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

by Dando-Collins, Stephen

  Tigellinus was acquainted with Anteius, and when the matter first raised its head in the Senate, he advised Anteius not to delay preparing and sealing his will. Anteius had thought the charge so trifling and ridiculous, coming as it did from a man who had been convicted of libeling the emperor, that he ignored Tigellinus’ advice. But Anteius soon found that he was being treated as a guilty man even though the matter was still being debated in the House. Only then did he realize the wisdom of preparing his will. Once he had done so, he had become such a pariah that no one he approached was prepared to put his name on the document as a witness. In the end, Tigellinus personally attested the will. The shocked Anteius, realizing that a sentence of death was imminent, attempted to commit suicide by taking poison. Like Seneca, Anteius found that the poison he downed was too slow-acting. Emulating many before and after him, he finally resorted to slitting his veins and died at his own hands.

  Ostorius Scapula, on the other hand, seems to have felt that the Senate would not convict him. While serving as a prefect of auxiliaries in Britain over the winter of AD 47-48, when his father was governor there, Scapula had won the Civic Crown for saving the life of a Roman citizen in battle. The Civic Crown was the most prestigious bravery decoration that a Roman officer could be awarded, the forerunner of today’s Medal of Honor in the United States and the Victoria Cross in the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth countries. The Civic Crown was rarely awarded and was greatly prized. Julius Caesar had won it as a young officer. Recipients were treated as VIPs by fellow Romans throughout the remainder of their lives. On the strength of his Civic Crown, Scapula apparently felt that he was safe from a death sentence. Just the same, to keep a low profile and not invite further criticism, he left Rome and withdrew to a remote country estate in Liguria, a coastal region in north-western Italy that today borders France.

  Scapula had judged wrongly. Before long, a detachment of Praetorian soldiers came marching along the road to his villa. The centurion in charge ordered every exit barred to prevent escape. He then confronted Scapula and informed him that he had orders to return to Rome with Scapula’s head, one way or another. Scapula was famous for his courage and his skill with a variety of arms. A broad-shouldered, physically powerful man like his father, he had a fearsome reputation as a soldier. Yet Scapula did not fight. To avoid the indignity of decapitation while he still lived, he withdrew to his chamber and slit his veins. But the blood flowed too slowly, and in dread of the centurion’s sword, the decorated fighter called one of his slaves to him and handed him a dagger. Making the man hold the dagger firmly as he stood before him, Scapula took hold of the slave’s hands, steadying the knife in front of his throat, then pushed forward, impaling himself on the blade. So died Scapula, decorated Roman hero.

  In the late days of winter, both the news of these two deaths and the reports of Sosianus’ reward in the form of a pardon sparked a rash of informers. Many informants came forward in search of rewards, accusing a number of leading men of having links with the previous year’s Piso Plot. At the top of the list was Nero’s close friend Gaius Petronius, the emperor’s famous arbiter of good taste. One of Petronius’ slaves accused his master of having been the intimate friend of Scaevinus, the man through whose agency the Piso Plot had unraveled, implying that Petronius had been aware of the plot. According to Tacitus, this slave was paid handsomely by Tigellinus the Praetorian prefect to invent his accusation. Tigellinus had long been jealous of Petronius and of his influence with the emperor. In Tacitus’ view, Tigellinus “looked on him as a rival, and even his superior in the science of pleasure.”5

  Nero was on the road, heading down through Campania to spend time at Neapolis, which he liked for its Greek heritage and as the site of his first stage victory, when Tigellinus produced this slave, who told the invented tale to the emperor. The imperial cavalcade, of which Petronius was customarily a member, had reached the coastal town of Cumae on the way to Neapolis when Nero received this information. As the cavalcade prepared to move on, Praetorian troops arrived at Petronius’ quarters, and when the imperial party departed Cumae, Petronius remained behind, under guard.

  The arbiter had seen enough other men perish around him to know what he must do. At least Nero did not hurry his end. Petronius’ friends remained with him as he sliced open his veins. Then he bound them up again and called for dinner. As Petronius and his friends dined, he encouraged them to recite light poetry and playful verses. Summoning those of his slaves accompanying him, he rewarded the good with generous gifts and punished the bad by ordering them to be flogged.

