Rome is Burning: Nero and the Fire That Ended a Dynasty

Abstract

Barrett’s new book, aimed at both an academic and general readership, is an object lesson in how ancient historians work. Every major disaster raises basic questions about its date, extent, causes, and consequences. Modern historians offer answers from archival material—state and private (media) eyewitness statements, statistics, reports, etc. Ancient historians, lacking such resources, have to look elsewhere. Hence, they must be fully interdisciplinary. Formal histories are usually insufficient to consult exclusively because of the lateness of their composition, authorial bias, incomplete survival, etc. Hence, ancient historians must also turn to a wider literature, such as poetry and plays, and to inscriptions, coins, archaeological finds, and comparisons with experiences of the same sort of disaster at other times. To bind all of this evidence together, they often resort to reasoned speculation: The line between the ancient historian and the historical novelist is distinct, but fine!Barrett, an authority on the early Roman Empire, deploys all these approaches to conclude that the Great Fire of Rome lasted from 19 to 28 July, a.d. 64. Starting in the Circus Maximus, it swept around and up the Palatine hill and then devastated much of the city. The fire began accidentally, and strong winds spread it: Neither Nero nor local Christians, both of whom were popular scapegoats, were responsible for setting it. Nero’s subsequent re-development of Rome, including his building of a grand Golden House, stimulated major advances in architecture and art, though it led directly to his fall and long-term fiscal disaster.Barrett’s knowledge about the subject and his passionate desire to impart it is particularly evident in his enthusiastic summary of the most recent archaeological discoveries about both the severity of the initial fire damage and the ambition of Nero’s rebuilding program. He is, however, always careful to point out the difficulties involved in using all types of source; in this respect, he gives much space to evidence from the historian Tacitus. His lengthy treatment of Tacitus’ description of Nero’s savage punishment of Christian scapegoats may, indeed, smack of self-indulgence; it certainly comes close to academic heresy in its revival of the view that it may be a late Roman interpolation. Yet his frankness is forgiveable: Lay readers should be aware of the range of problems that have to be explained away by special pleading if the passage is to be accepted as authentic.Overall, Barrett’s book is a mine of information that scholars will cite copiously. However, apart from its treatment of the Christians, it propounds two questionable hypotheses. (1) Barrett argues throughout that the Roman elite turned against Nero because of financial losses incurred by the fire, resulting first in failed conspiracies and finally Nero’s deposition and suicide in a.d. 68. (2) He also argues that the fiscal burden of the fire forced Nero into a major debasement of the coinage, thereby starting a downward spiral that ended in the collapse of the Roman monetary system in the third century.The first argument is debatable. The upper-class rejection of Nero that caused his downfall may well have occurred much later than a.d. 64, totally unrelated to the fire.1 This notion is, however, part of the cut and thrust of speculative ancient history; neither case has definitive proof. More substantive is the recent metallurgical research that rules against Barrett's second argument about a major financial crisis under Nero that required him to enact an emergency debasement of the coinage. The debasement of the coinage was actually part of a deliberate and deft way of breaking the direct correlation in value between the gold aureus and the silver denarius, which was badly disrupting the whole monetary system.2 Another positive result was that it brought the denarius, the dollar of the western Empire, into line with the drachma, the dollar of the eastern empire. Barrett’s own statements about the debasement confirm the efficacy of the reform, which kept the system stable until the early third century.