You know the mystery which hovers above the history of primitive
Christianity, which we might desire to know more in detail. The death of
the apostles Peter and Paul remains enveloped in a veil which will never
be penetrated. That which appears the most probable is, that they both
disappeared in the great massacre of Christians commanded by Nero.
On the 19th of July, in the year 64, a violent fire burst out at Rome.
It originated in that portion of the great Circus near to the Palatine
and C[oe]lian Hills. In this quarter there were many little shops,
filled with inflammable matter, in which the flames spread with
prodigious rapidity. Thence it made the turn of the Palatine, ravaged
the Velabra, the Forum, the Carinæ, ascended the hills, greatly injured
the Palatine, descended again to the valleys, devouring compact
quarters, and piercing tortuous streets, continuing six days and seven
nights. An enormous pile of houses which were torn down near the foot of
the Esquiline, arrested its progress for a time; then it again broke
out, and endured three days more. A considerable number of people
perished. Of the fourteen portions which composed the city, three were
entirely destroyed; of seven, only blackened walls remained. Rome was an
extremely compact city, and the population very dense. This disaster was
frightful, and the like of it had never before been seen.
When the fire broke out, Nero was at Antium. He returned to the city
about the time when it approached his "transitory" house. It was not
possible to arrest the flames. The imperial houses of the Palatine, the
"transitory" house itself with its dependencies, and the whole
surrounding quarter, were destroyed. Nero did not seem much to regret
the loss of his house. The sublime horror of the spectacle transported
him. Later it was said that he had watched the fire from a tower, where,
in a theatrical costume, with a lyre in his hand, he chanted the ruin of
Ilion to the rhythm of an ancient elegy.
This was a legend, the fruit of a period of successive exaggerations;
but one point upon which the universal opinion was decisive from the
first was, that Nero had commanded this fire, or at least had revived it
when it seemed about to die out.
These suspicions were confirmed by the fact, that, after the fire, Nero,
under pretext of removing the ruins at his own cost, in order to leave
the place free to the proprietors, undertook to clear away the _débris_;
and the people were not allowed to approach. This seemed worse when it
was seen that he drew from the ruins what belonged to the country, when
the new palace, that "golden house" which had been the plaything of his
delirious imagination, was seen rising upon the site of the ancient
provisory residence, enlarged by the spaces which the fire had cleared.
It was believed that he had desired to prepare the place for his new
palace, to justify the reconstruction which he had long contemplated, to
procure money by appropriating the wreck of the fire, in short, to
satisfy his mad vanity, which led him to desire to rebuild the whole of
Rome, so that it might date from him, and be called Neropolis.
All the honest men of the city were outraged. The most precious
antiquities of Rome, the houses of the ancient leaders, decorated with
triumphal spoils, the most holy objects, the trophies, the ancient
_ex-votos_, the most revered temples, all the belongings of the old
worship of the Romans, had disappeared. It was as if they mourned the
souvenirs and the traditions of the whole country. They celebrated
expiatory services; they consulted the books of the Sibyl: the ladies
especially observed various _piacula_. But the secret consciousness of a
crime and infamy still remained.
Then an infernal idea took possession of the mind of Nero. He cast about
to see if he could find anywhere some miserable wretches, still more
detested by the Roman plebeians than himself, upon whom he could rest
the odium of the incendiarism. He thought of the Christians. The horror
which they testified towards the temples and the most venerated edifices
of the Romans made the idea plausible, that they should have been the
authors of this fire, the result of which was the destruction of these
sanctuaries. Their air of sadness in regarding the monuments appeared
like an injury to the nation. Rome was a very religious city, and
whoever protested against the national worship was at once remarked. It
should be remembered that certain rigorous Jews went so far as to refuse
to touch money which bore an effigy: they even saw a great crime in
bearing or looking at an image, unless engaged in the occupation of
carving. Others refused to pass beneath a city gate surmounted by a
statue. All this excited the ridicule and ill-will of the people.
Perhaps the idea that the Christians were incendiaries gained force from
their manner of talking about the final conflagration, their sinister
prophecies, their love of reiterating that the world would soon be
ended, and ended by fire. It is even admissible that some of the
faithful might have committed imprudences, and that there were pretexts
for accusing them of having wished, by anticipating the celestial
flames, to justify their oracles, at any price. Four and a half years
later the Apocalypse was to present a chant upon the burning of Rome,
for which the event of 64 probably furnished more than one feature. The
destruction of Rome by fire had been a Christian and Jewish dream; and
it was not merely a dream: the pious sectaries were pleased to see in
spirit the saints and angels applauding from the heights of heaven what
they regarded as a just expiation.
A certain number of persons suspected of belonging to the new sect were
arrested, and thrown into prison, which was of itself a punishment. The
first arrests were followed by many others. The people were surprised at
the multitude of converts who had accepted these gloomy doctrines: it
was only spoken of with alarm. All sensible men considered the
accusation of having caused the fire as extremely weak. "Their true
crime," said they, "is hatred of the human race." Although persuaded
that the burning was the crime of Nero, many serious Romans saw in this
work of the police a mode of delivering the city from a dreadful
nuisance. Tacitus, in spite of his pity, was of this opinion. And
Suetonius counted the sufferings which Nero heaped upon the partisans of
the new and mischievous superstitions as among his laudable measures.
