Nero’s Fire and the Myth of Christian Persecution....
Cliff Carrington 8-1998/5-2000
That there was a fire in Rome when Nero was emperor is fairly certain; just about every emperor had one. It is mentioned in a few, very few, ancient references. The Tacitus reference is backed up by a contemporary of the fire, Pliny the Elder and by his own contemporary Suetonius. The legend, on the other hand, that Nero fiddled while Rome burned became a popular fiction.
The fire under Nero could not have been as extensive as Tacitus’ passage, and popular imagination, would have it. Historical and archaeological evidence somewhat diminishes the importance of Nero’s fire. His fire destroyed, at most, a tenth of the city. The important temples like that of Juppiter Captiolinus and Apollo, along with the major public buildings, private mansions and tenements survived. As did the Circus Maximus in the district where the fire started, which was in use nine months later. It had slight damage to the wooden upper story and stairs, but no major damage to the stonework. Nero’s recently completed palace was the major victim of the fire. He lost the most.
The Capitol and surrounding buildings survived to be burnt in the battle between the forces of Vitellius and Vespasian in December of 69 CE. The more serious fire, which burnt the Campus Martius and many major public buildings in the centre of Rome, happened in 80 CE, when Titus was emperor. The Christians were not blamed for this one.
According to Tacitus, alone, Nero blamed the Christians for the fire in Rome. Annals, XV. This passage is not referred to in any other pagan, nor Christian writings until 400 CE. The Fantastic details of the sufferings of the Christians - dressed in animal hides and torn apart by dogs, crucified, and used as human torches - fits the pornographic masochistic obsession of the early Church. The sordid details of flesh torn and blood copiously shed is repulsive to the modern mind. For some reason the early Church wallowed in graphic descriptions of virgins violated and gored to death by bulls, old men crucified suffering horrific tortures and not to mention the over-fed lions of the Colosseum. By the way, the Romans did not feed their lions exclusively on Christians, any old mal-content would do; and more often did.
Eusebius, when the Church was triumphant in the 4th century, after the ‘persecutions’ could only find 146 martyrs in the history. As we shall see, in Lactantius, between Domitian in the nineties and Decius in the late 3rd century there was a long peace where the Church was not persecuted. There was then a brief period of political persecution, especially under Diocletian, before his successor formed an alliance with them in the beginning of the 4th century. Constantine defeated his political opponents with the assistance of the Christians and recognized the fact when he held power. This period, of the Ante & Post-Nicene Fathers, knows nothing of Nero’s fire and its Christian victims.
Pliny the Elder, [26-79 CE] In his N.H. XVII, 1. 5. Pliny mentions, in passing, that in his youth he had seen some remarkable trees on a Roman estate which were famous for their longevity, they lasted “down to the Emperor Nero’s conflagration.” That is the sole mention of the ‘great fire’ by one who lived through the period. Pliny was to die, in 79 CE, at the eruption of Vesuvius. This was a year before the serious fire in the reign of Titus which burned a much more important area of the city; in which many of the temples and other public buildings were destroyed. The Christians were not blamed for that fire in 78.
Although Pliny does not anywhere mention Christians in his work, he does write about the Jewish sect of the Essenes, in N.H. V, 15. He locates them: “On the west side of the Dead Sea, but out of range of the noxious exhalations of the coast, is the solitary tribe of the Essenes...” Pliny then describes their celibate and isolated existence.
Josephus, [41-100] He was in Rome, for over a year, from the first part of 64, [Life, 3]. The fire happened in July, but, he fails to mention it at all. Josephus’ attitude to Nero was such that he would have mentioned it in the passage in the Jewish War XX. vii. 2-3. Instead he takes other biased historians to task, “some of whom have departed from the truth of the facts, out of favour,... while others, out of hatred to him, have so impudently raved against him with their lies.” Surely, out of some kind of consideration for his home city, Jerusalem, which was burnt to the ground, he would have made a comparison with the Capital of the world being burnt?
