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 Œta, 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.