The charioteer, who stood throughout, wound the ends of the reins of his horses around his waist to increase his leverage, leaving the right hand free for the whip and the left for the reins. As a consequence, if his chariot crashed or if he fell out, a driver would be dragged by his bolting team until circus attendants reined them in. Even if the drag did not seriously injure a driver, he was likely to be trampled by another passing team.
In Nero’s day, every race consisted of seven laps of the circuit. At the drop of an officiating magistrate’s napkin, the competing chariots charged from the starting gates at the flat end of the “U.” They raced down the right side of the central spine, which was angled a little diagonally so that the track narrowed at the two turns, increasing the degree of difficulty for making the turn. If there was a false start, a white rope, the alba linea, which stretched across the track several feet above the ground halfway down the first lap, would force the teams to stop. If the start was fair, a judge let the alba linea drop to the sand before the teams reached it, and they passed over it.
As each lap was completed, high on the circus’s spine one of seven large eggs was removed and one of seven gilded dolphins was reversed, to tell spectators and drivers alike how many laps remained. And then it was the last lap, and a champion might overtake his opponents to snatch victory in the last strides, accompanied by the roar of 200,000 spectators. This crescendo of voices meant that visitors approaching Rome on race days would hear the city before they saw it. To leaven the entertainment, there were novelty events and displays of trick riding during the middle of the day. This was when the traders in the arcades beneath the Circus Maximus did their best business, the hot-food shops and wine bars in particular. Here, too, beneath the arcades, prostitutes found ready customers.
Nero was more than just a spectator. Just as he had pretensions to be a stage performer, he also hankered for the circus sands. “Horses had been Nero’s main interest since childhood,” said Suetonius. “His chatter about the chariot races at the circus could not be stopped.”1 Nero’s adherence to the Greens was formed during his school days. As a youth, he had diligently practiced horse management and had learned how to drive the chariot. He became a proficient charioteer and had wanted to show off his skill in public, but Seneca and Burrus had convinced him that it would not be politic.
Instead, the pair had encouraged the boy emperor to build a private chariot-racing circus where he could drive to his heart’s content, behind high walls, and out of the public eye. Nero’s circus was erected in the Vatican Valley, west of the Tiber. An Egyptian obelisk today stands in the center of St. Peter’s Square; originally surmounted by a golden ball, the obelisk stood on the spine of Nero’s Vatican circus, testimony to his fascination with all things Egyptian. The obelisk is linked with the pharaoh Ramses II and the Temple of Isis.
From the beginning of his reign, Nero “came up from the country to attend all the races, even minor ones,” said Suetonius. “So, there was never any doubt that he would be at Rome on that particular day.”2 Still, Nero harbored ambitions of driving in competition in front of the roaring crowd, not just in his private circus in front of his servants, and of claiming the winner’s golden palm trophy. But his confidence was not so great that he would venture out in front of the masses at the Circus Maximus. He could only watch, enviously, as each race unfolded and the teams thundered past his box, and he told himself that he could do as good as, or better than, any of these charioteers competing today.
It is likely that Vespasian was in the judges’ box with the emperor this July 13. And accompanying Vespasian would have been his thirteen-year-old boy Domitian, a fan of the Blues and a fanatical follower of chariot racing, although he had no ambitions to be a driver. Once he became emperor, seventeen years hence, Domitian would add two more teams to the competition, Purple and Gold, so that six teams competed in every race, and would reduce the races to five laps so that one hundred races could be run in a day. He would also build a private circus within his Palatium complex on the Palatine, the domus Domitiana, so that he could stage and watch racing whenever he felt like it.
With the sun about to set, the last race of the Ludi Apollinares was run and won. Apollo’s Games were over for the year. But the mass of people slowly departing the massive stadium in the twilight could look forward to more exciting racing before long. Just a week from now, on July 20, the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris were due to start at the Circus Maximus. Originally staged by Julius Caesar in 46 BC to celebrate his civil war victories and dedicated to his patron deity Venus, these games had been continued by his successor Augustus and by all the Caesars since. Like the Ludi Apollinares, the early days of the upcoming festival would feature drama, music, and other events such as gymnastics, but it would climax with three solid days of chariot racing.
