Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Chapter XLIV

  Light from the burning city filled the sky as far as human eye couldreach. The moon rose large and full from behind the mountains, andinflamed at once by the glare took on the color of heated brass.It seemed to look with amazement on the world-ruling city which wasperishing. In the rose-colored abysses of heaven rose-colored stars wereglittering; but in distinction from usual nights the earth was brighterthan the heavens. Rome, like a giant pile, illuminated the wholeCampania. In the bloody light were seen distant mountains, towns,villas, temples, mountains, and the aqueducts stretching toward the cityfrom all the adjacent hills; on the aqueducts were swarms of people, whohad 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 remotefrom the principal fire. From the heights on which Rome was founded theflames flowed like waves of the sea into the valleys densely occupied byhouses,--houses of five and six stories, full of shops, booths, movablewooden amphitheatres, built to accommodate various spectacles; andfinally storehouses of wood, olives, grain, nuts, pine cones, thekernels of which nourished the more needy population, and clothing,which through Caesar's favor was distributed from time to time among therabble huddled into narrow alleys. In those places the fire, findingabundance of inflammable materials, became almost a series ofexplosions, and took possession of whole streets with unheard-ofrapidity. People encamping outside the city, or standing on theaqueducts knew from the color of the flame what was burning. The furiouspower of the wind carried forth from the fiery gulf thousands andmillions of burning shells of walnuts and almonds, which, shootingsuddenly into the sky, like countless flocks of bright butterflies,burst with a crackling, or, driven by the wind, fell in other parts ofthe city, on aqueducts, and fields beyond Rome. All thought of rescueseemed out of place; confusion increased every moment, for on one sidethe population of the city was fleeing through every gate to placesoutside; on the other the fire had lured in thousands of people from theneighborhood, such as dwellers in small towns, peasants, and half-wildshepherds of the Campania, brought in by hope of plunder. The shout,"Rome is perishing!" did not leave the lips of the crowd; the ruin ofthe city seemed at that time to end every rule, and loosen all bondswhich hitherto had joined people in a single integrity. The mob, inwhich slaves were more numerous, cared nothing for the lordship of Rome.Destruction of the city could only free them; hence here and there theyassumed a threatening attitude. Violence and robbery were extending. Itseemed that only the spectacle of the perishing city arrested attention,and restrained for the moment an outburst of slaughter, which wouldbegin as soon as the city was turned into ruins. Hundreds of thousandsof slaves, forgetting that Rome, besides temples and walls, possessedsome tens of legions in all parts of the world, appeared merely waitingfor a watchword and a leader. People began to mention the name ofSpartacus, but Spartacus was not alive. Meanwhile citizens assembled,and armed themselves each with what he could. The most monstrous reportswere current at all the gates. Some declared that Vulcan, commandedby Jupiter, was destroying the city with fire from beneath the earth;others that Vesta was taking vengeance for Rubria. People with theseconvictions 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 fromodors which rose from the Subura, and build a new city under the nameof Neronia. Rage seized the populace at thought of this; and if, asVinicius believed, a leader had taken advantage of that outburst ofhatred, Nero's hour would have struck whole years before it did.

  It was said also that Caesar had gone mad, that he would commandpretorians and gladiators to fall upon the people and make a generalslaughter. Others swore by the gods that wild beasts had been let outof all the vivaria at Bronzebeard's command. Men had seen on the streetslions with burning manes, and mad elephants and bisons, trampling downpeople in crowds. There was even some truth in this; for in certainplaces elephants, at sight of the approaching fire, had burst thevivaria, and, gaining their freedom, rushed away from the fire in wildfright, destroying everything before them like a tempest. Public reportestimated at tens of thousands the number of persons who had perishedin the conflagration. In truth a great number had perished. There werepeople who, losing all their property, or those dearest their hearts,threw themselves willingly into the flames, from despair. Others weresuffocated by smoke. In the middle of the city, between the Capitol, onone side, and the Quirinal, the Viminal, and the Esquiline on the other,as also between the Palatine and the Caelian Hill, where the streets weremost densely occupied, the fire began in so many places at oncethat whole crowds of people, while fleeing in one direction, struckunexpectedly on a new wall of fire in front of them, and died a dreadfuldeath in a deluge of flame.

  In terror, in distraction, and bewilderment, people knew not where toflee. The streets were obstructed with goods, and in many narrow placeswere simply closed. Those who took refuge in those markets and squaresof the city, where the Flavian Amphitheatre stood afterward, near thetemple of the Earth, near the Portico of Silvia, and higher up, at thetemples of Juno and Lucinia, between the Clivus Virbius and the oldEsquiline Gate, perished from heat, surrounded by a sea of fire. Inplaces not reached by the flames were found afterward hundreds of bodiesburned to a crisp, though here and there unfortunates tore up flatstones and half buried themselves in defence against the heat. Hardly afamily inhabiting the centre of the city survived in full; hence alongthe walls, at the gates, on all roads were heard howls of despairingwomen, calling on the dear names of those who had perished in the throngor the fire.

  And so, while some were imploring the gods, others blasphemed thembecause of this awful catastrophe. Old men were seen coming from thetemple of Jupiter Liberator, stretching forth their hands, and crying,"If thou be a liberator, save thy altars and the city!" But despairturned mainly against the old Roman gods, who, in the minds of thepopulace, were bound to watch over the city more carefully than others.They had proved themselves powerless; hence were insulted. On the otherhand it happened on the Via Asinaria that when a company of Egyptianpriests appeared conducting a statue of Isis, which they had saved fromthe temple near the Porta Caelimontana, a crowd of people rushed amongthe priests, attached themselves to the chariot, which they drew to theAppian Gate, and seizing the statue placed it in the temple of Mars,overwhelming the priests of that deity who dared to resist them. Inother places people invoked Serapis, Baal, or Jehovah, whose adherents,swarming out of the alleys in the neighborhood of the Subura and theTrans-Tiber, filled with shouts and uproar the fields near the walls. Intheir cries were heard tones as if of triumph; when, therefore, some ofthe citizens joined the chorus and glorified "the Lord of the World,"others, indignant at this glad shouting, strove to repress it byviolence. Here and there hymns were heard, sung by men in the bloom oflife, by old men, by women and children,--hymns wonderful and solemn,whose meaning they understood not, but in which were repeated frommoment to moment the words, "Behold the Judge cometh in the day ofwrath and disaster." Thus this deluge of restless and sleepless peopleencircled 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 asPredestination itself. Around Pompey's Amphitheatre stores of hempcaught fire, and ropes used in circuses, arenas, and every kind ofmachine at the games, and with them the adjoining buildings containingbarrels of pitch with which ropes were smeared. In a few hours all thatpart of the city, beyond which lay the Campus Martius, was so lighted bybright yellow flames that for a time it seemed to the spectators, onlyhalf conscious from terror, that in the general ruin the order of nightand day had been lost, and that they were looking at sunshine. But latera monstrous bloody gleam extinguished all other colors of flame. Fromthe sea of fire shot up to the heated sky
gigantic fountains, andpillars of flame spreading at their summits into fiery branches andfeathers; then the wind bore them away, turned them into golden threads,into hair, into sparks, and swept them on over the Campania towardthe Alban Hills. The night became brighter; the air itself seemedpenetrated, not only with light, but with flame. The Tiber flowed onas living fire. The hapless city was turned into one pandemonium. Theconflagration seized more and more space, took hills by storm, floodedlevel places, drowned valleys, raged, roared, and thundered.