Talk:Great Fire of Rome
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Nero fiddled? You mean he played the violin? No, that is an anachronism. The word "fiddle" refers to "engaging in frivolous activity,". The violin was invented centuries later. ChimpanseeWithTypewriter 14:41, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
removed:
- Some researchers now believe that the fire may have indeed been started by Christian Doomsday Cultists and that Nero may have believed himself justified in his persecution of them. It was during this era that the book of Revelations was written and there is evidence to support that other prophesies concerning the burning of Rome were widespread throughout the Empire. June 18 was one of the suggested dates for the beginning of the Apocalypse and the fire may have been started by the Christian Sect as a means of bringing about the Day of Judgment.
Some questions:
- Who are these researchers? Where did they publish this theory?
- The Book of Revelation is usually dated to the reign of Domitian, not the mid-60s.
- What evidence is there for these "other prophecies concerning the burning of Rome"?
- Who suggested June 18 as a possible date for the beginning of the apocalypse?
Furthermore, most Christians of the early 1st century were convinced that Jesus was coming back RSN, so why would any of them think they needed to take measures to hasten the apocalypse? —No-One Jones (m) 15:11, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Okay, this seems to be based on the work of one Prof. Gerhard Baudy. I couldn't find him in any (English) journals of classical studies, but he published this theory back in 1991 in a book entitled Die Brände Roms : Ein apokalyptisches Motiv in der antiken Historiographie. His thesis does not appear to have gained much currency among classical scholars (this mailing list post is the only opinion I could find), but I would see no problem with putting it in the article if it were properly contextualized and attributed. —No-One Jones (m) 21:23, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- There was recently a new found interest in this theory and PBS has hosted documentary on the subject. I also can't find anything more about the academics of this theory but suggest that it be included in the article as many scholars aren't really sure who started the fire. The theory is compelling, maybe an article on Gerhard Baudy is in order? JoeHenzi 19:54, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] Page Has been vandalized
THis page has been vandalized. I would fix it but I don't know how to revert to an earlier version.
"Who are these researchers? Where did they publish this theory?"
It was some time ago but this theory was postulated on an episode of "Secrets of the Dead". I'm looking into finding it elsewhere now.
"The Book of Revelation is usually dated to the reign of Domitian, not the mid-60s."
True. But there are other Apocryphal books similar to Revelations and doomsday type literature was popular among the Christians at the time of the Great Fire. Again this was featured on "Secrets of the Dead".
"What evidence is there for these "other prophecies concerning the burning of Rome"?"
Many instances of Apocalyptic type pamphlets have been found over much of the old Roman Empire. It would almost seem to be the junk mail of the time.
"Who suggested June 18 as a possible date for the beginning of the apocalypse?"
Many dates were mentioned, usually in conjuntion with some type of stellar phenomena. I would think that people read into these what they wanted to similar to our own Y2K scare and other recent "End of the World" scenarios.
"Furthermore, most Christians of the early 1st century were convinced that Jesus was coming back RSN, so why would any of them think they needed to take measures to hasten the apocalypse?"
Who knows? Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time.
James McCleary
[edit] related?
On August 30th 2005 as every major news organization in America was covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Bush made a trip to California to promote his prescription drug plan for senior citizens and to give a speech to American troops at a Navy base outside San Diego.
At the Navy base country singer Mark Wills presented a guitar to Bush who proceeded to strumming the instrument. [1]
- No, it's not related. Rhobite 02:45, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Copyright violation
I sure don't see the claimed copyright violation from [2] -- the text overall is substantially different, except for a few isolated phrases. CarbonCopy 14:51, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Potential Article Rewrite, New Information Provided
This article is sadly lacking in some key issues, such as any mention of Nero's relief measures during the Great Fire and his efforts to rebuild Rome thereafter. Further information is provided in a short Great Fire essay that I wrote last month. I request that anyone to comment and digest the information provided into the main article. I'd suggest replace this current article with the essay altogether as it touches on all the same issues and then some, but at the moment input may be needed. I added subtitles inside the essay body for purposes of Wikipedia for suggested subsections.
