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

by Dando-Collins, Stephen

  For the Caspian Gates operation, too, Nero ordered the formation of a new legion. The first entirely new Roman legion raised in a century, this unit would also be the first legion recruited in Italy south of the Po River since the days of Julius Caesar. Both aspects were reflected by the unit’s title, Legio I Italica, literally, the first Italian legion. It was Augustus who had initiated the practice of raising all recruits for the legions in the provinces, including Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy), with only the Praetorian Cohorts enlisting their recruits among Italians south of the Po. Nero changed this with his latest directive.

  This summer of AD 66, conquisitors, recruiting officers, would bustle around southern Italy, consulting with local magistrates as they compiled lists of potential conscripts with an average age of twenty, to fill the ranks of Nero’s new 1st Italica Legion. Simultaneously, orders went out for the manufacture of arms and equipment for 5,245 men. By Nero’s decree, every man recruited into the 1st Italica would have to be a minimum of six Roman feet tall—around five feet ten inches in today’s measurement. This was tall by the standards of the day, with legionaries at that time averaging some five feet four inches in modern terms. Under Nero’s decree, too, the troops of his new 1st Italica Legion would be equipped as spearmen. In the ancient Greek fashion, they would carry spears thirteen feet long, and in action they would employ the battle formations and tactics of the Greek phalanx of centuries past. Nero nicknamed his new unit “the Phalanx of Alexander the Great.”

  In Alexander’s army, the cavalry had done most of the hard work in battle, supported by archers, slingers, and javelin men. The nine thousand men of Alexander’s phalanx had been his elite infantry troops, like Napoleon Bonaparte’s Imperial Guard in more recent times. Held in reserve, the phalanx was thrown into a battle at a critical point as required, driving all before it at the point of its spears. It was Nero’s intent that his phalanx would serve a similar purpose, bristling with spears and acting like a giant porcupine. Once the men of the 1st Italica were conscripted, they would be sent to the Adriatic naval base of Ravenna in the province of Cisalpine Gaul to undergo their training and to be ready for service the following year.

  Even the centurions transferred from other legions to positions of command with the 1st Italica Legion would have to learn new skills, for the use of the long spear was alien to Roman legionaries, who were accustomed to throwing their six-or seven-foot-long javelins in the first stage of battle and then drawing their swords and moving in for close combat. For the bristling phalanx to work, the long spear must never leave the soldier’s hands. Given the boar as its unit symbol, the 1st Italica Legion would be officially commissioned over the winter of AD 66-67, taking the zodiacal sign of Capricorn as its birth emblem.

  With preparations for Nero’s grand military operations in the works, spies were sent ahead into the regions that were to be penetrated by the two expeditions. According to Dio, Nero was hoping that the barbarians “would submit to him of their own accord” without the need of battles, because he was Nero, emperor of Rome.1 Now, Nero felt able to indulge his artistic side; he would stay in Greece for the year it took to prepare the army for the Ethiopian and Caspian Gates operations, and he would compete in the poetry and singing competitions and chariot races of the Panhellenic Games as he had long dreamed of doing. It was still spring when he set off for Greece with a vast entourage.

  Four main games were held in Greece, and many smaller ones in imitation of them. The Olympic Games, held every four years at Olympia, are the most famous today, but the Pythian Games at Delphi were equally famous in ancient times, if not more so. The Nemean and Isthmian Games, held every two years, were almost as prestigious as the others. Under the normal Greek games calendar, both the Nemean and the Isthmian competitions were held on the first and third years following the Olympic Games, with the Pythian Games held in between, two years before and after the Olympics.

  Suetonius would write that to suit his traveling schedule, Nero had the games’ timetable altered. It appears that with the Olympic Games due to be staged that year of AD 66, and with the Isthmian Games running in the summer of AD 67 and the Nemean Games over the winter of AD 67-68, Nero probably rescheduled the Pythian Games ordinarily set down for AD 68, bringing them forward to the spring of AD 67. All these events except the Olympic Games always included artistic as well as physical and equestrian contests; Nero commanded that a singing competition now also be added to the Olympic events.

