Nero
(Glyptothek München;
©**)
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But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the
propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the
conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of
the
report, Nero
fastened
the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated
for
their abominations, called 'Chrestians' by the populace.
Christus, from whom the name had its origin,
suffered the extreme penalty during the reign
of Tiberius
at the hands of one of our procurators,
Pontius
Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for
the moment,
again broke out not only in Judaea,
the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things
hideous
and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become
popular.
Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who
pleaded guilty;
then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not
so
much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.
Mockery
of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of
beasts,
they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were
doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination,
when
daylight had expired.
[unknown translator]
Commentary
Rome was destroyed by fire in July 64; Tacitus' story suggests that the
Christians were killed in the same summer. The early Christian
tradition
adds some details, such as the decapitation of Paul and the crucifixion
of Peter. There is no reason to be skeptical about these traditions,
although
it must be noted that there was a very old tradition that Paul was
executed
in Hispania (First letter of Clement 5.7).
Why did Nero blame the Christians? The answer may
be that they were
living near the place where the fire started: the eastern part of the
Circus
Maximus. It should be noted that the first Roman Christians were Jews
and
probably lived with the other Jews. (The separation of Judaism and
Christianity
probably took place in the second quarter of the second century CE.)
One
of the Jewish quarters in Rome was just east of the Circus, near the
Capena
Gate. It is described by the Roman author Juvenal as a slum area:
Now, the grove with its sacred spring and
the shrine [of
a water goddess] are rented to Jews, whose worldly goods are
no more
than a basket and some hay. [...] The wood has become the haunt of
beggars.
[Satires
3.12-16]
That there were Christians living among the Jewish proletariat, is also
suggested by the presence of a very ancient church, the SS. Nereo ed
Achilleo,
which is, in a venerably old legend, connected with Peter's last days.
Both the Capena Gate and this church are situated on the Appian Road,
which
was also connected with the last days of Peter.
So, there were Jews living near the place where
the fire started, and
there was another reason to suspect the people near the Capena Gate:
their
part of the city was not destroyed by the fire. But Nero could never
punished
the Jews of Rome: there were thousands of them. The Christians, on the
other hand, were an easy target.
Moreover, there may have been some element of
distorted truth in the
accusation, because the Christians believed that Rome would be
destroyed
during Christ's return. They must have responded enthusiastically when
they saw "Babylon" burning, and in fact, Tacitus tells us that at least
some of them pleaded guilty, i.e. admitted something that their
interlocutors
interpreted as a confession.
Their execution (in a circus on the Vatican hill,
where Nero's family
possessed a villa and a park) was a kind of comic relief to the badly
hit
Romans. There were many victims - both Tacitus and a very ancient
Christian
document, the First letter of Clement 6.1, mentions
'an immense
multitude'.
Tacitus' remark that 'they were covered with the
skins of beasts and
torn by dogs' suggests that several Christians were the unwilling
actors
in a mythological tableau vivant: the death of Actaeon, a legendary
hunter
who was devoured by his own dogs. In the First letter of
Clement,
we also read about women being tortured as if they were the
mythological
Danaids or the legendary criminal Dirce (6.2). The climax of these
cruel
shows was the mockery of the crucifixion of Christ: according to a
second-century
tradition, the Christian leader Peter was crucified upside down.
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