Light from the burning city filled the sky as far as human eye could
reach. The moon rose large and full from behind the mountains, and
inflamed at once by the glare took on the color of heated brass.
It seemed to look with amazement on the world-ruling city which was
perishing. In the rose-colored abysses of heaven rose-colored stars were
glittering; but in distinction from usual nights the earth was brighter
than the heavens. Rome, like a giant pile, illuminated the whole
Campania. In the bloody light were seen distant mountains, towns,
villas, temples, mountains, and the aqueducts stretching toward the city
from all the adjacent hills; on the aqueducts were swarms of people, who
had gathered there for safety or to gaze at the burning.
Meanwhile the dreadful element was embracing new divisions of the city.
It was impossible to doubt that criminal hands were spreading the fire,
since new conflagrations were breaking out all the time in places remote
from the principal fire. From the heights on which Rome was founded the
flames flowed like waves of the sea into the valleys densely occupied by
houses,--houses of five and six stories, full of shops, booths, movable
wooden amphitheatres, built to accommodate various spectacles; and
finally storehouses of wood, olives, grain, nuts, pine cones, the
kernels of which nourished the more needy population, and clothing,
which through Cæsar’s favor was distributed from time to time among the
rabble huddled into narrow alleys. In those places the fire, finding
abundance of inflammable materials, became almost a series of
explosions, and took possession of whole streets with unheard-of
rapidity. People encamping outside the city, or standing on the
aqueducts knew from the color of the flame what was burning. The furious
power of the wind carried forth from the fiery gulf thousands and
millions of burning shells of walnuts and almonds, which, shooting
suddenly into the sky, like countless flocks of bright butterflies,
burst with a crackling, or, driven by the wind, fell in other parts of
the city, on aqueducts, and fields beyond Rome. All thought of rescue
seemed out of place; confusion increased every moment, for on one side
the population of the city was fleeing through every gate to places
outside; on the other the fire had lured in thousands of people from the
neighborhood, such as dwellers in small towns, peasants, and half-wild
shepherds of the Campania, brought in by hope of plunder. The shout,
“Rome is perishing!” did not leave the lips of the crowd; the ruin of
the city seemed at that time to end every rule, and loosen all bonds
which hitherto had joined people in a single integrity. The mob, in
which slaves were more numerous, cared nothing for the lordship of Rome.
Destruction of the city could only free them; hence here and there they
assumed a threatening attitude. Violence and robbery were extending. It
seemed that only the spectacle of the perishing city arrested attention,
and restrained for the moment an outburst of slaughter, which would
begin as soon as the city was turned into ruins. Hundreds of thousands
of slaves, forgetting that Rome, besides temples and walls, possessed
some tens of legions in all parts of the world, appeared merely waiting
for a watchword and a leader. People began to mention the name of
Spartacus, but Spartacus was not alive. Meanwhile citizens assembled,
and armed themselves each with what he could. The most monstrous reports
were current at all the gates. Some declared that Vulcan, commanded
by Jupiter, was destroying the city with fire from beneath the earth;
others that Vesta was taking vengeance for Rubria. People with these
convictions did not care to save anything, but, besieging the temples,
implored mercy of the gods. It was repeated most generally, however,
that Cæsar had given command to burn Rome, so as to free himself from
odors which rose from the Subura, and build a new city under the name
of Neronia. Rage seized the populace at thought of this; and if, as
Vinicius believed, a leader had taken advantage of that outburst of
hatred, Nero’s hour would have struck whole years before it did.
