Great Fire of Rome - July 18, 64

The Great Fire of Rome began on this day in the year 64.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to this day in history class. It's July today.
In the year sixty four, a fire broke out in
Rome that would destroy a lot of the city. It
would also make the emperor Nero infamous. It's probably the
thing people associate most with Nero today. So Nero was
the great grandson of Caesar Augustus. He became emperor at

(00:24):
the age of sixteen, and he was very ambitious because
also ran in the family. His mother was also very ambitious,
but he got her out of the way, first by
moving her to a different residence and then allegedly by
killing her. He also wanted to build a giant palace
complex of his own and call it Neropolis. This fire,
though it probably started near the chariot stadium known as

(00:47):
the Circus Maximus, the Colosseum that people think of today,
was not yet built. The wind spread the fire to
wooden housing. Sometimes this housing is described as slums. Sometimes
it's described as a part. It was basically densely packed
wooden housing that allowed the fire to spread very very quickly.
Rome had fourteen districts at the time. Three of them

(01:10):
were totally destroyed in this fire. Almost all of them
also sustained some damage. Tacitus wrote about this in his history,
calling it a disaster that was quote graver and more
terrible than any other which had befallen this city. He
also said that people were prevented from fighting the fire.
There were definitely firefighters in Rome at this point, but

(01:31):
it's not clear why they either couldn't or didn't fight
the fire successfully. He did not write this history when
it happened, though, he would have been a child or
maybe young teenager when the fire actually occurred, and he
wrote about it later on July. People managed to create
a firebreak, which finally stopped the spread of the fire,
but it started up again a few days later. Overall,

(01:53):
it was catastrophic for Rome. Nero blamed it on Christians,
and then he used the fire as an excuse to
persecute them, including torturing and executing the Christian population of Rome.
He also used some of the land that had been
cleared by the fire to start building some of those
fancy new palaces that he had been so enthusiastic about.

(02:15):
He also implemented new building codes. He built other structures
as well. All of this uh contributed to the suspicion
that he had had something to do with the fire,
or at least hadn't tried very hard to stop it.
And as for probably the most frequently asked question, no,
Nero did not actually fiddle while Rome was burning. The

(02:37):
fiddle wasn't invented until much later on. He did like
music emplay instruments, the instruments that he played were more
like a liar, and Tacitus did claim that as Rome
was burning, Nero performed a song about the burning of
Troy on his private stage. Even if you're thinking about
the more figurative term fiddle rather than actually playing the

(02:58):
fiddle as an instrument, it's not exactly that he just
sat around frivolously doing nothing while the fire was happening.
Tacita sort of implies that he did not come back
until his some of his personal property was at risk
of the fire, but once he was back, he set
up shelters, he distributed food, and those shelters and food

(03:21):
distribution points included on his own grounds. Nero's power, as
ember did eventually wayne. He died on ju nine of
the year sixty eight, when he was facing arrest and
a likely execution, and he instead took his own life
Thanks to Christopher Hasciotis for his research work on today's
episode and Tatari Harrison, who editson produces all these episodes.

(03:43):
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