DIO CHRYSOSTOM, [40-120] Discourse 21, On Beauty, 9-10. Loeb, vol II, p. 281. Dio is writing about the corruption of absolute power:
“This is indeed true of Nero, and no one contradicted him in anything, what ever he said, or affirmed that anything he commanded was impossible to perform, so that even if he ordered anyone to fly, the man promised that too and for a considerable time he would be maintained in the imperial household in the belief that he would fly.”
Now, Dio goes on to the passage describing Nero’s end and popularity:
“Indeed the truth about this has not come out even yet; for so far as the rest of his subjects were concerned, there was nothing to prevent his continuing to be Emperor for all time, seeing that even now everybody wishes he were still alive. And the great majority do believe that he still is, although in a certain sense he has died not once but often along with those who had been firmly convinced that he was still alive.”
This refers to the numerous ‘resurrections’ of ‘false’ Neros, mentioned in Tacitus H. II, 8, 9, Suetonius, Nero, 57. and Dio Cassius, 64. 9, see Loeb footnote #2, p. 280.
Plutarch, [46-120] As a contemporary of both Tacitus and Suetonius he does not mention the fire in Rome, nor anything about the Christians for that matter. Plutarch did not write about Nero directly, but does mention him in his Life of Galba, and his mis-rule as the excuse for Galba’s rebellion, which ended with Nero’s suicide, 20 December 68 CE. Nowhere does he blame Nero for the fire which he likewise does not mention.
Epictetus, [50-130] The best known Stoic was a slave, whose master was Nero’s secretary. The translator of Epictetus, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, is baffled that he was not a Christian. “There are so many of the sentiments and expressions of Christianity in it, that one should be strongly tempted to think that Epictetus was acquainted with the New Testament,..” [p. xxii] Well, he was not and never even so much as mentions Christians in passing. He lived in Rome and as a slave to Epaphroditus, a senior member of Nero’s government would have known of the fire and the Christian sacrifice in the aftermath. However, all he has to say about Nero is his persecution of some good men who refused to attend his performances.
Tacitus, [55-117] Annals XV. 37 - 41 Nero’s fire started 19 July 64 CE. This is the famous passage which mentions Nero’s fire and his persecution of the Christians to disguise his own guilt. It is only in this passage that the fire and the Christians were connected. Other pagan writers mention the fire, in passing, but not the Christian persecution. Christians writers mention the Persecution, but, do not connect them with the fire.
Tacitus has an account of terrible damage: “Of Rome’s fourteen districts only four remained intact. Three were leveled to the ground. The other seven were reduced to a few scorched and mangled ruins.” However, the only other account we have, an interpolation in a forged Christian letter from Seneca to Paul: “A hundred and thirty-two houses and four blocks have been burnt in six days; the seventh brought a pause.” This account turns out to mean about a tenth of the city was burnt. Rome contained about 1,700 private houses and 47,000 apartment blocks.
Tacitus is the only writer to connect the fire with the Christians. Nero was blamed, both at the time and in all other subsequent writers on the fire, and supposedly blamed the Christians for arson. He then condemned “large numbers” of them to be crucified and torched during the night. This must have been a big affair and there must have been “large numbers” of so-called Christians.
In his earlier ‘Histories’ Tacitus has a different attitude. The person in charge of persecutions in Rome was the City Prefect, Police Chief of Rome. Under Nero this was a man described by Tacitus in his ‘Histories’ bk. 3, #65, #75 - “His gentle character made him hate bloodshed and killing... His honesty and fair-mindedness are beyond question.” Flavius Sabinus, brother of Vespasian, was City Prefect of Rome from 56-69, covering the Neronian period of the disputed persecutions! Would a man of this character do the things described in the ‘Annals’ and Sulpicius?
The big question is why the Church Fathers know Nothing of this important information from Tacitus? The two partial manuscripts were found in the Medici library dating from 1313 to 1375. It is only after this time, much after, that the story became almost an Article of Faith about the early Church.
Pliny the Younger, [61-113] There is only one more early source to the Christians, or the Anointed Ones, and it is found in the Letters of Pliny the Younger, X. 96, 97. He corresponds with the emperor Trajan, in 115, asking what to do with the Christians in his province of Bithynia, near the Pontus. He describes their worship in detail. This passage is so theologically highly developed that it seems to come from a time when the church was well organized. The tenth book of Pliny’s letters, to Trajan, were not published by him. An anonymous person published them after Pliny’s death.
