Baring-Gould’s sources: Modern Roman Martyrology. Authority: — Tacitus, Ann. Lib. xv.] The city of Rome caught fire on July 19th, a.d. 64, on the same day that it had been burnt by the Gauls four hundred and fifty years before. The fire is said to have broken out in all fourteen quarters of the city, and to have burnt for six days and seven nights, with fierce intensity. June 04.3.SVy. Martyrs under Nero.
It only died out when deprived of aliment, after having ravaged the city from the grand circus at the foot of the Palatine hill to the extremity of the Esquiline quarter, where it was arrested by the destruction of a large number of houses, so as to produce a chasm which the flames could not overleap.
The fire was first observed in the gardens of Tigellinus, prefect of the pretorian guard; this circumstance aroused vague suspicion, which was heightened by slaves of the imperial household being reported to have been seen spreading the flames. The Emperor Nero was at Antium when the conflagration broke out; he remained there till the third day, receiving message after message, and giving no orders. But when the disaster had reached its extremity, a savage gleam of curiosity lit up his troubled spirit, and he hastened to the tower of Maecenas, whence he could view the blaze. There, in his theatrical costume, lyre in hand, he thought it becoming to recite Homer's account of the destruction of Troy. His eager anticipations of being the new founder of Rome, lent a colour to the spreading rumour that he was himself the author of the conflagration, and it was hinted that he had ordered Rome to be fired, that he might enjoy the glory of rebuilding it It is extremely improbable that such was the case. His boasting of what he should do perhaps originated the suspicion. But the suspicion assumed a sufficiently threatening character to make it expedient for the emperor to divert it from himself. He declared the Christians to be guilty of the burning of Rome, and turned upon their innocent heads the rage of the people.
Inventive cruelty sought out new ways of torturing these victims of popular hatred and imperial injustice. The calm and serene patience with which they were armed by their religion against the most excruciating sufferings may have irritated still further their ruthless persecutors. The sewing up men in the skins of beasts, and setting dogs to tear them to pieces, may find precedents in the annals of human barbarity; but the covering them over with a kind of dress smeared with wax, pitch, or other combustible matter, with a stake under the chin to keep them upright, and then placing them to be slowly consumed, like torches, in the public gardens of popular amusement, — this seems to have been an invention of Nero’s refined barbarity; and, from the manner in which it is mentioned by the Roman writers, as the most horrible torture known, appears to have made a profound impression on the general mind. Even a people habituated to gladiatorial shows, and to the horrible scenes of wholesale execution which were of daily occurrence during the reign of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero, must yet have been in an unusual state of exasperation to endure, or rather to take pleasure in, the sight of these unparallelled barbarities. Thus, the gentle, the peaceful religion of Christ was welcomed upon earth by new applications of man’s inventive faculties, to inflict suffering, and to satiate revenge.
