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

by Dando-Collins, Stephen

  The fourth man who was active on the emperor’s behalf was thirty-five-year-old praetor-designate Marcus Cocceius Nerva. He was the son of a former consul who had committed suicide during the reign of Tiberius by starving himself to death shortly after Nerva was born. Credited by all chroniclers with being a good and wise man, Nerva, who was soon due to take up office as a senior judge at Rome, was distantly related to Nero, by marriage. Twenty-nine years from now, Nerva would become Rome’s twelfth emperor.

  Through the agency of these four men, Nero was presented with a list of a dozen suspects who, it was thought, sympathized with the convicted conspirators and the conspiracy. At the top of this list was Seneca’s friend Novius Priscus, at whose villa Seneca had died. Another on the list was Rufius Crispinus, the empress Poppaea’s first husband. With no concrete evidence against them, all twelve suspects were, on Nero’s command, exiled from Rome. Some were merely banished from Italy, to live where they chose, while others were sent to specific islands. Several took their wives with them.

  One man whom Nero had been hoping would be caught in the conspiratorial net was Vestinus, the sitting consul. When Nero was younger, Vestinus had been one of his companions on his night revels, at a time when Nero, incognito, would pick fights with strangers in the street. Vestinus, a witty man, had been good company on these revels, but his wit had a sarcastic edge, and although Nero had not shown it at the time, the emperor had long remembered Vestinus’ barbs, for many jests are exaggerated truths. Added to Nero’s aggravation was the fact that Vestinus had only recently married Nero’s latest mistress, Statilia Messalina.

  Nero felt certain that Vestinus was deeply disaffected with him, and considering Vestinus an impetuous man, Nero was convinced that the consul must have been involved with the conspiracy. Yet, not a word against Vestinus had been uttered by any conspirator, and all inquiries by Nero’s investigators failed to produce a single piece of evidence that incriminated the consul. Came the end of another day, and still no one had come forward with anything negative to say about Vestinus. It was reported to Nero that during that day, Vestinus had conducted his consular duties as usual and in the evening had welcomed a number of guests for dinner. Nero, fearful of waiting any longer in case Vestinus was about to act against him, decided to proceed with his arrest, despite the lack of evidence against him, to “forestall the plans of the consul.”12

  Vestinus’ city house was a palatial mansion on the Palatine Hill, home to the palaces of the emperors. Like the old palaces on the Palatine, Vestinus’ house, a structure “towering over the Forum,” in the words of Tacitus, had been rapidly restored since the Great Fire.13 In this mansion, Vestinus kept a staff of hundreds of male slaves, chosen deliberately by their master for their handsome appearance and youth. If Vestinus were to arm these men, he could effectively resist arrest or, worse, go on the offensive. So, Nero ordered an entire Praetorian Cohort to make the arrest. In the darkness, one thousand Praetorian soldiers commanded by the trustworthy Tribune Gerellanus marched from their barracks, crossed the city, climbed the Palatine, then surrounded the house, and sealed off the servants’ quarters.

  A party of troops led by a centurion burst into the house as the consul and his guests were reclining, unsuspecting, around the dinner table. The centurion announced that his tribune waited outside and asked the consul to accompany him. Vestinus knew exactly what this meant. Quickly coming to his feet, issuing orders to his staff, and asking his physician, who was one of his dinner guests, to join him, the consul withdrew into another room and closed and barred the doors. The physician sliced open the veins of Vestinus’ arms. A warm bath was prepared on the master’s orders, and as soon as it was ready, Vestinus was carried to it by servants and lowered in, as his life blood now colored the bath-water red. Not a word was uttered by the consul, who was resigned to his fate.

  Back in the dining room, Praetorians had surrounded the diners, who were instructed to remain where they were. There they waited, for hours, half expecting to also face a fatal end to their banquet. Word of the state of affairs at Vestinus’ house was regularly conveyed across the Tiber to the emperor, who was still residing at the Servilian Gardens. Even after it was reported that Vestinus had expired, Nero left the men in the dining room in suspense. According to Tacitus, he laughed at the thought of their terror. It was late at night when orders finally arrived for the troops to withdraw. Nero now had Vestinus’ head, and that was all he required. The traumatized diners were permitted to go home.

