18 Julho 64

Great fire of Rome: A fire begins to burn in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control while Emperor Nero reportedly plays his lyre and sings while watching the blaze from a safe distance. How large the fire was is up for debate. According to Tacitus, who was 9 at the time of the fire, it spread quickly and burnt for five days. It completely destroyed four of fourteen Roman districts and severely damaged seven. The only other historian who lived through the period and mentioned the fire is Pliny the Elder who wrote about it in passing. Other historians who lived through the period (including Josephus, Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, and Epictetus) make no mention of it. The only other account on the size of fire is 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 implies less than a tenth of the city was burnt. Rome contained about 1,700 private houses and 47,000 apartment blocks.

It was said by Suetonius and Cassius Dio that Nero sang the "Sack of Ilium" in stage costume while the city burned. However, Tacitus' account has Nero in Antium at the time of the fire. Tacitus said that Nero playing his lyre and singing while the city burned was only rumor. Popular legend remembers Nero fiddling while Rome burned, but this is an anachronism as the fiddle had not yet been invented, and would not be for over 1,000 years.

According to Tacitus, upon hearing news of the fire, Nero rushed back to Rome to organize a relief effort, which he paid for from his own funds. After the fire, Nero opened his palaces to provide shelter for the homeless, and arranged for food supplies to be delivered in order to prevent starvation among the survivors. In the wake of the fire, he made a new urban development plan. Houses after the fire were spaced out, built in brick, and faced by porticos on wide roads. Nero also built a new palace complex known as the Domus Aurea in an area cleared by the fire. This was a 300 acre palatial complex that featured the Colossus Neronis, a 37-meter-high bronze statue of Nero placed just outside of the entrance. To find the necessary funds for the reconstruction, tributes were imposed on the provinces of the empire.

It is uncertain who or what actually caused the fire. Tacitus says that Nero had Christians arrested and condemned "not so much for incendiarism as for their hatred of the human race." Christians confessed to the crime, but it is not known whether these were false confessions induced by torture. Suetonius and Cassius Dio favor Nero as the arsonist with an insane desire to destroy the city as his motive. However, major accidentally started fires were common in ancient Rome. In fact, Rome burned again under Vitellius in 69 and under Titus in 80.

Wikipedia