  As the emperor set off for Greece, he was accompanied by many of his officials and leading senators. Tigellinus went with him. Nymphidius was left in charge of those Praetorian Cohorts that remained at the capital. Vespasian was also a member of the imperial party. He took along his son Titus, who had recently returned to Rome after several years’ military service in Britain. One of many other senators in the party was a Gaul by the name of Gaius Julius Vindex.

  To the horror of the Roman establishment, the emperor left the freedman Helius in charge to rule at Rome in Nero’s stead while he was away. Helius, whom Nero had inherited from the staff of his predecessor Claudius and whom he trusted above all others, was made senior to the consuls. Nero endowed Helius with the same powers that he himself wielded, “so that he could confiscate, banish, or put to death ordinary citizens, Equestrians, and senators alike, even before notifying Nero.”2

  To noble-born Romans, this was appalling. But, to Nero, rather than risk putting supreme power into the hands of senators who might come to like it and refuse to relinquish it, this was a purely pragmatic step. Snobby Dio would complain about Nero and Helius, “I am unable to say which of them was the worse. In most respects they behaved entirely alike. The one point of difference was that the descendant of Augustus was emulating lyre players and tragedians, whereas the freedman of Claudius was emulating Caesars.”3

  “He sailed off hastily,” said Suetonius of Nero’s departure for Achaia, “and as soon as he arrived at Cassiope gave his first song recital in front of the altar of Jupiter Cassius, after which he did the round of the contests.” The port of Cassiope was the principal town on the Albanian side of the island of Corfu, and the Temple of Jupiter there was many centuries old. “So captivated was he by the rhythmic applause of a crowd of Alexandrians from a fleet that had just put in, he sent to Alexandria for more.”4

  Putting several young Equestrians in charge of these applauders, whom he dubbed “the Augustans,” and giving them forty thousand sesterces for each performance, Nero recruited five thousand youths in total. The Augustans were like a giant cheerleading squad for Nero. With the special outfits that were created for them, and their bushy hair, “it was easy to recognize them,” said Suetonius. They were divided into three groups. The Bees made a loud humming noise. The Roof-tiles clapped with hollowed hands. The Bricks clapped flat-handed. These Augustans would subsequently appear wherever Nero appeared.5

  His confidence sky-high now, Nero prepared to enter the Greek games. All of them.

  XXIII

  THE APOSTLES AND THE JEWISH REVOLT

  While Nero was still entertaining King Tiridates at Rome in the early spring of AD 66, Joseph bar Matthias, the Jewish rabbi, having obtained the release of three fellow priests from Nero, arrived back in Jerusalem. It was just after the year’s Passover festival. Joseph found Jerusalem in turmoil.

  “There were a great many with high hopes of a revolt from the Romans,” he would recall. “They were already in possession of Antonia, which was the citadel.”1 Weeks earlier, the Roman procurator of Judea, Gessius Florus, had come up to Jerusalem from the Roman capital of Judea, Caesarea, to be present for the Passover, when Jerusalem’s population was swelled well past a million people by Jewish pilgrims from throughout the ancient world—Josephus put the number of pilgrims one year at three million. Even though Florus had brought extra troops with him to augment the Roman garrison at Jerusalem during the Passover, Zealot rebels had stage-managed such unrest in the city that Florus, in fear for his own life, had n
egotiated what he thought would be an end to the troubles.

  In return for leaving a single cohort of Roman troops at the city and agreeing that these troops would remain in their garrisons and not mix with the people, Florus received a guarantee from the Jewish priests of the Great Sanhedrin that there would be no more trouble. Florus and the majority of his infantry and all his cavalry had then marched back down to Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast, leaving 480 men, apparently from the 3rd Gallica Legion, at Jerusalem. Of those legionaries, 240 were stationed in the Palace of Herod and the rest in the Antonia Fortress—built by Herod the Great and named in honor of his good friend Mark Antony.