Suetonius, [69-140] Live of Nero, 38. Writing very soon after Tacitus, Suetonius knows of no Christians connected with the fire? He and all subsequent writers firmly blame Nero for the fire, and continue the rumour that he ‘fiddled while Rome burnt’.Suetonius, in his Life of Claudius, 25, has one, confusing, word about a Chrestus. “Because the Jews at Rome caused a continuous disturbance at the instigation of Chrestus, he (Claudius) expelled them from the city.”
The sense of the passage is that there was one ‘Chrestus’ at Rome stirring up the Jews. That can hardly fit Christ, the Anointed One. It was a proper name in those times. Eunapius, the 4th century biographer, mentions a philosopher/sophist named ‘Chrestus of Byzantium’, but nothing else in known about him other than his name. Also ‘Chrestus’ often meant - a ‘handy man’, a slave.
The only reference to ‘Christiani’ in the Life of Nero is between nut sellers and chariot drivers, along with Mime actors: “Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition.” [Nero, 16] This sentence is completely isolated and could very possibly have been inserted later. However, this is in No way connected to Suetonius’ romantic description of Nero’s fire, found in ch. 38. No Christians are blamed! Indeed Nero is given all the blame for the fire. Worse, he is damned by the accusation that while viewing the conflagration; “he sang the whole of the ‘Sack of Ilium,’ in his regular stage costume.”
Christian Apocrypha, [3rd. century CE]: Acts of Paul, Acts of Pete, Acts of Peter and Paul. All have variations on a theme of the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul. This was because they taught chastity and led the wives and lovers of important people, including Nero, astray. Therefore, Nero executed them. However, in all of these apocryphal Acts there is no fire and Nero refrains from attacking the rest of the Christians after killing Peter and Paul.
1 Clement, [c. 95-160?] This ‘letter’ is the only evidence, if we can call it such, for the martyrdom of Peter and Paul in Rome. The letter does not mention Nero nor the fire, nor any of the circumstances of their ‘martyrdom’. Nor does it identify any particular ‘persecution’, Nero’s or otherwise.
Lucian, [120-190] The famous satirist of the ancient world. In his *Death of Perigrinus* Lucian mentions a group of ‘Christiani’ in Judea. From the description they would date to about the 130’s. Peregrinus was an old man when he self-immolated in 160. He is described as having been one of the Christians in his youth. After some time Peregrinus, or Proteus as he was also known, got into trouble over food laws and was expelled.
Lucian’s description of these early Christians is somewhat condescending, but, not hostile. There is nothing connecting them to the fire, or persecution. This is the first truly Independent reference to Christians in Pagan literature, written about 160.
Tertullian, [145-220] Apologetics v. 3., To the Nations; “It was Nero who first condemned the Christian religion.” He goes on to say that, ‘whatever Nero condemned must be good’. Again, no mention in his works of the fire, nor the Christian persecution being connected with it in any way?
Dio Cassius, [163-235] He wrote a *Roman History* in eighty books, only twenty-six have come down to us. Dio mentions the fire, bk. XLII, but puts the blame squarely upon Nero. There is no mention of Christians in the surviving books of his history, and definitely no connection to Nero’s fire.
Philostratus, [170-244] He wrote the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, a first century philosopher who died at an advanced age in the reign of Nerva [96-98]. Apollonius had several encounters with Nero’s secret police when Nero had banned philosophers from Rome. He lists many of Nero’s crimes and enormities, but not the fire and nowhere are there any Christians. Apollonius thought Judea to be too polluted to have anything good come from it. He associated with Vespasian in Egypt in 69 and several conversations with him are about the government of his predecessors, but, Nero’s fire never comes up.
Origen, [185-254] written in 249 CE. Contra Celsus III. 8., “In order to strengthen the faith of the pusillanimous and to teach them to brave death, a few martyrs from time to time offered them the example of their consistency.” No great martyrdom by Nero is mentioned, or later for that matter.