  Nero still considered four other men to pose continuing threats. The first was young poet Lucan. From the testimony of other conspirators, it became clear that Lucan had been one of the instigators of the plot against the emperor’s life. What was more, Lucan was the nephew of Seneca, and that alone was sure to win him sympathy and followers from among Seneca’s admirers. Lucan had been promised immunity if he named one other conspirator, and as if to poke out his tongue at Nero, he had named Atilla, his own mother.

  Lucan’s immunity offer had not come from Nero’s own lips, but from Tigellinus. On the strength of that technicality and infuriated by Lucan’s cheek, Nero sent the poet word that he had been condemned to death. Calling his friends around him, Lucan slit his veins. Remarking that he felt a chill creep through his hands and feet as the blood dripped from him, he lay reciting one of his poems, about a wounded soldier dying a similar kind of death. And so Lucan the poet died. His mother was never arrested or questioned.

  Senecio, the “inside man” who had betrayed Nero’s friendship as well as his trust, was the next to receive a visit from the Praetorians. He too was permitted to take his own life. Quintianus was next, and he followed the others’ example, as did, finally, Scaevinus, the man who had claimed the right to plunge Fortune’s dagger into the emperor’s heart. Scaevinus’ wife, Caedicia, was, on Nero’s orders, exiled from Italy. Nero had the by-now-infamous dagger inscribed “To Jupiter the Avenger” and dedicated it in a temple at the capital.

  In the wake of the wave of arrests and punishments, Nero called an assembly of the Praetorian Guard at their barracks. Thanking them for their loyal service, he distributed a reward of two thousand sesterces to every man and ordered that the corn the troops had previously been entitled to buy at market price should now be provided to them free of charge. Next, the emperor called a sitting of the Senate.

  Delivering a speech to the packed benches of the Senate House, Nero read the confessions of the condemned men, which were also published by the Palatium in a proclamation. For their roles in putting down the conspiracy Nero presented three men with Triumphal Decorations. These were the crimson cloak, golden palm tunic, bay leaf crown, laurel branch, and statues in the Forum normally presented to a general celebrating a Triumph for a major victory over foreign enemies. The recipients were the Praetorian prefect Tigellinus, the general Turpilianus, and praetor-designate Nerva. So much had Nerva and Tigellinus distinguished themselves in his service, to Nero’s mind, that he also had busts of both made and placed in his Golden House.

  Tall, stern-looking Nymphidius, the freedwoman’s son, was doubly rewarded. He received the decorations of a consul—the consular insignia, purple-fringed toga, and twelve lictors. More importantly, he was also awarded the post of prefect of the Praetorian Cohorts that had been vacated by the death of Faenius Rufus, becoming Tigellinus’ colleague in power. Several past appointees to this post, including Rufus, had similarly held the post of prefect of the vigiles at the time of their promotion.

  There were still enemies of Nero who would deny that a conspiracy to murder him ever existed, men who would claim that Nero had used this as a pretence to destroy innocent men through jealousy or fear. Tacitus, despite being no fan of the young emperor, said that those who “took pains to ascertain the truth” at this time “conclusively proved” that such a conspiracy genuinely existed, beginning and maturing before being discovered and terminated. The plot’s existence, and people’s complicity in it, was also admitted, said Tac
itus, by men who were exiled by Nero and later returned to Rome; Tacitus seems to have, some years later, personally spoken with a number of them.14

  All the participants at this sitting of the Senate “abased themselves in flattery” of Nero, said Tacitus, especially those who were mourning relatives and friends caught up in the purge, as they strove to prove their loyalty to the emperor.15 Junius Gallio, who had been stricken with terror by the enforced deaths of his brother Seneca and nephew Lucan, had made a personal plea to Nero for his life. For days, Gallio and others had prostrated themselves at the emperor’s feet and smothered his hand with kisses as they swore that they’d had no part in the plot and had known nothing of it.