  Within days, the rebels, against the advice of the Sanhedrin, had taken up arms and launched attacks on the Antonia Fortress and Herod’s palace. The Antonia was a vast citadel and much too large for just 240 troops to defend against thousands of attackers. Within days, the rebels had overrun the fortress and massacred all the legionaries inside. It was at this point that Joseph had arrived back home. “I therefore tried to put a stop to these troublemakers,” Joseph wrote.2 Having been at Rome for the past several years and seen the vast resources that the Romans could draw on to rebuild their city from rubble in just a year following the Great Fire, he dreaded what they could do against a rebellious Jewish nation.

  Joseph said that he told the rebels “that they were inferior to the Romans not only in military skill but also in good fortune,” and that they would only bring “the most terrible disasters down on their country, on their families, and on themselves. And I said this with vehement exhortation, because I could foresee that the outcome of such a war would be most unfortunate for us. But I could not persuade them. For the madness of desperate men was much too strong for me.”3

  The young rabbi realized that “by often repeating these things I would incur their hatred and their suspicion, as if I were on our enemy’s side, and would run the risk of being seized by them and killed.”4 So, he joined the priests who barricaded themselves inside the Temple against the rebels. The Zealots, meanwhile, targeted all their efforts on seizing the Palace of Herod. The remaining 240 legionaries were soon reinforced by troops sent by Herod Agrippa II, tetrarch of Trachonitis and Batanaea, a Roman ally. But, after heavy fighting, Agrippa’s troops defected to the side of the rebels.

  The legionaries, who had retreated to the palace’s towers, were now convinced to surrender with the promise that once they gave up their weapons, they would be permitted to leave. As soon as the Roman troops had disarmed, they were butchered by the rebel Jews. Only the centurion in charge was spared, after he vowed to convert to Judaism. At this same time, another party of Zealots was tricking its way into the old Herodian fortress atop the cliffs at remote Masada, beside the Dead Sea. There, the Roman cohort of the garrison was also massacred.

  Nothing that Joseph could say now could prevent history from taking its course. The Jewish Revolt had begun, a thousand Roman legionaries had been killed, and Rome would want its revenge. Joseph was now one of three Jewish priests sent to Galilee to coordinate Jewish resistance there, not only to defend against a Roman military reply, but also to guard the Jewish communities against reprisals from the non-Jewish peoples of Judea, who began massacring their Jewish neighbors on the news of the uprising in Jerusalem. Like it or not, thirty-year-old Joseph had just become a general of the rebel Jewish army. He and his colleagues would arm and train tens of thousands of Jewish partisans, knowing that sooner or later, the Roman war machine would have to grind into gear against them.

  In May, with Joseph in Galilee building his forces and competing with Zealots for control in the area, while expecting a Roman counteroffensive to be launched from Syria any day, Nero was in Greece attending the Olympic Games and about to compete in them. According to Christian legend, around this same time, two Jews were arrested in Rome. This would have been on the orders of Helius, the freedman left in charge at Rome by Nero during his absence.

  One of these Jews was a noncitizen named Simeon of Galilee, who would become known among Christians as the Apostle Peter. Formerly a successful fisherman from Capernaum in Galilee, Simeon, called Simon by the Romans, had become the chief lieutenant of the Jewish preacher whom his Greek-speaking followers called Jesus of Nazareth, or the Christos, or anointed one. The other Jew was Paul of Tarsus, who had made his promised return to Rome. No Roman or Greek historian made any mention of these two Christian apostles, let alone described their time at Rome. All that is known of Peter and Paul at Rome comes from Christian tradition, which is based on later Christian writing.

  According to that tradition, Peter and Paul had been preaching in Rome and were arrested and thrown into the Tullianum, or the Tullian Keep, the city prison at Rome, which later became known as the Mamertine Prison. This cavernous underground jail had originally been created, centuries before, as a cistern for the storage of rainwater. Converted into a prison, it consisted of two levels. The upper level was used for the incarceration of general inmates. In the lower level were kept those prisoners who had been convicted of a capital crime and were awaiting execution. It was also in this lower level that high-ranking enemy leaders captured in wartime met their deaths—strangled with a halter after being led through the streets in the Triumph of a Roman general. In this way, Gallic war leader Vercingetorix had been executed here after surrendering to Julius Caesar in 52 BC. Five years from now, one of the senior leaders of the Jewish Revolt in Judea would similarly meet his executioner in this lower chamber of the Tullianum.