Nero himself did not plan to attend the first week of the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris. He intended to almost immediately head for the seaside city of Antium, where he had an extensive villa. But Nero was not heading for Antium just for the sea air. The city would be staging a singing contest, and Nero intended following up on his success at Neapolis earlier in the year by also entering, and winning, the Antium contest.
At dawn on July 14, Nero and his typically enormous entourage of bodyguard troops, servants, and courtiers set off for Antium. On the emperor’s last, dawdling visit to Campania at the beginning of the spring, he had traveled by road. But this trip was more hurried, for Nero wanted to be as rested as possible before he took the stage and competed for the victor’s laurel at Antium.
A rider could accomplish the journey from Rome to Antium in a day. But for a party on foot to travel thirty-five miles in a day was virtually unheard-of. Even Rome’s legions, composed of fit men accustomed to marching, marched only eighteen to twenty miles a day, and even then only in the mornings, before the heat of the day. To cover thirty-five miles in a day was considered, by legionaries, an extended forced march. Just five years from now, a thirty-three-mile forced march in a single day accomplished by a Roman army in northern Italy would be reckoned a remarkable feat.
For the sake of speed, Nero journeyed to Antium by sea. Tacitus noted that when the troops of Nero’s bodyguard accompanied the emperor on his journeys to the lakes of Campania, which were near Antium, the trip was made by sea. A flotilla of small craft from the Misenum base of Rome’s Tyrrhenian Fleet on the Bay of Naples would have come up the Tiber and been waiting to embark the emperor and his party at the Campus Martius. The ships would have rowed Nero and the imperial retinue down the river to the Tyrrhenian Sea. Then, turning south and setting their square sails, the ships would have sped them the short distance down the coast to the Cape of Antium and to the small and ancient city of Antium.
The imperial villa’s rows of sweeping, gently curved colonnades hugged the shoreline, and the emperor’s ships were able to dock right there. Nero and his party stepped ashore on the villa’s doorstep in time for lunch, unaware that a disaster of unimaginable magnitude was just five days away.
XII
THE FIRE
Activity was intense in and around the Circus Maximus on July 19. It was a baking hot day. This very morn, Sirius the Dog Star rose in the heavens, signaling the beginning of summer’s hottest period. The following day, the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris were scheduled to begin, and in the circus, thousands of perspiring slaves were preparing the stadium for the first day’s events.1 Visitors were flooding into the city from country districts to attend the games. Some would stay at Rome’s taverns and inns; others, with friends or relatives. Some would sleep beneath the arcades of the circus or the porticoes of city temples.
Come darkness, convoys of carts that always clogged the night brought the produce, fresh fish, game, and birds in from the countryside. In the arcades beneath the circus, the fires of bakers, pastry cooks, and hot-food stores blazed, so the crowd that descended on the stadium well before dawn could be supplied with their breakfast, their snacks for the day, their lunch.
From hundreds of sources, smoke rose up from beneath the stadium and hung above it in a haze. That evening, a strong wind rose up from the north and began to buffet the city, clearing the haze.
At the circus and throughout the rest of the city, excitement mounted in anticipation of the next games on the Roman calendar commencing next day.
This same day, Nero was at Antium. Since coming to the throne, Rome’s fifth emperor had lavished money and honors on the town, his birthplace. Antium predated Rome, having been established by the Volsci people, who were later conquered by the Romans. The “beaks,” or iron battering rams, from the prows of six captured warships of Volsci Antium decorated the speakers’ rostra in the Forum Romanum at Rome, as trophies of Rome’s victory four hundred years before.