  Nero seemed content to hush up or ignore any evidence that implicated Gallio, said Tacitus, but now, the senator Salienus Clemens came to his feet and denounced Gallio, calling him an enemy and a traitor. But Clemens was shouted down by hundreds of fellow senators, for it was known that Clemens had a personal grudge against Gallio. Besides, the other senators wanted the bloody wound caused by the exposed conspiracy to heal as quickly as possible, so that no more leading men fell victim to it.

  The Senate decreed offerings and thanksgivings to the gods because Nero’s life had been preserved. Special honors were given to Sol, the sun god, because a temple to Sol formed part of the Circus Flaminius, where Nero was supposed to have been assassinated. The Senate also decreed that a temple dedicated to Safety be built at Ferentum, the town from which Scaevinus had taken the infamous dagger. One senator, Cerialis Anicius, even proposed that a temple be built at public expense and dedicated to “the Divine Nero,” as if the emperor were a living god. No such temple would be erected.

  Now, too, Nero rewarded the informant who had forestalled the plot and saved his life. Milichus, freedman of chief conspirator Scaevinus, was showered with gifts from the emperor and permitted to add to his name the Greek word for “savior.” And, apparently because Nero had personally given his word that Natalis and Proculus, the first to identify Praetorian officers among the plotters, would receive immunity for identifying so many conspirators, both men went free.

  “Rome all this time was thronged with funerals, the Capitol with sacrificial victims,” said Tacitus.16 Throughout the rebuilt city, houses were decked with funereal laurels. But this season of death, stemming from the foiled plot to kill the emperor, had yet to run its course.

  XVIII

  THE NEW STAGE

  That spring of AD 65, the Piso Plot, as it came to be known, had not long been quashed when the Neronian Games loomed. Also called the Quinquennial Games, this was the competition instituted by Nero, to be staged every five years and last run in AD 60, involving verse, song, gymnastics, and horse and chariot races.

  It became clear to the members of the Senate that for the first time, Nero intended to appear on stage at Rome, to compete in these, his own games. Even though they had heaped praise on him for destroying the plot against his life, many senators dreaded the prospect of their emperor taking to the Roman stage, for they considered it shameful. As far as they were concerned, it was one thing to compete in rural or even in provincial competitions, but to appear on stage at the capital would be a scandal.

  It was one of the great contradictions of Roman society that the upper classes flocked to the theater to see and applaud actors and singers, yet many snobbish nobles considered the theater profession contemptible. As recently as the twentieth century, acting was still considered a rather shameful profession by the upper classes. It is only in present day that the rewards of the cinema have made many actors rich and their profession acceptable, even desirable. So that “a veil might be thrown over a shameful exposure on the stage,” the Senate, in advance, offered Nero the prizes for song and eloquence, to prevent him from taking the stage. But Nero “respectfully” responded that he could, and would, win the laurel crowns on merit.1

  On the appointed day, the emperor joined the other competitors and took to the stage in the massive Theater of Pompey on the Campus Martius. Rome’s first permanent all-stone theater, and for centuries the largest theater in the Roman world, Pompey’s theater had escaped the ravages of the Great Fire. Opened in 55 BC, the theater had been paid for by Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar’s onetime son-in-law and ally and later his adversary in the civil war that had brought Caesar to power. The theater’s portico had also been the site of the fateful meeting of the Senate on the Ides of March, 44 BC, when more than sixty conspiratorial senators had executed the plot that saw the assassination of Julius Caesar. Ironically, the dictator had fallen at the foot of a statue of Pompey. That statue no longer stood in the theater; Augustus, Caesar’s great-nephew, had removed it to another site on the Campus Martius.

  Nero, nervous as always and announced by Cluvius Rufus as usual, recited one of his own poems to the vast audience. His performance was received ecstatically by the surprised general public. The judges were senators whose names had been drawn by lot, while the editor of the games and president of the judges was the senator Aulus Vitellius, another future emperor. Those judges now awarded Nero the winner’s crown, to the great delight of the ordinary people in the crowd.

