The basic story:

Early in the morning on July 19^th, 64AD, a fire started in the shops at the southeast corner of the Circus Maximus, adjacent to the Palatine and Caelian Hills.  Strong winds fanned the flames, and since the shops contained ‘merchandise of a combustable nature” (Tacitus, p. 356), the fire spread rapidly, first engulfing the Circus, moving across the flat and low areas of Rome from there, and then heading up hills and down again. The fire spread so quickly, the citizens and vigiles (firemen) were unable to stop its progress.  The fire then burned for 6 days, when a large firebreak of demolished buildings seemed to stop it. Despite this, it reignited the next day, and burned for a further three days in the more open areas of the city before it burned out, its progress and damage checked by a lack of fuel.

By the time the fire was well and truly extinguished, 3 districts of Rome had burned to the ground; 7 were heavily damaged, and only 4 of the 14 districts of Rome survived unscathed.  A few of the major buildings destroyed by the fire included:  the Temple of Jupiter Stator; the Temple of the Vestal Virgins, home of the sacred fire of Rome; Nero’s palace, the Domus Transitoria; and most if not all of the other important buildings of the Forum.  In addition, countless homes burned, leaving both rich and poor homeless.

Why was the fire so destructive?

Structurally, Rome was a fire-trap, and fires were very common there. The Great Fire did so much damage, in part, because Rome had no building codes. Most of the poor and middle class residents lived in insulae, which were apartment buildings constructed primarily of wood.  The richer inhabitants of the city lived in homes made of brick, marble and wood, full of wooden furniture and flammable decorations. Both types of structures burned readily and easily.

Adding to the danger, Rome was unplanned, unlike most of the other cities in the Roman Empire.  Instead of an organized, structured street layout, the majority of Romans lived in and around chaotic, winding narrow dark alleys and streets.  It is true that Augustus ‘found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble,’ but that was just in the public places where it was important to impress diplomats.  Augustus ‘found’ the slums and many non-Imperial parts of Rome poorly constructed out of wood, and he pretty much left them that way, as did the emperors who followed him. With the ready availability of fuel for fire, and the nature of its street layout, Rome was a disaster waiting to happen, particularly since the Roman ‘fire brigade’ was inadequate for the job.

There were only 7000 vigiles charged with putting out fires in Rome, which was home to more than one million people in 64AD. (Secrets of the Dead).  These 7000 men used water in buckets to put out fires, helped, one would imagine, by Roman residents, but they could not cope with either the Great Fire’s speed, nor with its heat.  Archaeological excavations at the level of the Great Fire along the Roman Triumphal Way uncovered melted iron nails, bronze tablets shattered by heat, and melted limestone and marble, indicating the fire burned at a temperature of upwards of 1800° F. (Secrets of the Dead).  It also took a considerable effort for the vigiles to determine where to put a firebreak to stop the flames, and then the buildings in the way had to be destroyed by hand, which took precious time.

Based on these facts, it’s a miracle the entire city didn’t burn to the ground.

So who did it?

Possible culprit #1: Nero

Both Suetonius and Cassius Dio blame Nero for the deed, while Tacitus hedges his bets, claiming the sources for Nero’s involvement are “unclear.” But, Tacitus mentions that there were numerous people throwing torches into homes and preventing fire-fighting efforts, claiming to be ‘under orders’, but he doesn’t say whose orders they followed. (Tacitus p. 356-7).  Most modern scholars, along with Cassius Dio and Suetonius, believe the orders probably came from Nero, or his agents.

Those who blame Nero for the fire also cite his desire to remake Rome with a grand building scheme - calling the ‘new’ city Neropolis - a scheme the senators thwarted. (Secrets of the Dead). Much of what burned to the ground in 64AD consisted of the homes of aristocrats opposed to Nero’s building plans before the fire.  Coincidence? After the fire, Nero confiscated the heart of the city to build his Domus Aurea and its surrounding gardens, displacing those senators from their homes permanently.