These sufferings were something frightful. Such refinements of cruelty
had never been seen. Almost all those arrested were of the _humiliores_
(the poorest classes). The sentence of these unfortunates, when it
concerned high treason or sacrilege, was to be thrown to the beasts, or
to be burned alive in the amphitheatre. One of the most hideous traits
of Roman manners was that of making a _fête_, a public amusement, of
these tortures. The amphitheatres had become places of execution: the
tribunals furnished the victims. The condemned of the entire world were
forwarded to Rome for the provisionment of the circus and the amusement
of the people. At this time derision was added to the barbarism of these
tortures. The victims were kept for a feast day, to which was given,
without doubt, an expiatory character. "The morning spectacle,"
consecrated to the combats of animals, presented an appearance hitherto
unknown. The condemned, covered with the tawny skins of beasts, were
hurried into the arena, where they were torn by dogs. Some were
crucified: others, reclothed with tunics steeped in oil, wax, or resin,
were bound to posts, and reserved to light up the evening _fêtes_. When
the day lowered, these living torches were ignited. For this spectacle,
Nero offered his magnificent gardens beyond the Tiber, which occupied
the site of the present Borgo, the Square, and the Church of St. Peter.
Near by was a circus commenced by Caligula, in which the middle of the
_Spina_ was marked by an obelisk brought from Heliopolis (the same one
which in our day stands in the centre of the Square of St. Peter). This
place had already been the scene of massacres by the light of torches.
Caligula, in one of his walks, decapitated a certain number of consular
personages, senators, and Roman ladies, by the light of torches. The
idea of replacing lanterns by human bodies impregnated with inflammable
substances had occurred to the ingenious Nero. Burning alive was not a
new mode of suffering; it was the ordinary penance of incendiaries: but
it had never been made a system of illumination. By the light of these
hideous torches, Nero, who had established the custom of evening
entertainments, showed himself in the arena, sometimes mingling with the
people in the dress of a charioteer, sometimes conducting his chariot
and seeking applause. Women and young girls were involved in these
horrible games: a _fête_ was made of the nameless indignities which they
suffered. Under Nero, the custom was established of compelling the
condemned to play in the amphitheatre some mythological part entailing
the death of the actor. These hideous operas, where mechanical science
attained to prodigious effects, were very popular. The miserable wretch
was introduced into the arena, richly costumed as god or hero devoted to
death. He then represented by his suffering some tragic scene of the
fables consecrated by sculptors and poets. Sometimes it was the furious
Hercules burned on Mount [OE]ta, tearing the waxed tunic from his skin;
sometimes Orpheus torn in pieces by a bear; Dædalus thrown from heaven,
and devoured by beasts; Pasiphæ struggling in the embraces of the bull;
Attys murdered. Sometimes there were horrible masquerades, in which the
men were dressed like priests of Saturn with a red cloak, the women as
priestesses of Ceres with fillets on the brow; finally, at other times,
some dramatic work of the time, in which the hero was really condemned
to death as Laureolus; or the representations were those of such tragic
acts as that of Mucius Scævola. At the end of these hideous spectacles,
Mercury, with a red-hot iron wand, touched each corpse to see if it
moved. Some masked valets, dressed like Pluto or Orcus, dragged away the
dead by the feet, killing with hammers all who still breathed. The
Christian ladies of the highest respectability even suffered these
monstrosities. Some played the _rôle_ of the Danaïdes, others that of
Dirce. It is difficult to say what fable furnishes a more bloody picture
than that of the Danaïdes. The suffering which all mythological
tradition attributes to these guilty women was not cruel enough to
suffice for the pleasure of Nero and the _habitués_ of his amphitheatre.
Sometimes they were led out bearing urns, and received the fatal blow
from an actor figuring as Lynceus. Sometimes these unhappy beings went
through the series of the sufferings of Tartarus before the spectators,
and only died after hours of torments. The representations of Hell were
quite _à la mode_. Some years previous (the year 41), some Egyptians and
Nubians came to Rome, and made a great success in giving evening
performances, in which they displayed in order the horrors of the
subterranean world, conforming to the paintings of the burial-places of
Thebes, notably those of the tomb of Seti I.
As for the sufferings of the Dirces, there was no doubt about them.
People know the colossal group now in the Museum of Naples, called the
_Toro Farnese_,--Amphion and Zethus attaching Dirce to the horns of an
unmanageable bull, which is to drag her over the rocks and briers of
Cithæron. This mediocre Rhodian marble, brought to Rome in the time of
Augustus, was the object of universal admiration. How could there be a
finer subject for the hideous art which the cruelty of the time had made
in vogue, and which consisted in reproducing the celebrated statues in
living tableaux? An inscription and a fresco of Pompeii seem to prove
that this terrible scene was frequently repeated in the arenas, when a
woman was the sufferer. Naked, attached by the hair to the horns of a
furious bull, these poor wretches glutted the eyes of a ferocious
people. Some of the Christians immolated in this way were feeble in
body: their courage was superhuman. But the infamous crowd had eyes
alone for their torn bowels and lacerated bosoms.
After the day when Jesus expired in Golgotha, the _fête_ day in the
Gardens of Nero (it may be fixed about the first of August, 64) was the
most solemn in the history of Christianity. The solidity of any
construction is in proportion to the sum of virtue, of sacrifices, and
of devotion which has been laid down at its base. Only fanatics lay
foundations. Judaism endures still on account of the intense frenzy of
its zealots; Christianity, on account of its first witnesses. The orgy
of Nero was the grand baptism of blood which set Rome apart as the city
of martyrs in order to play a distinct _rôle_ in the history of
Christianity and to be the second Holy City. It was the taking
possession of the Vatican Hill by conquerors hitherto unknown there. The
odious, hair-brained man who governed the world did not perceive that he
was the founder of a new order, and that he signed a charter for the
future, the effects of which would be claimed after eighteen hundred
years.