Obviously, linking is going to need to be added.
Introduction
Rome was, at the time, largely built out of cement and wood. One of its most numerous buildings were its apartment flats, which housed entire families in cramped rooms whose upper floors were made entirely of wood, and whose alleys were lined by wooden shops. Among these fire was common and expected, especially in the summer heat. Every citizen was aware of the danger, and fire brigades were organized to quell the fires that broke out in Rome almost every day.
On July 19th 64 AD, a fire started in or near the Circus Maximus -- a large stadium for chariot games and foot races that was lined by nearby flats and shops. It spread and consumed the nearby buildings, quickly growing out of control and beyond the ability of the fire brigade. According to Tacitus, "...the conflagration both broke out and instantly became so fierce and so rapid from the wind that it seized in its grasp the entire length of the circus. For here there were no houses fenced in by solid masonry, or temples surrounded by walls, or any other obstacle to interpose delay." (Annuls XV, 38) As the fire swelled, it did not stop when it reached the richer districts of Rome built of of stone and concrete rather than wood. It burned at an estimated 1100+ degrees, and its widespread ruin extended inside the great stone temples and the rich's concrete dwellings, consuming first the furnishings.
Tacitus writes that for five days Rome burned until it subsided, only to reignite and burn for another four. In the end, three districts were destroyed completely and seven damaged severely. Only a third of Rome remained untouched. He mentions that among the loses were irreplaceable Greek relics, temples of the Roman gods, a great number of public buildings, and emperor Nero's own palace (Annuls XV, 40-41).
Nero was away at Antium at the time and had not returned until the fire begun to threaten his palace, which was eventually consumed altogether. He began a rather large relief measure; he shacked citizens in the remaining public buildings and his own gardens, built temporary shelters, imported food and water, and lowered the price of food for the time being. However, by this time rumors were already beginning, and he could do little in relief that would stop the suspicions that he started the fire himself.
Nero and the Great Fire
Nero was an unpopular emperor -- he was said to be violent, often out of control, and reputedly enjoyed singing and did so, quite to the dismay of the invited, among guests. A rumor spread that had him singing of the burning of Troy as Rome was on fire. The facts of this myth are inconsistent: Tacitus had reported that the rumor was started during the Great Fire itself and that Nero was accordingly singing in his private theater, despite being in Antium at the time. Suetonius says he was watching from the Tower of Maecenas, and another source puts it at the roof of his palace. Still, these rumors quickly worked against Nero, and, along with other facts, made a wide margin of his citizens come to believe that the fire was ordered by himself for political intent or mere amusement.
Similarly, most of our generation associate the Great Fire with the image of Nero merrily playing his fiddle as Rome burns, obviously inspired out of the ancient anecdote that Nero 'fiddled while rome burned'. In truth, this is an idiom. The musical instrument was invented many centuries later; to fiddle at that time merely meant to squander needlessly away the time in vain, as is still a popular use of the word today.
Curiously, though, Nero did have motive for the destruction of Rome. A young ambitious emperor, he looked at the city that emperors centuries before him had built and wished to make the city in his own image. The senate disapproved of his plans to rebuilt Rome. He possibly burned Rome down to render these verdicts inconsequential. Either way, he capitalized greatly off of the ordeal -- his building projects to come would be more extensive than when Augustus built Rome to be a city worthy of being the world's capital.
To ease suspicions against him Nero he gave banquets for his people and made tributes to the gods, but eventually opted to use a scapegoat when other measures did not work.
Persectution of the Christians
An unpopular obscure Jewish sect at the time, the Christians, became the target for the blame. Consequentially, state-supported Christian persecution first began in Rome. In a famous and widely quoted passage, partially for being the first instance a non-Christian author has ever mentioned the origins of Christianity, Tacitus recites (Annals XV, 44):
Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women. 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 Christians 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 Pilatus, 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 centre 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. 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 on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.
