Rome is Burning
“The book, Rome Is Burning: Nero and the Fire That Ended a Dynasty,” by Anthony A. Barrett, is one of the best books about Rome when it comes to the Nero and the Great Fire of 64. This book, published on November 10th, 2020, provides a comprehensive and engaging account of the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD and its aftermath, focusing on the role of Emperor Nero in the event.
The Great Fire of Rome was a devastating conflagration that lasted for nine days and destroyed much of the city. The disaster has been a topic of historical debate, with some sources accusing Nero of starting the fire to make room for his grandiose building projects, while others argue that the fire was accidental.
In Rome Is Burning, Anthony Barrett examines the historical evidence and presents a balanced account of the event. He delves into the political, social, and economic context of the time, exploring the impact of the fire on Rome and its citizens. Barrett also addresses the controversial figure of Nero, examining his actions and motivations during the fire and its aftermath, ultimately providing a nuanced view of the emperor’s involvement in the disaster.
The book is well-researched and provides readers with a vivid and detailed portrayal of one of the most famous events in Roman history, making it an excellent resource for those interested in learning more about the Great Fire of Rome and the enigmatic figure of Emperor Nero.
The Truth About Nero
Of the many evils attributed to the emperor Nero, ordering the burning of the city of Rome and using the flames as a dramatic backdrop to recite his poetry on the fall of Troy is the most spectacular. Compounding his crime, he is supposed to have blamed the local Christian population for the fire. He rounded up a group of them, set them up on crosses, and burned them alive. When encouraged to view these grisly human torches, even the normally bloodthirsty Roman citizenry was horrified by his cruel retribution. But is this story true? Anthony Barrett in “Rome is Burning” investigates the available evidence for the great fire of 64 AD and convincingly argues that no, it mostly isn’t. He relies on two main forms of evidence to evaluate what really happened: the archaeological record and the ancient historians who wrote extensively about the fire: Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio.
Any history of the ancient world will have to reckon with how much to trust the written sources. Barrett’s interrogations of the motives and methods of those historians are quite lively and interesting. All of them wrote decades or more after the events they describe, and all of them were extremely hostile to Nero. He lays out a convincing case of a sort of literary game of telephone. What began as rumors reported by Tacitus that some people blamed Nero for the fire, becomes fact when Suetonius and Dio flatly assert he started it and prevented anyone from putting it out. What was most likely an attempt by Rome’s firefighting force, the Vigiles, to starve the fire of fuel by tearing down buildings in its path becomes reinterpreted as Nero’s sinister agents spreading throughout the city to stoke the fires.
Further, the story about the burning of the Christians is located only in Tacitus, and Barrett makes a convincing case that this might not even be authentic to him, but a later addition. Though several ancient historians, both Pagan and Christian, mention that Nero persecuted Christians, none but Tacitus ties that persecution directly to the fire, dating that later in his reign.
The Aftermath
In trying to understand exactly how much of the city was destroyed Barrett reviews the archaeological evidence in some detail. The task is difficult because as part of the rebuilding efforts Nero ordered the ash and debris cleared and sent away on boats. That, plus 2000 years of building has destroyed much of the evidence. Still, he reviews what remains in some tedious detail, building by building. I never like to recommend skipping over any part of a book but given the author himself recommends skipping the introductory chapter if you already have a decent grasp of basic Roman history, I’m fine with recommending those with a more casual interest not feel bad if they skim through this section.
The section of the book examining the aftermath of the fire and Nero’s grandiose rebuilding program makes for much more interesting reading. Even Nero’s ancient critics agree that he ordered the city to be rebuilt in a more resilient and rational way than before, with wider and straighter streets, and in stone instead of wood. More spectacularly, he ordered the construction of two monuments to himself, the colossal statue that probably bore his face, and a gigantic palace complex, the Domus Aurea.
Here Barrett writes much more engagingly about the archeological evidence for the extent and design of the palace, only tiny portions such as the Oppian Wing survive. This palace has been remembered as an insanely opulent structure with a rotating dining room, the cenatio rotunda, and statues stolen from all over the empire. When one of its rooms was discovered in the 15th century, its still preserved paintings greatly impressed artists of the time including Raphael. The size of the Domus Aurea was said by critics to encircle the city. It didn’t do that, but the entire complex, including palaces, gardens, and an artificial lake did occupy a large area in the heart of Rome. The building of such an impressive complex at a time of financial difficulty was probably unpopular, but might not have been as hated as the historians and the poet Martial later claimed.
Nero’s immediate successor continued the building project and even the Flavians, under whom Martial was writing, only demolished part of it to make room for their own building projects, including the Colosseum.
Why the Great Fire of 64 Was a Huge Turning Point
In making the case for the great fire of 64 as a major turning point in history Barrett offers two reasons. First, he argues convincingly that it fatally undermined Nero’s emperorship and led to his downfall four years later. Before the fire, Nero’s position was secure, but the anger of Senators who lost their homes, citizens who had to pay higher taxes to fund the rebuilding effort, and the army whose pay was effectively reduced when he debased the currency, led to conspiracies, revolts, and his eventual desperate suicide. This ended the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Rome’s first, established by Augustus.
His second reason deals with the long-term result of that currency devaluation. The backbone of the Roman economy was based on a silver coinage that was 99% pure at the start of his reign. When pressed by a sudden emergency requiring large amounts of money, besides increasing taxation which he also did, Nero had three options to increase the money supply: digging more silver out of the ground, reducing the size of the coin itself, or reducing the purity of the coin. This section of the book detailing exactly how we know the purity of ancient coins over time is brief but very interesting. Nero reduced the silver coinage to about 80% in 64, surely as an emergency measure to pay for rebuilding. Then in the last year of his reign, it rose to 90%, perhaps as Barrett says, a desperate attempt to walk back from an unpopular measure. From there on for the next century, the purity of Roman coins fluctuated but mostly trended downward until a sudden collapse in purity reduced the silver content to about 1%. Blaming the modest devaluation of Nero for the total collapse of the currency more than a century after his death is not totally convincing.
Final Thoughts
The best thing I can say about this book is that it piqued my interest to read more about several areas of Roman history. His short explanations for the history of firefighting in Rome, the expected role for an emperor to play in times of emergency, and the question of just how much history, and which historians, did later Romans read were all brief but fascinating subjects.
Nero may have committed some of the other crimes attributed to him by ancient historians. He probably did have his own mother murdered after all. But he can’t be blamed for the great fire of 64 that destroyed so much of the city, and he didn’t “fiddle while Rome burned.” He attempted to do what was expected of an emperor, providing shelter to the displaced, overseeing efforts to put out the flames, and rebuilding on a more rational plan when the fires had died out. Nevertheless, the catastrophe overwhelmed his emperorship and led to his downfall. Perhaps a better emperor could have survived the storm. Maybe his palace was too opulent in a time of hardship, for senators and the poor both. Barretts’s book can’t answer those questions definitively, but it does provide an interesting look at one of Rome’s worst crises.
