The conflagration burned for six days, with many priceless treasures lost. The fire eventually burned out, and sighs of relief were heaved, but then the flames sprang up again from beneath the ashes on the property of Tigellinus, of all people, and smoke again covered the sky.
The emperor was in Antium when the fire broke out and only returned when it had reached his own palace, which lay between Palatine Hill and the gardens of Maecenas, but there was nothing he could do either, and the imperial palace as well as all its surroundings burned down.
Four districts were untouched, three burned down to the ground, and the other seven suffered severe damage.
The great fire started on July 17—the same date as the Senones had torched an as yet tiny Rome. Uri lay low in his cottage and blessed the Eternal One that he had bought poultry and goats, which the peasant had not been keen to bother with; now he drove them into a pen, on which he placed a strong lock as there was going to be a food shortage. He had his own well, for which he also gave blessings to the Eternal One. On the following day, the third after the outbreak had started, Hagar came back from Far Side, where she has hurried when the fire broke out. Nothing at all had burned there as the fire had not jumped from one bank of the Tiber to the other, and nobody there would dream of igniting a blaze.
“The city, though, the city!” Hagar wailed, as if Rome had become her place of residence, and she scattered ashes over herself.
Not long after Hagar, Marcellus also showed up.
“He is coming for the second time, He is coming!” he proclaimed. “It’s all true! The prophets have been preaching the truth, His prophets! He sent Satan on ahead, as it is written, and Nero cleared the way for Him! This fire is His fire! He is nigh! He’ll be here at any moment! It has started, it has started! Get down on your knees and pray!”
“You nitwit!” Uri bellowed. “Don’t do these things! It’s dangerous!”
“This is the proof!” Marcellus yelled. “Even the infidels can see! Even the pagans can see! This is His doing!”
“You numskull, do you want people to think the Jews were the arsonists?”
“The unfaithful will end up in Hell!” yelled Marcellus. “You’ll be the first! That’s what you deserve!”
He called on his mother to join them, because they were praying over in Far Side; a lot of people had been joining in, and in a great fever of excitement they were awaiting the Anointed, who had sent a message with the fire and would be coming with a sword. Sustained by the faith of His believers, He was treading on clouds, the smoke was His smoke, the flames — His flames. Hagar, however, felt too tired to entertain any wish to traipse back over there.
“You too will be consigned to Hell!” said Marcellus, baring his lips in derision at his mother before he raced off.
Uri uttered a groan.
He could see this spelled big trouble.
The ruins were still smoking when from the Rostra, which had been kept intact, Nero announced with due imperial dignity that he would rebuild a Rome more splendid than it had ever been, saying that the fire had been a blessing in disguise, because now he could have an even bigger royal palace erected, replete with the loveliest imaginable gardens for the glory of Rome. He promised to have a navigable canal cut from Lake Avernus to the mouth of the Tiber which could supply enough water for fighting fires; Rome would be turned into an orderly city, not a dirty hole of narrow, dark, unfathomable alleyways — more orderly than Alexandria. He decreed that debris and rubbish should be transported down the Tiber by ships and tipped onto the marshes of Ostia. As for the buildings themselves, he ordered that up to the second story they were to be solidly constructed, without wooden beams, of hard rock from the cliffs of Alba. In addition, every building was to be enclosed by its own proper wall, not by one common to others. He asked the populace to propitiate the gods by offering prayers to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina, while Juno in the Capitol, which the fire had left intact, was to be entreated by matrons. Nero also pronounced that he had heard there were rumors he himself had set fire to Rome! He, the emperor! What an unrivaled, loathsome, fanciful insinuation! What base slander! He was therefore giving the order to arrest all those sinister, conspiratorial, lunatic, evil Jews who say that the Great Fire was the vengeance of their God, who damned Rome, cast an evil spell on Rome, to befuddle, stupefy and pollute the minds of the Roman populace. They are the ones who caused the fire and occasioned Rome’s misery, and they are guilty of causing the deaths of hundreds of innocent citizens as many saw and can give witness.
The citizens catcalled and whistled, cursing the Jews, and they rushed to take revenge.
The Nazarenes, and anyone who was alleged to be such, were seized and tortured, and they readily admitted to being incendiary and named their accomplices. Many Jews were denounced, by way of preemptive exculpation, by other Jews who thus avoided torture, this being a simple way to rid oneself of rivals and enemies. The Augustans even detained and stripped guiltless passersby, and anyone found lacking a foreskin was hacked to pieces, though anyone who did possess one was beaten to death in fury anyway. It was not advisable to be out on Rome’s remaining streets during those days.
It was not just Jews who had fled from Alexandria to Italia but also a fair number of Greeks, and they brought with them their own tales of horror. Superstitions which had grown up in Alexandria during the Bane were also propagated in Rome: on the Sabbath Jews drank the blood of non-Jews; they slaughtered Greek children and roasted them, which is why they did not eat pork. The most watertight accusation against Jews was one of black magic: the Jews were able by muttering their curses anywhere to set anything ablaze, they had no need for a spark or tinder. Most of those who were tortured confessed that this charge was well-founded before their skulls were cracked by the wheel. It was a highly credible charge too, the political commentators recalled: at the time of Germanicus’s death Piso had been accused first and foremost of black magic, and he had admitted as much by the fact that he had gone on to commit suicide even while the trial was still in progress. He, too, had been perverted by the Jews.
Seeing that they had betrayed mother Rome, so read the charge, those who were to be executed were first sewed into the hides of wild animals together with monkeys, rats and dogs like matricides, and they were then cast into the Tiber. But then they ran out of monkeys, so then those sewed into the skins were cast to packs of dogs. But then there was a shortage of skins and the dog-owners began to object because they had trained their animals to run, but once they had eaten human flesh they would never again be obedient, as a result of which Nero had the Nazarenes thrown to wild beasts in the wooden amphitheater on the Field of Mars, dressing up himself as a charioteer and watching the proceedings from close at hand in the arena, but those animals eventually had their fill and there were not enough of them anyway, so Nero had the remainder crucified in his gardens which had been consumed by the fire, giving free entrance.