Tacitus seemed convinced that the Christians were innocent of starting the fire, but guilty of 'hating the human race', as was a popular notion at the time. Christians have been around for less than 40 years with the death of their Christ dated around 33 AD, and many Romans thought that their symbolism and methods were odd and unorthodox, which is probably why their blame partially worked. Oddly, though, no other writer afterward mentioned Christians as being blamed for the Great Fire, though they knew Nero as a persecutor. Suggested in Nero: Reality and Legend (125), for a people who often defended their faith against such extreme examples and would often celebrate the martyrdom of men who died under these conditions, there is a curious lack of Christian documents referring to this. Most scholars, still, do not doubt that Tacitus' account is accurate. The church has now widely accepted the event, and in fact adjusted the biblical chronology of some martyr's deaths to coincide with new evidence it presented.
However, that the Christians started the Great Fire is not either without motive. An Egyptian prophecy had it that on the day of Sirius, the dog star, an evil city would burn and fall. Christians, tired of the oppression of Rome, from this were vengefully spreading word that a fire was going to consume it. "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," a researcher Professor Gerhard Baudy explains (The Great Fire of Rome). Cirius rose the same day that the fire started: July 19th 64 AD.
New Evidence in the Physics of Fire
What had actually caused the fire is still debated. Many, especially at the time, believed it was arson, but new evidence suggest the very real possibility it was merely accidental. Tacitus observed that the fire spread against the wind, which was popularly considered evidence for arson up until this century. He also observed that it spread right through the less flammable temples and the concrete dwellings of the rich, which he felt was unnatural and probably evidence for arson as well. New studies show that as a large fire consumes the oxygen around it, it will spread outward to seek more oxygen, even against the wind. Experts also now know that even in a building made entirely out of inflammable materials, furnature may just as easily catch on fire if embers come through a window. This may lead to the entire building being consumed. Roman buildings were particularly open to this threat because their windows were not shielded and the buildings were well ventilated.
Nero Rebuilds Rome
In any case, Nero did fair justice rebuilding Rome. As Martial wrote, "What is worse than Nero? What is better than Nero's baths?" (Nero: Reality and Legend, 128) And as such he made many public buildings, and rebuilt all buildings under strict fire codes to make sure that Rome would never burn again. Most extravagant was his new palace, the Domus Aurea (or, Golden House), whose entrance was so large it fit a monumental statue of himself 120 feet high, and it was so long that it had a triple portico a mile long. Later, the statue, due largely to Nero's unpopularity, was dismembered by his successor, Vespasian, and its head was replaced by the sun god's head.
Conclusion
Identifying an arsonist from two thousand years ago is virtually impossible, and its cause will probably never be solved conclusively. Many now think that it was just an accident; fires in Rome were numerous, and they were always a threat at that time of year. This notion has especially become popular since it was proven that the Great Fire could have burned without aid, which was widely thought impossible in the ancient world. Still, the idea of a malicious ruler playing a fiddle as his city burns is one that will never completely go away.
Works Cited:
Adams, Laurie Schneider. Art Across Time I. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2002.
Conte, Ronald L. Jr. The Martyrdom of James the Less and Mark the Evangelist. 2003. 5 November 2005. <http://www.biblicalchronology.com/martyrs.htm>
ESC. "Fiddling While Rome Burns." Online posting. 13 Dec. 1999. Phrases, Sayings and Idioms at The Phrase Finder. 5 November 2005. <http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/1/messages/2950.html>
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius. Annals XV. Trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. 1942. 5 November 2005. <http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/tacitus/TacitusAnnals15.html>
Uhl, John. The Great Fire of Rome. 2002. 5 November 2005. <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_rome/index.html>
Warmington, H. B. Nero: Reality and Legend. Ed. M. I. Finley. New York: W W Norton & Company, Inc., 1969.
