, although he had little time for Thrasea’s son-in-law Priscus. No other man of distinction was prepared to follow the example of Asclepiodotus and speak in favor of the accused. For those who put self-preservation ahead of all else, it seemed a pointless and suicidal act. The Nicaean, a lone voice in support of the beleaguered Soranus, would pay for his loyalty and courage. The Senate would tar him with the same brush as they did Soranus and would impose a stiff sentence on him, stripping him of his great wealth and sending him into impoverished exile.

  Late that afternoon, the consul’s quaestor, a young man in his late twenties, arrived at the gate to Thrasea’s gardens; he had been sent by the consul to convey a message to Thrasea. Escorted into the gardens, the quaestor found Thrasea surrounded by a crowd of distinguished men and women, including Thrasea’s wife Arria. The throng was listening intently as Thrasea conversed with Demetrius, a noted Greek professor of the Cynic school of philosophy—Cynics led an austere life, like monks in later times, but were also outspoken and believed in being unconventional and in challenging the social norms of the day. As the quaestor came up to the group, he found Thrasea speculating loudly with Demetrius on the nature of the soul and the separation of body and spirit.

  When Thrasea would not halt his discourse, the quaestor spoke with one of Thrasea’s friends, Domitius Caecilianus, and imparted the consul’s message. The Senate, said the messenger, had found Thrasea, Soranus, and Soranus’ daughter Servilia guilty of capital offenses. But the senators had voted to permit all three to choose how they died. Helvidius and Agrippinus had been ordered to leave Italy. Montanus the poet had been saved from similar punishment when his father had stood up in the Senate and proposed that the young man be punished by being banned from ever entering political life, which the House agreed to. The prosecutors in Thrasea’s case, Capito and Marcellus, had each been given 5 million sesterces by the Senate for their work, while Ostorius, Soranus’ prosecutor, was awarded 1.2 million sesterces and the decorations of a quaestor.

  Domitius went to Thrasea and interrupted him, announcing the convictions and sentences to all present. Many of those around Thrasea, men as well as women, burst into tears at the news. Others complained bitterly at the injustice of it all. Thrasea’s wife Arria immediately declared that she wished to die with him, taking her own life the same way that her own mother had done some years before.

  “No, preserve your life,” Thrasea urged his wife, “and don’t rob our daughter of her only support.” Turning to his friends, he said, “Go quickly now, and don’t imperil yourselves by becoming embroiled in the fate of a man who is doomed.”11

  The quaestor was under orders to deliver the verdict to Thrasea in person and to then return to the consul with word of Thrasea’s response to his sentence. A failure by Thrasea to take matters into his own hands would result in the consul’s consigning the condemned man’s fate to the Praetorian prefect. As most of Thrasea’s companions hurried away, the quaestor found the man himself beneath a garden colonnade. The quaestor read the consul’s message aloud. Thrasea seemed oddly elated, before explaining that he was joyful because the life of his son-in-law had been spared.

  After parting from his wife, Thrasea took his son-in-law Priscus and Demetrius the Cynic and withdrew into a room. There, he took out a dagger and sliced open the veins of each arm. Letting the blood flow freely, he sprinkled it onto the floor. He then called in the quaestor, so that he could report that he had seen the condemned man follow the noble course.

  “We pour out a libation to Jupiter the Deliverer,” Thrasea said to the quaestor, indicating the dripping blood. “Look well, young man—and may the gods ignore the omen—you have been born into times when it is wise to fortify the spirit with examples of courage.”12

  XXII

  THE NEW ALEXANDER

  Thrasea and Soranus were dead, and King Tiridates was on his way back to the East. Nero was feeling on top of the world. At some point during Tiridates’ visit to Rome, someone—probably the king himself—seems to have likened Nero to Alexander the Great. Now, Nero was convinced that he could indeed become the new Alexander the Great.

  Like Alexander, Nero had eliminated potential rivals and leaders of dissent from within his own camp. Now, Nero would emulate Alexander in other ways. Reputedly, Alexander had sent an expedition south from Egypt into what the Romans called Ethiopia, to search for the source of the Nile River. Nero decided that he would do likewise and issued orders for an expeditionary force to be prepared for just such an operation the following year or, at the latest, the year after that. Nero intended to personally lead this expedition.

  In addition to ordering the 15th Apollonaris Legion to transfer to Egypt from Syria to join the two legions already stationed there (the 3rd Cyrenaica and 22nd Deiotariana), the Palatium would partly meet the manpower needs of the Ethiopian operation by reforming an old legion. It was a re-creation of the 18th Legion, one of three legions famously wiped out in the Teutoburg Forest by the German tribes led by Arminius in AD 9. Neither Augustus nor his successors had reformed any of the three annihilated legions, the 17th, 18th and 19th, because it had been considered unlucky to do so. Consequently, why Nero chose to re-form the 18th Legion is a mystery. Making the re-creation of the legion more difficult, half of its ten cohorts were recruited in Europe, and half in Libya, adjacent to Egypt.

  To provide more troops for the Ethiopian expedition, the Palatium also called up Evocati reservists in Europe. With these reservists acting as garrison troops in Egypt, the two legions that had been stationed in Egypt could march south with Nero in his force of four legions. For the Ethiopian operation, Nero would make his headquarters in Alexandria, at the palace of the Egyptian sovereigns of old. That palace’s first occupant had been Alexander’s general Ptolemy, founder of the Macedonian dynasty that had gone on to rule Egypt for centuries. The last occupants had been Cleopatra and Nero’s great-great-grandfather Mark Antony. The palace was grand, but not grand enough for Nero, who instructed the prefect of Eg
ypt to erect a luxurious new bathhouse in time for his arrival. Later, after the prefect tried out the newly built bathhouse, an incensed Nero would remove him from his post.

  Nero would, of course, be accompanied on the Ethiopian expedition by most of the Praetorian Cohorts. It would take the Praetorians’ minds off the loss of half their tribunes following the Piso Plot and give them the opportunity for action and, more importantly, for booty. In conceiving this operation, Nero took a leaf from his uncle Claudius’ book. After a revolt among the legions in Dalmatia had been put down in AD 41, Claudius, who, like Nero, had no military experience, had initiated the AD 43 invasion of Britain. This aggressive action, which had added the province of Britain to the empire, had been cleverly conceived by Claudius to prove to his discontented army that he could be a successful military leader and could give them new sources of blood and booty.

  Nero did not stop at the Ethiopian plan, for he wanted to prove his military credentials to the army and cement its loyalty. Alexander the Great had also conquered the Persians, precursors to the Parthians, and had defeated the aggressive Getae north of the Danube. Julius Caesar, just before he died, was planning a similar operation, which would have taken him through the Caspian Gates, around the Caspian Sea, and into the heartland of the Getae, at the head of a hundred thousand troops. Nero decided that he would both emulate Alexander and take up where Caesar had left off. Movement orders went out to legions around the empire to prepare to move to new bases for the Caspian Gates operation. The 14th Gemina Legion, considered the best legion in the Roman army since it had defeated Boudicca’s rebel army, would, for example, leave its longtime base in Britain and relocate to Carnuntum in Pannonia, on the Danube, in preparation for the Getae offensive.