How did the great fire of Rome start
While Rome was ruled less than two decades by the notorious emperor Nero, his reign has seen tremendous changes in the empire's capital city Rome.
The great-grandson of Caesar Augustus was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus – better known as Nero. Agrippina was the mother of Nero and sister of Emperor Gaius Caligula.
The Emperor banished him and his mother Agrippina into the relatively tiny Pontian Islands when Nero was a child.
The Great Fire of Rome book
However, two years later, when Uncle of Agrippina, Claudius, took over the empire, the banishment was lifted.
Nero's mother swiftly convinced Claudius to marry her and make her son heir to the Empire. In A.D. 54, Claudius was assassinated.
He was allegedly a victim of Agrippina's poisonous mushrooms. At the age of 16, Nero became Rome's emperor.
Nero moved to a separate residence a few years later and was reported to have killed her mother shortly thereafter.
Nero's ambition had no end. A third of Rome was one of his grandest plans for building a complex series of palaces known as Neropolis.
However, this proposal was strongly opposed by the Senate. Exactly for almost 2000 years, what happened next remained a mystery.
On the night of 19th July 64, the Circus Maximus, the mammoth chariot stadium in Rome shot fire. There was nothing unusual in a city of two million population about this fire.
The heat swelling in summer regularly sparked conflagrations around Rome, especially in the city's slum areas.
At the same time, Nero himself was miles away. He was in the cooler coastal resort of Antium. This, however, was not a common fire.
It kept burning for six days before they came under control. The fire again broke and burned down for three more days. 10 of the 14 districts of Rome were ruined when the smoke was cleared.
The 800-year-old Jupiter Temple and the Vestae Atrium, the heart of the Vestal Virgins, have been destroyed. Rome was destroyed approximately by two-thirds.
Historians blamed Nero for the disaster, suggesting he began to fire to bypass Senate and reconstruct Rome according to his plan.
The aristocrat and historian Tacitus who claimed that Nero was watching Rome burn while playing his fiddle happily came up with much that is known about the great fire at Rome.
Thug gangs prevented the public from fighting the fire, and threatened to torture if they tried to control fire, Tacitus described. Some theories suggest that Nero had deliberately got it leveled.
Domus Aurea was constructed in the wake of the fire and the majestic number of villas and pavilions in Nero placed on a landscaped park and a man-made lake.
Art historian Eric Varner states that “it would have been very inappropriate for the elite in Rome."
"They would have been glad to have built the Domus Aurea in Nero's country, but it really has been an outstanding statement to do so here in the city."
Tacitus belonged to this Roman elite. So, it is difficult to know whether his writing is biased. In fact, at the time of the fire still Tacitus was a boy.
In 68 A.D. when Nero died, he would have been a young adolescent. Nero himself blamed the fire for a new obscure Jewish religious sect called the Christians.
Nero crucified them brutally and mercilessly. He would feed Christians to lions during gladiator matches. He often lit the burning carcasses of the Christian human torches on his garden parties. However, there is proof that in 64 A.D.
Many Roman Christians believed that Rome would quickly be destroyed by fire. This was the reason behind to be blamed Christian for the fire.
Is there a way to find who or what started one of the most destructive fires of Rome after 20 centuries? Is the allegation of Tacitus true?
Or Nero is the mastermind behind this monumental tragedy. Archaeologists, historians and researchers have been trying to identify the contemporary cause of the fire.