Did Nero start the Fire?

[ASCLEPIADES]

Speaking about Crassus, not only did he put out fires with his own private fire brigade (slaves he owned acted as 'fire-fighters'), he probably started them as well, with the intention of buying prized properties at 1/10th of their market value. He even conducted negotiations on the sale of these buildings as they were burning !!

Com'on, pal!!! You don't really expect me to post the same stuff again and again, do you?

 

You can read the answer to that in the post #5 of this same page on this same thread.

 

I hope it may be useful.

 

Cheers and good luck!

Edited July 30, 2007 by ASCLEPIADES

[M. Porcius Cato]

"fuere qui adnotarent XIIII Kal. Sextiles principium incendii huius ortum, quo et Seneones captam urbem inflammaverint"

 

Some modern sources state the 18 of July

 

Since XIIII isn't 18, I wonder: did Romans count market days only? Apologies for the digression.

 

(My sketchy source was This Day in Ancient History.)

[Octavia]

I believe I heard in a bio about Nero, that the fire started on July 19. It's good that he went back and tried to relieve the citizens, but the awful thing is, that he built his own palace that was larger than the other and had a statue of himself! He shouldn't have blamed the Christians either! A horrible and wicked act!

[ASCLEPIADES]

"fuere qui adnotarent XIIII Kal. Sextiles principium incendii huius ortum, quo et Seneones captam urbem inflammaverint"

Since XIIII isn't 18, I wonder: did Romans count market days only? Apologies for the digression.

Salve, guys!

 

Kalendas, Nones and Ides were the only named days of each month. Kalendas is always the 1st day.

 

Roman computation of other days was prospective (numbered to the next named date) and inclusive (the count includes the dated day). This last characteristic is probably the origin of the confusion between 18 and 19.

 

Sextilis is the name of the month("the 6th"). As the calendar was named before the Decemvir reform, his month count began in our March; then, his Sextilis is our August. (The 11th and 12th months are November and December for the same reason).

 

"XIII Kal. Sextiles" is then 14 days before August 1 (inclusive), or July 19 (if you don't include the day, you wrongly get 18).

 

BTW, July 19 of 64 was Thursday by our system.

 

Cheers and good luck

Edited July 31, 2007 by ASCLEPIADES

[caldrail]

I believe I heard in a bio about Nero, that the fire started on July 19. It's good that he went back and tried to relieve the citizens, but the awful thing is, that he built his own palace that was larger than the other and had a statue of himself! He shouldn't have blamed the Christians either! A horrible and wicked act!

Well, despite his 'rock star' lifestyle, Nero wasn't a pleasant personality. The christians got a rough deal but then you have to realise the nature of their faith lent itself to persecution. They were divided amongst small secretive cults, all worshipping this judaean god (and not the emperor!), whose practises were rumoured to be cannabalism and drinking blood etc... All very disturbing to sane roman ears. There is of course this possibility that a few disaffected jews/christians did in fact commit an ancient act of terrorism that night as their way of striking back at the 'Seven Headed Whore of Babylon' (The seven hills of Rome?) but there's no definitive answer.

 

Nero helped relief efforts out of duty to his citizens. He had a melodramatic side to his character and no doubt felt he should do something - 'My people need me!', and his self importance would never allow him to sit back and allow someone else to gain political influence by doing all the rescue wotk while he sent a message of sympathy from Antium where he partied with friends!

 

He really felt threatened by the public mood didn't he? Such was the opinion of the plebs that he found a scapegoat - and that sort of thing is definitely within Nero's character.

[Octavia]

So basically, he wanted someone to blame to take the heat off him! Very wicked! I wonder, if Nero was ever a good charictor?

[caldrail]

Only in the public eye. His 'image' was everything in roman politics.

[Octavia]

Everyone is nice when it comes to politics. I'd have to research Nero's childhood and see what kind of charictor he was then.

[caldrail]

Very subdued I think you'll find. Nero was kept in place by his mother, a very strong willed woman who wanted Nero as an obedient son for political purposes. If you notice, Nero's early reign is largely a growth of his independence from her. He consorted with a greek slave-woman, Acte, whom Agrippina loathed. He wandered about the city at night with his jack-the-lad mates, beating up passers-by and womanising, just for kicks. It was almost a teenage rebellion against his strict public life, a growing sense of his increasing self confidence, which was always a little shakey in the early half of his reign and the cause of his panic when the senate turned against him. Nero has this image of wanting the bright lights, to be adored by the public, a man whose childhood had probably seen little love or happiness.

