Emperors of Rome | The Trouble with Christians (Lecture 15)

Lecture 15: In the summer of 64, Rome burned. We start the lecture with a description of the great fire, then move to its historically significant aftermath. As suspicion fell on Nero as the cause of the fire, he blamed the Christians and, thus, started the patchy history of Rome’s persecution of this sect.

From the Roman pagan perspective, Christianity was a strange cult. Its adherents worshiped a recently executed criminal, chose a device of degrading punishment as their symbol, and were suspected of nocturnal cannibalism. The tenets of Christianity itself did little to allay such suspicions, particularly its monotheistic insistence that the gods revered for centuries by the Roman state were not only to be denied but despised as demons and its apocalyptic doctrines of the world ending in flames. We then consider the possible guilt of Nero in causing the fire and contemplate other possibilities, as well. We end by discussing the other result of the fire: Nero’s Golden House (Domus Aurea). This structure, excessive and fascinating in itself, carries a significance for the history of architecture.

Essential Reading:
Cassius Dio, Roman History, book 62.
Suetonius, Nero.
Tacitus, Annals, 15.
Champlin, Nero, especially pp. 178–209.

Supplementary Reading:
DIR, “Nero.”
Griffin, Nero: The End of a Dynasty, especially chapter 8.
Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, especially chapter 3.