  Dictating his will, not only did Petronius fail to leave any part of his fortune to Nero or to Tigellinus, but he also included an elaborate account of the nightly revels he and Nero had enjoyed when the emperor was younger, naming Nero’s many female and male sexual partners in that period. After adding his seal to the will, Petronius dispatched it to Nero himself and then destroyed his signet ring so that his seal could not be used to change his will or forge further documents in his name, documents that might incriminate others. Late in the evening, Petronius unbound his wounds and let the blood flow once more, then lay down his head as if he were turning in for the night as usual. Petronius Arbiter died in his sleep, from loss of blood.

  When Nero read Petronius’ will, he was furious at the disclosures that his former friend had made. And he was perplexed at how Petronius had known the identity of all his sexual partners, for Petronius had not always been in Nero’s company. But there was one person who had; this was a senator’s wife, a woman named Silia. She had shared almost every one of the young emperor’s teenage nights on the town and was also close to Petronius. Convinced that Silia must have revealed all to Petronius at some time, Nero ordered that she be sent into exile for revealing imperial secrets.

  Now that Tigellinus had rid himself of his rival Petronius, the prefect followed up his success by fabricating an accusation against Minucius Thermus, a former praetor. One of Thermus’ freedmen had possessed the audacity—and the stupidity, to Tigellinus’ mind—to bring criminal charges against the Praetorian prefect. Tigellinus now punished both the freedman and his employer, felling two birds with the one stone. Putting the freedman on the rack with the excuse that he suspected Thermus of treason, Tigellinus forced the man to concoct charges against Thermus. The freedman’s original temerity cost him considerable pain and cost Thermus his life.

  The informers came thick and fast now, offering accusations of treason about elderly senator Cerialis Anicius and also Rufius Crispinus. The latter had been prefect of the Praetorian Cohorts during the reign of Claudius and had been rewarded for his service with consular decorations even though he was only a member of the Equestrian Order. Crispinus had been exiled to Sardinia in AD 65 for his connections with members of the Piso Plot and a suspicion that he might have been involved in the conspiracy, but the latest accusation placed him at the center of the plot. Informed that he had now been sentenced to death, Crispinus took the usual “noble” way out.

  Mela, father of Lucan the poet and brother of Seneca and Gallio, was next to fall victim to the informers, accused by one of his late son’s closest friends, Fabius Romanus, of sharing in the Piso conspiracy with Lucan. It turned out that following Lucan’s death, his tight-fisted father had called in money owed to the young man. Romanus had been one of Lucan’s debtors. When Romanus had failed to pay, Mela had resorted to legal action. This accusation of treason was Romanus’ revenge and probably his way of avoiding paying up.

  As proof of his accusation, Romanus even produced a letter that he said Lucan had written to his father about the conspiracy. Nero, not convinced of the letter’s authenticity, sent it to Mela and demanded a reaction. Mela, believing that, whatever he said, his fate was sealed, quickly wrote a new will. He left a large part of his immense estate to Tigellinus and Tigellinus’ son-in-law, Cossutianus Capito, to ensure that the remainder went to family members. He also wrote bitterly that he felt it unjust that he was f
orced to end his life while two other accused, Crispinus and Cerialis, men whom Mela knew despised Nero, were still permitted to live. It seems that Mela was unaware that Crispinus was already dead. Mela then slit his veins and died. Cerialis, a man who was both disliked and distrusted by his fellow senators ever since he had exposed a plot against the life of the emperor Caligula many years before, soon followed suit.

  Tigellinus’ son-in-law Capito now saw an opportunity to settle an old score and stood up in the Senate and leveled accusations against Publius Thrasea Paetus, the dour, serious Stoic who had for many years been one of the most highly influential members of the House. Early in Nero’s reign, Thrasea had impeached Capito in the Senate for extortion while serving in Cilicia. Thrasea had succeeded in having Capito convicted, after which the Stoic had him removed from the Senatorial Order as punishment. Several years later, Capito had been restored to the Senate through Tigellinus’ influence, but Capito had never forgotten that Thrasea had been responsible for his conviction.

