Burning of Rome (eBook)

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Ancient Rome forged one of the greatest and most influential empires in history, and books written by and about them continue to be popular all over the world over 1500 years after its collapse. Palatine Press is a digital publishing company that has reproduced the greatest works ever written by Romans, from the poetry of Virgil to the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, as well as histories of Rome written by historians like Edward Gibbon.

THE reigning successor of the great Augustus, the master of some forty legions, the ruler of the Roman world, was in council. But his council was unlike as possible to the assembly which one might have thought he would have gathered together to deliberate on matters that concerned the happiness, it might almost be said, of mankind. Here were no veteran generals who had guarded the frontiers of the Empire, and seen the barbarians of the East and of the West recoil before the victorious eagles of Rome; no Governor of provinces, skilled in the arts of peace; no financiers, practised in increasing the amount of the revenue without aggravating the burdens that the tax-payers consciously felt; no philosophers to contribute their theoretical wisdom; no men of business to give their master the benefit of their practical advice. Nero had such men at his call, but he preferred, and not perhaps without reason, to confide his schemes to very different advisers. There were three persons in the Imperial Chamber; or four, if we are to reckon the page, a lad of singular beauty of form and feature, but a deaf mute, who stood by the Emperor’s couch, clad in a gold-edged scarlet tunic, and holding an ivory-handled fan of peacock’s feathers, which he waved with a gentle motion.

Let me begin my description of the Imperial Cabinet, for such it really was, with a portrait of Nero himself.

The Emperor showed to considerable advantage in the position which he happened to be occupying at the time. The chief defects of his figure, the corpulence which his excessive indulgence in the pleasures of the table had already, in spite of his youth, increased to serious proportions, and the unsightly thinness of his lower limbs, were not brought into prominence. His face, as far as beauty was concerned, was not unworthy of an Emperor, but as the biographer of the Cæsars says, it was “handsome rather than attractive.” The features were regular and even beautiful in their outlines, but they wanted, as indeed it could not be but that they should want, the grace and charm in which the beauty of the man’s nature shines forth. The complexion, originally fair, was flushed with intemperance. There were signs here and there of what would soon become disfiguring blotches. The large eyes that in childhood and boyhood had been singularly clear and limpid were now somewhat dull and dim. The hair was of the yellow hue that was particularly pleasing to an Italian eye, accustomed, for the most part, to black and the darker shades of brown. Nero was particularly proud of its color, so much so indeed, that, greatly to the disgust of more old-fashioned Romans, he wore it in braids. On the whole his appearance, though not without a certain comeliness and even dignity, was forbidding and sinister. No one that saw him could give him credit for any kindness of heart or even good nature. His cheeks were heavy, his chin square, his lips curiously thin. Not less repulsive was the short bull neck. At the moment of which I am writing his face wore as pleasing an expression as it was capable of assuming. He was in high spirits and full of a pleased excitement. We shall soon see the cause that had so exhilarated him.

Next to the Emperor, by right of precedence, must naturally come the Empress, for it was to this rank that the adventuress Poppæa had now succeeded in raising herself. Her first husband had been one of the two commanders of the Prætorian Guard; her second, Consul and afterwards Governor of a great province, destined indeed himself to occupy for a few months the Imperial throne; her third was the heir of Augustus and Tiberius, the last of the Julian Cæsars. Older than the Emperor, for she had borne a child to her first husband more than twelve years before, she still preserved the freshness of early youth. Something of this, perhaps, was due to the extreme care which she devoted to her appearance, but more to the expression of innocence and modesty which some strange freak of nature—for never surely did a woman’s look more utterly belie her disposition—had given to her countenance. To look at her certainly at that moment, with her golden hair falling in artless ringlets over a forehead smooth as a child’s, her delicately arched lips, parted in a smile that just showed a glimpse of pearly teeth, her cheeks just tinged with a faint wild-rose blush, her large, limpid eyes, with just a touch of wonder in their depths, eyes that did not seem to harbour an evil thought, any one might have thought her as good as she was beautiful. Yet she was profligate, unscrupulous, and cruel. Her vices had always been calculating, and when a career had been opened to her ambition she let nothing stand in her way. Nero’s mother had perished because she barred the adventuress’ road to a throne, and Nero’s wife soon shared the fate of his mother.

The third member of the Council was, if it is possible to imagine it, worse than the other two. Nero began his reign amidst the high hopes of his subjects, and for a few weeks, at least, did not disappoint them, and Josephus speaks of Poppæa as a “pious” woman; but we hear nothing about Tigellinus that is not absolutely vile. Born in poverty and obscurity, he had made his way to the bad eminence in which we find him by the worst of arts. A man of mature age, for by this time he must have numbered at least fifty years, he used his greater experience to make the young Emperor even worse than his natural tendencies, and all the evil influences of despotic power, would have made him. And he was what Nero, to do him justice, never was, fiercely resentful of sarcasm and ridicule. Nero suffered the most savage lampoons on his character to be published with impunity, but no one satirized Tigellinus without suffering for his audacity.

The scene of the Council was a pleasant room in the Emperor’s seaside villa at Antium. This villa was a favourite residence with him. He had himself been born in it. Here he had welcomed with delight, extravagant, indeed, but yet not wholly beyond our sympathies, the birth of the daughter whom Poppæa had borne to him in the preceding year; here he had mourned, extravagantly again, but not without some real feeling, for the little one’s death. It was at Antium, far from the wild excitement of Rome, that he had what may be called the lucid intervals in his career of frantic crime.

The subject which now engaged his attention, and the attention of his advisers, was one that seemed of a harmless and even a laudable kind. It was nothing less than a magnificent plan for the rebuilding of Rome. All the ill-ventilated, ill-smelling passages; all the narrow, winding streets; all the ill-built and half-ruinous houses; all, in short, that was unsanitary, inconvenient, and unsightly was to be swept away; a new city with broad, regular streets and spacious promenades was to rise in its place. At last the Empire of the world would have a capital worthy of itself. The plan was substantially of Nero’s own devising. He had had, indeed, some professional assistance from builders, architects, and others, in drawing out its details, but in its main lines, certainly in its magnificent contempt for the expedient, one might almost say of the possible, it came from his own brain. And he had managed to keep it a secret from both Poppæa and Tigellinus. To them it was a real surprise, and, as they both possessed competent intelligence, however deficient in moral sense, they were able to appreciate its cleverness. Their genuine admiration, which so practised an ear as Nero’s easily distinguished from flattery, was exceedingly pleasing to the Emperor.

“Augustus,” he said, after enjoying for a time his companions’ unfeigned surprise, “said that he found a city of brick and left a city of marble. I mean to be able to boast that I left a new city altogether. Indeed, I feel that nothing short of this is worthy of me, and I thank the gods that have left for me so magnificent an opportunity.”

“And this vacant space,” asked Tigellinus, after various details had been explained by the Emperor: “What do you mean, Sire, to do with this?”

A huge blank had been left in the middle of the map, covering nearly the whole of the Palatine and Esquiline Hills.

“That is meant to be occupied by my palace and park,” said the Emperor.

The Prime Minister, if one may so describe him, could not restrain an involuntary gesture of surprise.

Nero’s face darkened with the scowl that never failed to show itself at even the slightest opposition to his will.

“Think you, then,” he cried in an angry tone, “that it is too large? The Master of Rome cannot be lodged too well.”

Tigellinus felt that it would be safer not to criticise any further. Poppæa, who, to do her justice, was never wanting in courage, now took up the discussion. The objection that she had to make was in keeping with a curious trait in her character. “Pious” she certainly was not, though Josephus saw fit so to describe her, but she was unquestionably superstitious....