Nero had built a new port to service Antium. The town had military colony status, which entailed numerous privileges and had brought retired legion veterans to settle, which meant status and wealth. To boost the former-soldier population, Nero had settled Praetorian veterans and wealthy retired centurions in the town. Here at Antium, too, Nero had leveled and rebuilt the seaside villa that Augustus had kept. It was here in this villa, set below the ancient walled town, that Nero had been born on December 15, AD 37.
Over the foundations of Augustus’ Antium vacation house was raised a palatial complex that extended for eight hundred yards along the seafront. More like a small town, the villa included numerous gardens, pools, and temples and a drama theater. To the townspeople of Antium, Nero granted the right to conduct drama and music recitals and competitions in his new theater. And now he would grace the stage that he had built, by competing in Antium’s singing competition.
On July 19, Nero spared his voice in preparation for his event that evening. Come nightfall, the emperor, dressed in a long, unbelted, Greek-style tunic, walked along one of the villa’s long, marble-lined corridors to the theater, trailed by aides. Out front, beneath the twinkling stars, the stone tiers of the theater were lined with locals who had come to enjoy the night air and the competition. Many of the audience members were retired soldiers who had recently made Antium their home and who were still on the lists of the Evocati militia as their terms of retirement required. In one section of the theater sat unarmed serving troops from the emperor’s German bodyguard; the duty cohort would have been stationed at the theater entrances. The half-moon theater’s curving front rows, called, in all Roman theaters, Germanicus’ Benches, in honor of Nero’s famous grandfather, were occupied by the senators who accompanied the emperor and by Antium’s magistrates and members of the city’s own elected senate.
Behind the scenes, Nero watched as the judges drew lots from an urn to decide the order of appearance of the competitors. After the lots were drawn, the first competitors took to the stage. As at Neapolis, Nero had been courteous and friendly to his opponents backstage. Finally, it was nervous Nero’s turn to perform. First came his opening oration. He addressed the judges with the utmost deference. “I will have done what I can. The issue will now be in Fortune’s hands,” Nero said, according to Suetonius. “Since you are men of judgment and experience, you will know how to eliminate the factor of chance.”2
Then, introduced by Cluvius Rufus as he had been at Neapolis, and with lyre in hand, Nero sang his song. It was about the destruction of Troy by the Greeks during the Trojan War, after the cunning employment of the Trojan Horse.
That same warm summer night, a blaze began in a shop beneath the Circus Maximus. A cooking fire had got out of control, or a fire had been deliberately set—no one knew for certain. Tacitus later said that authors of the day gave both explanations. The fire began in the northeastern section of the circus, where it adjoined the Palatine and Caelian hills, said Tacitus.3 Flames consumed the contents of the shop and then, via wooden rafters, spread to adjacent shops, which contained “inflammable wares” such as lamp oil.4 From these shops, the flames rose into the wooden stands above. Soon, the strong northerly wind was driving the fire throughout the entire Circus Maximus complex, whose dry timbers burst into flame as if by magic. Never had anyone seen such a sight as the massive circus ablaze from end to end.
As the flames reached high into the night sky, the handheld fire bells of the vigiles responsible for Rome’s Regio XI, which included the circus, were jangling. Thousands who lived beneath the circus escaped with whatever they could carry. Tenement blocks adjoined the circus to the south. Driven by the wind, the flames engulfing the circus crossed the Via Triumphalis and attacked the residential buildings southwest of the circus. Wooden window shutters and hanging drapes were soon alight. Flames rose up into the rafters, igniting the timbers of the floors above. Soon, entire gutted buildings collapsed in on themselves, crushing everything and everyone below.
“The blaze, in its fury, ran first through the level portions of the city,” said Tacitus.5 From Regio XI, driven by the strong wind, the fire quickly spread south into Regio XII and pushed toward Regio XIII. Before long, in the southeast, the flames jumped the four-hundred-year-old Servian Walls, once the protective boundary of Rome but beyond which the city had expanded over centuries of urban growth, and set alight buildings in Regio I, which adjoined Regio XII. The thousands of vigiles in service came from all the districts of the city to combat the blaze, as the prefect of the Cohortes Vigiles attempted to deal with the growing calamity. This prefect was not identified by Roman sources, but later events suggest he was Gaius Nymphidius Sabinus.