  “Make all your accomplishments public property, Caesar!” called someone from the audience.2

  Many others added their encouragement, for it had become well known that Nero also sang and played the lyre. To oblige them, Nero put his name down for the singing contest. The Theater of Pompey was full next evening as the lyre-playing singers prepared backstage to compete. Nero had joined the other competitors, while the audience out front clamored for him to make an appearance. But Nero’s nerves got the better of him. Giving the excuse that he dare not compete without an express invitation to do so from the judges, he began to walk away.

  On seeing this, Vitellius, editor of the games, hurried after him. Vitellius was grossly overweight from too much good living. And he walked with a limp as a result of a chariot crash during the reign of Caligula. This earlier emperor had challenged Vitellius and several other senators to a race, during which Vitellius’ chariot had overturned. Nero liked Vitellius because the large man enjoyed the good things in life and was a chariot racing fan, even though he supported the Blues. Vitellius was also addicted to dice, which contributed to his growing debts. Nero himself was reputed to have wagered forty thousand sesterces on each dot of the dice in a single throw.

  The limping Vitellius overtook the retreating emperor. “On behalf of the audience, Caesar,” said Vitellius, so Suetonius would write, “I beg you to reconsider your decision.”3

  Persuaded by Vitellius, Nero turned back, regained his courage, again took up his lyre, and returned to his place among the contestants. Out front, the audience in the sprawling theater, numbering tens of thousands, waited excitedly for the popular song contest. Apart from the nobility, who occupied the front rows in the semicircular theater, the throng was made up of off-duty soldiers, city residents, visitors from towns in Italy, and businessmen and envoys from the provinces and allied states.4 With word having spread quickly that the emperor would be competing, there was such a crush in the narrow approaches to the theater that it was rumored that two members of the Equestrian Order had been trampled to death.

  Among the many senators present was Vespasian, who had managed to avoid any involvement with, or taint from, the Piso Plot. He knew that it would be dangerous to be absent from Nero’s performance and that there were men in the crowd, informers probably in the pay of Tigellinus, who “secretly made it their business to scrutinize names and faces, and to note the delight or the disgust of the audience members.” To even leave the theater before the performances ended was construed as an insult to Nero, whose games these were. So that they did not incite undue attention, leading men remained in their seats through both the day and the evening sessions. Gossip even has several men dying from heart attacks in their seats.5

  As the evening session went late into the night, Vespasian nodded off. A freedman named Pho
ebus spotted the dozing senator, approached Vespasian, and rudely prodded him awake, accusing him of discourtesy to the emperor. This would have been reported to Nero, but friends of Vespasian’s and his brother the city prefect spoke up for him, and nothing came of the report.

  When Nero’s turn came, he took the stage, equipped with his lyre and in the proper costume. Again he performed creditably. He ended his number on one knee and with a sweep of the hand. Again the audience applauded loudly. Nero waited, obviously nervous, for the judges’ verdict. Sure enough, he was again declared the winner. Once more, the enthusiastic city people in the audience “made the place ring” with “elaborate applause,” which went on for some time. This reception to Nero’s winning performance so went against the usual custom of polite applause that, says Tacitus, out-of-town visitors found their hands aching from the prolonged clapping. But when they left off the applause before it generally abated, these out-of-towners found themselves on the end of rough thumps from nearby soldiers, who jolted them into resuming clapping.6

  Well received by the ordinary people of Rome, Nero now set his sights on winning the contests of Greece. But in the wake of his victories, immediately after the games, tragedy struck the Palatium. Nero’s pregnant wife Poppaea Sabina died, along with Nero’s unborn child. His critics would blame him for their deaths. According to Tacitus, “Poppaea died from a casual outburst of rage from her husband, who felled her with a kick.”7 Cassius Dio gave credit to the possibility that Poppaea’s death could have been as the result of an accident: “Either accidentally or deliberately he had leapt on her with his feet.”8 Suetonius wrote that Poppaea was ill at the time and so had not been able to attend the games, and she had incited Nero’s anger “because she complained that he came home late from the races.”9