Lactantius [260-330 CE] As to the Christian persecutions after Domitian, Lactantius is an authoritative source. He was not only favoured by Diocletian but a learned Christian historian, but, also the tutor to Constantine’s son Crispus. He was a contemporary of Eusebius of Caesarea and a favourite of Constantine’s court. In the beginning of the 4th century [313], he wrote about the past persecutions, but no Nero’s fire:
“Thus the commands of the tyrant [Domitian, d. 96] having been rescinded, the Church was not only restored to her former state, but shone forth with additional splendour, and became more and more flourishing. And in the times that followed, while many well-deserving princes guided the helm of the Roman empire, the Church suffered no violent assaults from her enemies, and she extended her hands unto the east and unto the west, insomuch that now there was not any the most remote corner of the earth to which the divine religion had not penetrated, nor any nation of manners so barbarous that did not, become mild and gentle.” [Alaric the Goth was a Christian when he destroyed Rome in 410!]
“This long peace, however, was afterwards interrupted. Decius [249] appeared in the world, an accursed wild beast, to afflict the Church.” (Lactantius, Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors of the Church Died, chapters 3 & 4.)
The earlier persecutions were political if anything. What is the favoured creation of one emperor is anathema to another. With no Eastern experience Domitian had a special hatred against the Jews, many of whom were in the Imperial service of his father, Vespasian, and brother, Titus. He removed them from their offices and had them heavily taxed. When Domitian, who persecuted the Jews, had been assassinated in 96 CE, Nerva became emperor. He rescinded the laws against the Jews and stopped the abuses of the annual Jewish tax.
Ante-Nicene Church Fathers, 10 volumes, [150-326]; In the thirty or so writers from the period of the growth of the early Church there is no mention of the fire in Rome, or the Christian blame.
Porphyry, [233-304] He wrote a work *Against the Christians* towards the end of the third century. What we have of this work comes mainly from Eusebius. Porphyry is quoted to condemn him and his work. Nowhere in the surviving fragments is there any mention of the fire, or persecutions. His work must have been effective; as by the end of the fourth century anyone found with Porphyry’s work was burned along with his book!
Eusebius, [260-339] The first great Church historian whose work has survived. He also wrote a chronography of the Church with all of its martyrs from Stephen, of Acts, up until his own day. Following Lactantius, Eusebius has Nero as the first emperor to persecute the Christians, but nowhere mentions the fire in Rome, nor the Christian blame. Eusebius was supposed to have written a Martyrology naming all one hundred and forty-six of them he knew about, but, nothing about Nero’s fire and martyrs of it.
Epistle of Seneca to Paul, 12. [5th century?] “...The source of the many fires which Rome suffers is plain. But if humble men could speak out what the reason is, and if it were possible to speak without risk in this dark time, all would be plain to all. Christians and Jews are commonly executed as contrivers of the fire. Whoever the criminal is, whose pleasure is that of a butcher, and who veil himself with a lie, he is reserved for his due season; and as the best of men is sacrificed, the one for the many, so he, vowed to death for all, will be burned with fire. A hundred and thirty-two houses and four blocks have been burnt in six days; the seventh brought a pause.”
This is interpolated into a late Christian forgery, Seneca never wrote like this and certainly not to St. Paul. As mentioned in Tacitus the amount of the damage given here is about a tenth of the City. The damage bill does not tally with Tacitus’ figures. Both do mention the fire lasting for six days. The Letter has the fire end on the seventh day, as a good Christian would have it. However, Tacitus states that it broke out again, in another part of the city and burned on, tradition says it lasted nine days. So, it is doubtful that the Christian author of the forged letter is directly following Tacitus.
Augustine, [354-430] St. Augustine does not mention Nero’s fire in his list of calamities that befell Rome before the Christian era. The City of God was written expressly to demonstrate that the fall of Rome, in 410, to the Arian Alaric the Goth, was not due to the Christian state suppressing the pagan religion in the reign of Theodosius in 392.
