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

former consuls executed by Domitian because they were “accused of conspiracy,” not for atheism or “drifting into Jewish ways,” as Dio wrote more than a century later. Suetonius did, however, write that Glabrio was initially exiled before being executed in exile for conspiracy. 10 As was the case in the reign of Nero, frequently a person initially exiled for conspiracy would ultimately be executed as a consequence of the original charge.
     
    Less important, perhaps, is that passages in the Annals refer to Pontius Pilatus (Pilate) as a “procurator,” a title always accorded Pilate in Christian literature. Pilate actually held the lesser rank of prefect in Judea, something that Tacitus, who had access to the official records at Rome’s Tabularium and frequently quoted from them in his Annals , should have known.
     
    After explaining that there was a widespread “sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order” from the emperor, the Annals go on:
    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 Christians by the populous. 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 Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the 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, on 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. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft in a chariot. Hence even for the criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion. For, it was not, as it was portrayed, for the public good, but to satisfy one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed. 11
     
     
     
    That “an immense multitude” was arrested is another cause to doubt that these people were Christians. Even the Christian Church acknowledges that the Christian community at Rome in AD 64 would have been quite small. The Apostle Paul, in his letters, usually listed the many leading Christians of the city or town where he was staying; in his letters from Rome of AD 60-62, he named not a single local Christian. In a letter apparently written in AD 66, while he was incarcerated at Rome for the second time, he specifically named just three male and one female Christians living at Rome; from their names, those four appear to have been noncitizens, probably former slaves. 12
     
    That there were indeed Christians at Rome at the time is affirmed by Acts of the Apostles, which referred to a small party of Christians coming out of the city to meet Paul at his last stop outside Rome while on his way to the capital in the spring of AD 60. 13 But for Tacitus to describe this small community as a “class” at Rome does not ring true. The observation that some of these people were executed on crosses by Nero following the Great Fire tells us not that they were Christians, but that they were not Roman citizens. Crucifixion was the regular method of execution for noncitizens convicted of a crime throughout the Roman empire, for centuries before and after the crucifixion of Christ. The use of crosses for these particular prisoners’ executions was not a deliberate allusion to, or a mockery of, Christianity. It