It was said also that Cæsar had gone mad, that he would command
pretorians and gladiators to fall upon the people and make a general
slaughter. Others swore by the gods that wild beasts had been let out
of all the vivaria at Bronzebeard’s command. Men had seen on the streets
lions with burning manes, and mad elephants and bisons, trampling down
people in crowds. There was even some truth in this; for in certain
places elephants, at sight of the approaching fire, had burst the
vivaria, and, gaining their freedom, rushed away from the fire in wild
fright, destroying everything before them like a tempest. Public report
estimated at tens of thousands the number of persons who had perished
in the conflagration. In truth a great number had perished. There were
people who, losing all their property, or those dearest their hearts,
threw themselves willingly into the flames, from despair. Others were
suffocated by smoke. In the middle of the city, between the Capitol, on
one side, and the Quirinal, the Viminal, and the Esquiline on the other,
as also between the Palatine and the Cælian Hill, where the streets were
most densely occupied, the fire began in so many places at once
that whole crowds of people, while fleeing in one direction, struck
unexpectedly on a new wall of fire in front of them, and died a dreadful
death in a deluge of flame.
In terror, in distraction, and bewilderment, people knew not where to
flee. The streets were obstructed with goods, and in many narrow places
were simply closed. Those who took refuge in those markets and squares
of the city, where the Flavian Amphitheatre stood afterward, near the
temple of the Earth, near the Portico of Silvia, and higher up, at the
temples of Juno and Lucinia, between the Clivus Virbius and the old
Esquiline Gate, perished from heat, surrounded by a sea of fire. In
places not reached by the flames were found afterward hundreds of bodies
burned to a crisp, though here and there unfortunates tore up flat
stones and half buried themselves in defence against the heat. Hardly a
family inhabiting the centre of the city survived in full; hence along
the walls, at the gates, on all roads were heard howls of despairing
women, calling on the dear names of those who had perished in the throng
or the fire.
And so, while some were imploring the gods, others blasphemed them
because of this awful catastrophe. Old men were seen coming from the
temple of Jupiter Liberator, stretching forth their hands, and crying,
“If thou be a liberator, save thy altars and the city!” But despair
turned mainly against the old Roman gods, who, in the minds of the
populace, were bound to watch over the city more carefully than others.
They had proved themselves powerless; hence were insulted. On the other
hand it happened on the Via Asinaria that when a company of Egyptian
priests appeared conducting a statue of Isis, which they had saved from
the temple near the Porta Cælimontana, a crowd of people rushed among
the priests, attached themselves to the chariot, which they drew to the
Appian Gate, and seizing the statue placed it in the temple of Mars,
overwhelming the priests of that deity who dared to resist them. In
other places people invoked Serapis, Baal, or Jehovah, whose adherents,
swarming out of the alleys in the neighborhood of the Subura and the
Trans-Tiber, filled with shouts and uproar the fields near the walls. In
their cries were heard tones as if of triumph; when, therefore, some of
the citizens joined the chorus and glorified “the Lord of the World,”
others, indignant at this glad shouting, strove to repress it by
violence. Here and there hymns were heard, sung by men in the bloom of
life, by old men, by women and children,--hymns wonderful and solemn,
whose meaning they understood not, but in which were repeated from
moment to moment the words, “Behold the Judge cometh in the day of
wrath and disaster.” Thus this deluge of restless and sleepless people
encircled the burning city, like a tempest-driven sea.
But neither despair nor blasphemy nor hymn helped in any way.
The destruction seemed as irresistible, perfect, and pitiless as
Predestination itself. Around Pompey’s Amphitheatre stores of hemp
caught fire, and ropes used in circuses, arenas, and every kind of
machine at the games, and with them the adjoining buildings containing
barrels of pitch with which ropes were smeared. In a few hours all that
part of the city, beyond which lay the Campus Martius, was so lighted by
bright yellow flames that for a time it seemed to the spectators, only
half conscious from terror, that in the general ruin the order of night
and day had been lost, and that they were looking at sunshine. But later
a monstrous bloody gleam extinguished all other colors of flame. From
the sea of fire shot up to the heated sky gigantic fountains, and
pillars of flame spreading at their summits into fiery branches and
feathers; then the wind bore them away, turned them into golden threads,
into hair, into sparks, and swept them on over the Campania toward
the Alban Hills. The night became brighter; the air itself seemed
penetrated, not only with light, but with flame. The Tiber flowed on
as living fire. The hapless city was turned into one pandemonium. The
conflagration seized more and more space, took hills by storm, flooded
level places, drowned valleys, raged, roared, and thundered.