Post-script and comments on sources:
My original source was The Great Fire of Rome, which is a summation of a PBS special on pbs.org which has a lot of good information, though none of it was well elaborated on. My process in finding further sources was to take information from The Great Fire of Rome PBS source and try to find sources that would elaborate on it further. I found Nero: Reality and Legend, which turned out to be a very useful resource, and it had quoted much from Tacitus' Annals, which were themselves easy to find on the Internet. Tacitus' accounts were invariably my greatest resource, as I'm sure was the case for any number of these other resources.
What had originally inspired me to do this piece was its mention in my Art Across Time I book, which I also cite as it gave me some information on the building materials and particular building types of Rome. It also provided me with the eventual fate of Nero's statue in his Domus Aurea.
The Martyrdom of James the Less and Mark the Evangelist and Fiddling While Rome Burns were two minor resources that I picked out for small notes, neither of which may be desired for scholarly citation provided within the article itself, depending on protocol. The former was used to decern the church's recent attitude of the Christian prosecution, and the latter for information on the 'Nero fiddling while rome burns' idiom. I could unfortunately not find a more scholarly source for this than a discussion group, of which I found many, but I chose to add this particular one to the works cited because it actually references printed material, a book called Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings, by Gregory Y. Titelman, which I could not locate myself. There was one more site that also elaborated slightly on the cramped living conditions mentioned in the first paragraph, however I have lost the url at this time.
I had tried to order the paragraphs by subject. First the event, second Nero's response to it, and third the resulting accusations and consiquences. The third to the last paragraph was hardest to place, though I eventually opted to put it close to the end.
The section Nero Rebuilds Rome section needs to be much more expansive and I encourage researchers to help with that, especially if it does not have its own wikipedia article altogether.
--SA (User:216.171.188.121)
- The material above is sourced and a clear improvement on the present text. I shall add it to the article without deleting anything that's there now. --Wetman 06:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
In his badly edited book,"James, the Brother of Jesus", scholar Robert Eisenman seems to claim that the Romans made no distinction between "Christians" and "Jews" at this date, and could not; and that James' (to us, Christian) Church was really the mainstream (popular, not Roman puppet) Judaism involved in the rebellion, led by James. This would make the fire more to do with Jewish unrest, which is undoubted, than Pauline doctrine. He may be wrong about much, but he does create real doubt that there was such a general distinction between Jews and Christians at the time. Such an act of terror would be very consistent with what we know, but nothing to do with what we now call Christianity (although according to him Christianity retroactively claimed the martyrs for its fold.) --RJ
[edit] Subjective statement without citation moved to talk page
"it is also unlikely that Christians in Rome would be concerned with fulfilling a prophecy of such pagan Egyptian origin." MarkBuckles 05:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Revelations
I have not gone through and read all the info on this talk page, although I see it does mention revelations. For the time being, the last sentence of this paragraph is quite confusing.
- "A minority view that has not established itself among Classical scholars was promoted by Gerhard Baudy. In his Die Brände Roms: Ein apokalyptisches Motiv in der antiken Historiographie, he suggested that Christians set the fire in order to fulfill an Egyptian prophecy. This prophecy stated that the day Sirius (the dog star) first rises would mark the fall of the great evil city. By setting fire to Rome on this day, the Christians would have suggested that Rome was both evil, and falling (in addition to the obvious physical damage caused by the fire). Most scholars, however, date the Book of Revelation to the reign of Domitian, not Nero."
We were talking about an Egyptian Prophecy and then suddenly we're talking about dating the Book of Revelations. This will probably be fixed with the rewrite but if you want to clean it up a tad for now since the article is linked from wikipedia's main page, that would be helpful. Thank you. MarkBuckles 05:28, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Map
A map showing which areas of Rome are believed to have been destroyed during the fire would be a great addition to the article. - Gobeirne 18:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Heartfelt excursus on Revelations
Whose interpretation is this? --Wetman 22:37, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