[Maty]

I seem to remember that Nero also passed some very sensible legislation to make buildings less inflammable, but in the rush to rebuild Rome a lot of this got ignored. Roman political insults were a major art form, in which one routinely called one's enemies the worst names you could think of. 'Parricide' was one, and another was 'incendiary'. It seems every bad hat Cicero ever had it in for (for example) nursed a secret ambition to turn Rome to ashes. Given that Nero was, um, less than popular, the incendiary label was stuck on him as a matter of course. The only reasons it has particularly stuck were the excesses of the golden house, and that inspired lie about him declaiming to music whilst the city burned. (Which let's face it, whether or not he started the fire, one can easily imagine him doing.)

[Ursus]

Nero didn't start the fire. It was always burning since the world was turning.

 

This has been an Elton John moment. We now return you to your regular thread discussion.

[caldrail]

I seem to remember that Nero also passed some very sensible legislation to make buildings less inflammable, but in the rush to rebuild Rome a lot of this got ignored. Roman political insults were a major art form, in which one routinely called one's enemies the worst names you could think of. 'Parricide' was one, and another was 'incendiary'. It seems every bad hat Cicero ever had it in for (for example) nursed a secret ambition to turn Rome to ashes. Given that Nero was, um, less than popular, the incendiary label was stuck on him as a matter of course. The only reasons it has particularly stuck were the excesses of the golden house, and that inspired lie about him declaiming to music whilst the city burned. (Which let's face it, whether or not he started the fire, one can easily imagine him doing.)

 

 

The trouble with Nero's reign is there was so much skullduggery going on and therefore its none too clear who set the flames. Actually, the fire started accidentially, I'm sure of that. If Nero was guilty, his building regulations to prevent fire are perfectly understandable since having burned Rome to the ground, he didn't want anyone else doing the same to 'his' Rome, the Colonia Neropolis. The great fire was an extensive disaster - lets remember that ten out of fourteen districts were razed. The fire wasn't one big conflagration either - the fire started again on the estate of Tigellinus, Nero's advisor. A revenge burning? Whilst its nonsense that he fiddled while Rome burned - he did after all rush back from Antium and organise relief efforts - there is a likeliehood that he sang briefly when viewing the flames from a tall viewpoint as related in the story, and that I agree is well within Nero's melodramatic character. A suspicious person might believe that Nero arranged for the fire to start and then to have him rush back from Antium to organise relief efforts. That too is within Nero's somewhat scurrilous character. The Great Fire of AD64 to my mind is the result of a series of people attempting to utilise a fire that occured accidentially, as so many did in the tinderbox that was Rome. What we'd all like to know is who, but since the men responsible weren't going to stand up and admit it, we can only speculate.

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve!

 

Here comes Juvenal Satyres (Book I, Satyre III), another reference to fire risk and building's height:

 

"vivendum est illic ubi nulla incendia, nulli nocte metus. iam poscit aquam, iam frivola transfert. calegon, tabulata tibi iam tertia fumant tu nescis; nam si gradibus trepidatur ab imis, ultimus ardebit quem tegula sola tuetur a pluvia, molles ubi reddunt ova columbae... nil habuit Codrus, quis enim negat? et tamen illud perdidit infelix totum nihil. ultimus autem

aerumnae est cumulus, quod nudum et frusta rogantem nemo cibo, nemo hospitio tectoque iuvabit."

 

"No, no, I must live where there are no fires, no nightly alarms. calegon below is already shouting for water and shifting his chattels; smoke is pouring out of your third-floor attic, but you know nothing of it; for if the alarm begins in the ground-floor, the last man to burn will be he who has nothing to shelter him from the rain but the tiles, where the gentle doves lay their eggs...Poor Codrus had nothing, it is true: but he lost that nothing, which was his all; and the last straw in his heap of misery is this, that though he is destitute and begging for a bite, no one will help him with a meal, no one offer him lodging or shelter."

 

Comic or tragic? Or both?

[Octavia]

Thanks for posting that reference. As for the fire, we'll never know who really started it, however, since Rome hd fires a lot, it's probably the case that the fire started from the heat and other things.