Severus Sulpicius, [c. 410] The only other, possible, mention of Christians being persecuted for Nero’s fire comes from a ‘Sacred History’ of Severus which disappeared from history. This was never used by the Church until after the 14th century and the discovery of Tacitus’ Annals.
In his biography of ‘Nero’ Gerard Walter examines the Sulpicius passage. On p. 174 Walter makes the three following points:
“1. Even if we admit that the text of the Annals contained the disputed passage in 400, we could not be sure that nothing had been interpolated into one of the copies during the interval of 285 years. This might very easily have happened during the second half of the fourth century when Christianity, now triumphant, was engaged in creating the heroic chronicle of its first beginnings.”
“2. The similarity of the two texts does not necessarily prove that Severus Sulpicius borrowed his from a contemporary copy of the Annals. The copyist who interpolated the passage into Tacitus might just as easily have added it after the publication of the Sacred History, using this work for his own ends.”
“3. Whichever hypothesis we adopt, one thing remains certain: of all the Christian authors who wrote before and after Tacitus up to the year 1000, Severus Sulpicius is the only one to make use of the version implicating Nero, and, if we admit the authenticity of the passage of the Annals, we have to find some explanation for the ‘conspiracy of silence’ which surrounded it during the first ten centuries of the life of the Church.” [Gerard Walter, Nero, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1957, chapter IX, ‘The Fire of Rome’, p. 174.]
Eunapius, [d. 414] He wrote histories of other pagan philosophers of his period. There are some descriptions of triumphant Christians gleefully destroying the Pagan temples of Egypt and Greece!
Boethius, [475-524] The Consolation of Philosophy, book two, says, “What murders, what ravages were not committed by Nero, that detestable monster who burnt the Capitol of the world, strangled its senators, poisoned his brother, ...” Here is a slight exaggeration Nero did not exactly ‘burn the Capitol of the world’, it was burnt in 69, in the battle for Rome well after Nero’s death and five years after Nero’s fire was supposed to have happened. There is no mention of the Christians taking the blame and being executed on mass for the crime.
And there is nothing for the next 1000 years of Christian or other literature connecting Nero’s fire and the Christian persecution. There is a biography of Nero which questions the Christian report of the fire. [Gerard Walter, Nero, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1957, chapter IX, ‘The Fire of Rome’, pp. 144-174.] Mr. Walter, casts doubt on the account of the fire in Tacitus’ Annals and notes the lack of contemporary evidence that connects the fire with the early Christians. As we have seen Pliny the Elder mentions it in passing, but no other contemporary pagan author even mentions a fire at all.
It is only Tacitus and Suetonius who mention Nero’s fire and they are writing for the same masters, the Flavians. The Flavian emperors experienced fires in their reign. The Capitol was burnt in Vespasian’s successful bid for the purple; and his son, Titus, had a disastrous fire in his time. But, the Flavian writers play down these events while exaggerating Nero’s fire. Especially the Tacitus passage seems more like propaganda than an accurate report of a widespread conflagration, which, incidentally, is not historically nor archaeologically verifiable. Suetonius mentions Nero’s fire but does not connect it with the Christians, he blames Nero without qualification.
Both Gerard Walter and I think that Nero has suffered from extremely ‘bad press’. Reading between the lines we can find evidence that, contrary to the stories of his enemies, Nero was quite popular for his good works. The population reacted favourably to the several ‘false’ Nero’s who impersonated him after his death, mentioned in Tacitus H. II, 8, 9, Suetonius, Nero, 57. and Dio Cassius, 64. 9.
Both Otho and Vitellius were happy to be known as ‘Nero’. There is a fair amount of evidence of Nero’s good rule and works, if we ignore the outrageous slanders Nero suffered from the time of the Flavians throughout history. [‘Nero’, pp. 255-256] He could be rehabilitated.
More interesting is the fact that no early Christian writer mentions the fire, and the Christian connection for over 1.300 years. This is not an argument from silence as they had plenty of good reasons to use the evidence if it existed. For example, Augustine wrote a whole book on the disasters of Rome under the pagan emperors, yet he nowhere mentions Nero’s fire and persecution. Eusebius, the church historian, likewise does not record the incident nor the connection with the early Christians.
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