  The crimes for which Peter and Paul were arrested, convicted, and condemned have never been determined. Paul, in his second letter from Rome to Timotheus, whom he had placed in charge of the Christian church at Ephesus, would complain bitterly from prison that when he stood in court to answer the latest charges against him, “no man stood with me, but all men forsook me. I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.” Paul made no mention of Peter. “Only Luke is with me.”5 Paul said that one of his companions, Demas, who had been with him when first he came to Rome six years earlier, had deserted him once Paul was arrested this second time; Demas had fled to Thessalonica in Macedonia. Two other companions had also left Rome; Crescens had gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia.

  It is likely that Paul had been arrested on the accusation of a local artisan of Greek extraction. “Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil,” Paul wrote. “The Lord reward him according to his works.” Summoning Timothy to Rome to help him, Paul warned him to be wary of Alexander, “for he has greatly withstood our words.” It seems that until he declared his Roman citizenship, Paul had been found guilty and was about to be sent to the arena to suffer the fate of convicted noncitizens, a meeting with wild beasts, for he told Timothy, “I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.”6

  Not released into the community under house arrest as he had been the last time he was in Rome, Paul was lodged in the prison in chains. Yet, he was still able to receive visitors, dictate letters to helpers, and receive gifts—he asked Timothy to bring him a cloak that he had left in Troas. Winter was approaching and the temperatures were already beginning to drop when he wrote this letter, most likely in the autumn. “Do thy diligence and come before winter,” he instructed Timothy.7

  Having escaped death in the arena in one of the several annual games in the Circus Maximus that June and July, Paul was being held in the Tullian prison while he awaited the hearing of his appeal to the emperor. The three Jewish rabbis whose freedom Joseph bar Matthias had eventually secured had spent six years in detention awaiting a hearing by the time of their release, and Paul himself had spent two years under house arrest the last time he had been at Rome. With Nero dallying in Greece and not planning to return to Rome for several years, there was every reason to expect that Paul’s wait could be a long one.

  Peter, on the other hand, was not a Roman citizen. If we accept that Peter did indeed come to Rome and was arrested and executed there—which is a basic premise of the Roman Ca
tholic Church—then as a noncitizen convicted of a capital crime, he had no right of appeal and would either be sent to the arena or be put on a cross and crucified shortly after his conviction. According to one Christian tradition, both apostles were executed within a year of each other. Another has nine months passing between their incarceration and execution. In the case of Peter, a noncitizen, such a long delay between arrest and execution is implausible. This suggests that Paul was arrested first, perhaps before Peter came to Rome, and that Peter was probably not arrested until some months later, during the winter of AD 66-67.

  Through the summer and autumn of AD 66, Paul was a lone Christian prisoner in the Tullianum at Rome, awaiting his fate.

  In Greece, Nero was competing in the Olympic Games. The news of the revolt by the Jews in Judea had reached him, but it did not concern him in the least. Just as Suetonius Paulinus, one of the consuls this year, had in AD 60-61 put down the Boudiccan revolt in Britain using his own resources as governor of the province, so the emperor expected the governor of Syria, who had four legions at his disposal, to deal with the Judean problem. Judea was a subprovince of the Roman province of Syria, and the authority of the propraetor, or imperial governor, of Syria extended over Judea and its procurator. By AD 66, that governor was Cestius Gallus. Once Procurator Florus in Caesarea had reported the Jerusalem uprising to Gallus in Antioch, the capital of Syria, the Jewish Revolt became Gallus’ problem. His expected response would be to march an army into Judea to put down the revolt.

  Nero, meanwhile, was competing in the singing contest that he insisted be added to the Olympic program. “Nero Caesar wins this contest,” the chief judge subsequently announced, “and crowns the Roman people, and the inhabited world that is his own.”8