  Capito knew that Thrasea had never liked Nero and that the feeling was mutual. Thrasea had walked out of the Senate when it was debating Nero’s treason charges against Agrippina the Younger in AD 59, after Agrippina’s murder at Baiae, refusing to participate in her condemnation. Nor had Thrasea ever sponsored the Juvenile Games, long a passion of Nero’s, which was expected of former consuls. Thrasea had led the Senate in reducing the sentence of Nero’s slanderer Sosianus. Moreover, the senator had failed to attend the House session that had decreed divine honors to the empress Poppaea, and neither had he attended her funeral. Even though he was one of the fifteen priests, the Quindecimviri, in recent times Thrasea had failed to attend the January 1 recitation of the oath of allegiance and public prayers for the emperor on the Capitol, and never had he offered a public sacrifice for the safety of the emperor as other priests made a habit of doing.

  Thrasea’s feelings toward the emperor could not have been more plain, just as Nero could not be blamed for disliking this man who disrespected him so obviously and so publicly, and to whom so many other senators looked for their lead. Capito, then, was tilling fertile ground at the Palatium when he began his campaign against Thrasea by writing a letter to the emperor, condemning the man.

  By AD 66, Thrasea had not appeared in the Senate for three years. Throughout that time, he had kept out of the limelight and out of all political affairs, only concerning himself with his personal business and that of his clients. No longer going to the theater, attending the games, or officiating at temples, Thrasea had been receiving visitors in his famously beautiful gardens at Rome. After listing the numerous examples of Thrasea’s brazenly insulting behavior toward the emperor, Capito was able to turn Thrasea’s recent absence from public life against him. Capito pointed out that while Thrasea had refrained from taking his seat in the House to vote down the convicted traitors Vetus and Silanus, in times past he had made a point of voting on even the most ordinary of motions.

  Tigellinus’ son-in-law likened the schism between Thrasea and the emperor to a state of war. Capito told Nero, “He is the only man who doesn’t care for your safety or doesn’t honor your accomplishments.” He accused Thrasea of being the leader and the adviser of a group that wanted to change Rome’s system of government. “They make a show of freedom,” Capito said, “to overturn the empire. Should they destroy it, they will assault freedom itself.” Capito urged the emperor not to write to the Senate to express his views on Thrasea, but to let the House debate his conduct and settle his fate.6

  At this same time, another prosecution was about to be launched in the Senate, against yet another leading man. This was directed against the former consul Barea Soranus. As governor of Asia in AD 64, Soranus had made himself unpopular with the Palatium that year by not punishing locals who had resisted the efforts of the emperor’s commissioners sent to remove gold and silver statues and valuable paintings from temples at the city of Pergamos for Rome’s Great Fire relief fund. Soranus, apparently a native of Asia, now stood accused of secretly supporting Rubellius Plautus when Plautus was living in self-imposed exile in the province, and with having been involved in intrigues designed to lure the people of Asia into revolt in support of Plautus and against Nero.

  As Nero was considering the contents of Capito’s letter at Neapolis, word reached him that King Tiridates I of Armenia and his entourage had entered Italy from the northeast. For close to nine months, Tiridates and his party, which included numerous members of the Parthian royal family, had been making their way overland from Armenia. The king’s personal escort included three thousand Parthian cavalry—the Parthian army was primarily made up of mounted troops, both horse archers and heavily armored cataphracts. They were accompanied by numerous Roman mounted troops, among them Mazacian cavalry from Mauritania in northwest Africa. Tiridates was now on the last leg of his journey to Rome, to take part in the planned ceremony during which he would swear allegiance to Nero, and when Nero would officially bestow the kingship of Armenia on Tiridates. Arrangements had long been in the works for this event.

  Nero now issued instructions for a two-horse carriage and Praetorian cavalry to be sent to convey to Neapolis the king and his wife, who had ridden all the way from Armenia on horseback. And, as he ensured that every detail of the official welcome for the king was being finalized, Nero also set down a date in April for a meeting of the Senate to debate the fates of Thrasea and Soranus. The hearing of charges against the pair would coincide with King Tiridates’ arrival at Rome.