Nero’s rebuilding of the city made it safer, however.  The area of Rome not occupied by Nero’s extravagant palace had: “rows of streets properly surveyed, spacious thoroughfares, buildings with height limits, and open areas.” Nero even specified that the reconstructed buildings needed to be free of wooden beams and reinforced with stone. (Tacitus p. 358-9), to prevent further fires.

Then there are the accusations that Nero ‘fiddled while Rome burned’, or at least performed a song in a private performance about the destruction of Troy at the same time as the fire.  In fact, Nero was in Antium, not in Rome, when the fire started, and he only returned to Rome when told his palace was endangered.  Despite that, it is true Nero claimed to envy Priam watching the burning of Troy (Champlin p. 182), and he did perform on stage as an actor in tragic roles and as a singer with a lyre, which makes the accusation of his ‘thespian indifference’ all the more believable, even if the exact details of the instrument played are anachronistic in the modern version.

Possible Culprit #2: The Christians

As a small, weird (to the Romans, anyway) religious sect from a far-off, difficult province, the Christians were an easy and convenient scapegoat for the 64AD fire.  “These people were hated for their shameful offenses,” Tacitus tells us, and: “a huge number were found guilty - more because of their hatred of mankind than because they were arsonists.” (Tacitus p. 359-360.)

Professor Gerhard Baudy of the University of Konstanz in Germany believes the Christians could have had a motive, at least. He claims that in the slums of Rome, Christians circulated vengeful texts predicting that a raging inferno would reduce the city to ashes. "In all of these oracles, the destruction of Rome by fire is prophesied.  That is the constant theme: Rome must burn. This was the long-desired objective of all the people who felt subjugated by Rome."(www.pbs.org…).  The Bible's Book of Revelation, written 30 years after the fire, talks about the seven headed Whore of Babylon, with the heads being “seven mountains”(Revelation 17, 8-10), and Rome was a city famous for seven hills.  At the very least, the Christians didn’t like Rome much, equating Rome with evil.  Based on this evidence, Baudy thinks Christians could have started the fire, or helped it spread, as a signal to other Christians of the end of Roman dominance over them. (Secrets of the Dead).

Nero, for his part, took full advantage of punishing the Christian ‘arsonists’, feeding them to wild beasts and using them as crucified human torches at his banquets (Tacitus, p. 360).  The traditional punishment for arson from the time of the Early Republic was to be burned alive - Nero just upped the cruelty factor on the usual penalty, and set a horrific persecution standard for Christians not equaled by other emperors until Diocletian.

Possible Culprit #3:  No one

Those who argue that the Great Fire was an unfortunate, terrible accident refute the ancient sources with the following points, (all taken from Secrets of the Dead):

1.  The fire started in a slum, or at least in a poor part of Rome, and Nero’s greatest supporters were the poor, so he’d be an idiot to burn them out of their homes;

2.  The fire started on the night of a full moon - hardly the optimum time for committing arson since the arsonists could be identified by moonlight;

3.  Nero’s own palace burned, and it seems unlikely he’d set a fire to burn down his own house;

4.  Nero went to great lengths to help the refugees of the fire, by opening public buildings and his own private gardens for them to stay in, as well as providing food and temporary shelters for them;

5.  Nero took personal control of the fire brigade, and if he wanted Rome to burn, he wouldn’t have bothered to try to stop the fire; and,

6.  Rome suffered from frequent accidental fires, and this was one of them.

As to the truth?  I leave it up to you, Skarosians.

Works Cited

Bible.  New International Version. 1993. Nick Hengeveld. 10 July 2009 .

Champlin, Edward. Nero. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 2003.

“Clues and Evidence”  Secrets of the Dead. www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/case_rome/clues.html. July 10^th, 2009.

Halliley, Mark, dir. "The Great Fire of Rome." Secrets of the Dead. PBS. Thirteen/WNET New York, New York. 2002.

Tacitus.  The Annals: The Reigns of Tiberius, Claudius and Nero, translated by J. C. Yardley.  Oxford’s World Classics Oxford University Press, USA. 2008.

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