Fighting the raging, wind-driven blaze with buckets of water soon proved next to useless. All Prefect Nymphidius could do was order preventative measures such as the removal of inflammable materials from the path of the fire. Another measure, employed when desperation made it necessary, would entail knocking down buildings to create a fire break. But to maneuver the battering rams used in building demolition into position would take time. The speed of the windblown flames was threatening to defeat that measure before it could be attempted.
With the vigiles fully engaged and losing the battle, the ordinary people of Rome were left to fend for themselves. Cassius Dio described just how quickly the conflagration moved: “Here, men while assisting their neighbors, would learn that their own premises were on fire. There, others, before word reached them that their own houses had caught fire, would be told that they were destroyed.”6 Tacitus, too, wrote of how the fire seemed to come from several directions at once to confront the residents: “Often, while they looked behind them, they were intercepted by flames on their side or in their face.”7 Everywhere, collapsing masonry blocked the narrow streets.
Modern-day research on the behavior of wildfires has shown that no matter what the direction of the prevailing wind during a fire, embers will be carried in all directions and will ignite new blazes seemingly all around the source of the fire, almost as if someone were deliberately setting these new blazes. It is no wonder that many Romans came to believe that arsonists were at work, spreading the fire behind the backs of those trying to combat it.
The streets of the threatened areas were filled with people. “There was shouting and wailing without end,” said Dio, “of children, women, men, and the aged, all together, so that no one could see anything or understand what was said because of the smoke and the shouting.” While panic sent many running blindly, shock froze others in their tracks; some residents, said Dio, were seen “standing, speechless, as if they were dumb” at the sight of the conflagration devouring one narrow winding, irregular street after another.8
Most residents were able to escape with their lives, but very little else. “They crowded the streets or flung themselves down in the fields” outside the city, said Tacitus.9 Others who rushed back into the burning areas in search of missing loved ones never returned. Sinister incidents were to follow. Looting became rife. Meanwhile, some people were seen hurling burning brands into untouched buildings. Were they pyromaniacs? Perhaps.
Reports would also emerge that when individuals attempted to fight the flames, they were warned
away by unidentified men who claimed that they were under orders to prevent the fire from being extinguished. When challenged, these mystery men claimed, “There is one who gives us authority,” although they would not name that person. These same people, too, were seen to plunder abandoned shops and houses.10
As dawn broke over the burning city and a pall of smoke hung over the southern regions, Flavius Sabinus, city prefect of Rome, took charge of the firefighting efforts, as responsibility for the security of the city transferred from the exhausted prefect of the vigiles at the start of the first daylight hour. The equally exhausted vigiles withdrew to find some place to sleep, handing the task of battling the conflagration over to three thousand men of the City Cohorts—just two of the City Guard cohorts were in the city—and imperial and state slaves such as the men of the water gangs. Prefect Sabinus’ own house on the Quirinal Hill seemed safe from the fire. As for his family, it is likely that he had sent them, along with many of his household staff, to one of his country estates at the start of the summer.
Sabinus was a mature, pragmatic man in his late fifties or early sixties and not prone to panic. Once, when leading the 14th Gemina Legion during the invasion of Britain in AD 43, his unit and his younger brother Vespasian’s 2nd Augusta Legion had been trapped by British tribes beside the River Medway. Sabinus, his brother, and their troops had endured a desperate night, fending off the Britons until another legion had fought its way across the river the next day to relieve them. Sabinus had not panicked then, and he would not panic now. He had served one term as city prefect early in Nero’s reign, as the nominee of Seneca and Burrus, only accepting the post again in AD 61 after his successor as city prefect, Pedius Secundus, had been murdered by one of his own slaves. Future emperors would also entrust Sabinus with the post of city prefect, such was the respect he garnered for the way he executed his duties.
The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City Page 10