  XX

  THE CROWNING OF A KING

  Down the highway from the Picenum district in eastern Italy came the vast cavalcade of King Tiridates I of Armenia and its Roman escort. “Their progress all the way from the Euphrates [River] was like a triumphal procession,” Cassius Dio would write, likening the royal cavalcade to the parade that followed a Roman general when he celebrated a Triumph through the streets of Rome. All along its route from Parthia, the vast caravan of horses, carts, and pedestrians had been welcomed at every Roman city through which it passed. There were bright decorations, garlands of flowers decking official buildings, and crowds “who shouted many compliments” to the passing king.1

  Parthian-born Tiridates was the brother of Pacorus, king of Media, the northern neighbor of Parthia. More importantly, Tiridates was also the brother of Vologases, king of Parthia, that eastern empire that had been Rome’s most implacable enemy for centuries. One of Rome’s greatest defeats had been suffered at the hands of the Parthians, when the triumvir Marcus Crassus had in 53 BC perished and forty thousand of his legionaries had been killed or captured in a running battle at Carrhae, in today’s Turkey. For a Parthian prince to travel to Rome to bow down to the emperor of Rome was unheard-of, but here was Tiridates embarking on just such an exercise.

  The credit was due to Roman general Corbulo and Roman force of arms, which had twice humiliated Parthian forces since AD 62. The very presence of Corbulo in the east threatened Roman invasion of Parthia, and the Parthians clearly dreaded such a prospect. Yet, while the Parthians considered Corbulo a great general, their respect was chiefly reserved for the man who had appointed him and sent him to the east, his sovereign lord Nero Caesar.

  Tiridates arrived at Neapolis with his wife, who all through their journey had worn a golden helmet with a visor that covered her face in place of a veil, “so as not to defy the traditions of her country by letting her face be seen,” said Dio.2 The king was met by Palatium freedmen who, noticing that he wore a dagger on his belt, informed him that he could not wear that when he met the emperor—no armed man apart from his bodyguards was allowed to approach Nero. When Tiridates refused to remove his dagger, a compromise was struck; the king had the dagger nailed into its sheath, so that it could be worn but not drawn.

  The day for the meeting between emperor and king arrived. Tiridates was a middle-aged man, tall and slim with a mustache and bushy beard. He wore a loose, long-sleeved tunic, trousers, sandals, and a turban. A
rich cloak, pinned at his right shoulder, hung down his back, almost reaching the ground. A belt circled his waist, and slung on his left hip was his dagger, nailed into its scabbard as agreed. He walked with the aid of a long staff. Nero, garbed in the outfit of a triumphant Roman general, sat on his curule chair of ivory and gold and beckoned Tiridates forward. Along an avenue of fully armed Praetorian troops standing stiffly at attention, the king approached. Just several feet from Nero, the king stopped. Laying aside his staff, he dropped to his knees. Crossing his arms across his chest, he bowed low, paying obeisance to the emperor of Rome. “Nero admired him for this action,” said Dio.3

  An entertainment had been arranged for the king and senior members of his party, which also included his sons and several nephews. It being the month of March, the port city of Puteoli, farther around the Bay of Naples, was staging its annual munus in honor of war god Mars. Nero’s party and the king’s party combined to move up to Puteoli, which was on the route to Rome, and halted there to enjoy the Puteoli munus. The editor of the Puteoli games was Nero’s freedman Patrobius, and it was “a most brilliant and costly affair.”4

  Patrobius’ Puetoli munus was a pageant of diverse people and ‘pleasures.’ On one day of the games, for example, in addition to the usual gladiatorial contests, only dark-skinned Ethiopians—men, women, and children—were sent into the arena to face wild beasts. Two tribunals had been set up in the stands of the Puteoli amphitheater for the king’s visit, one for Nero and his imperial party, the other, across the arena, for Tiridates and his party. By way of paying honor to the editor of the games, Tiridates shot at animals from his tribunal, using the traditional Parthian bow.