Status Updates From Rom brennt! Nero und das En...

“Disasters chase their own tails. They create the need for major expenditures, which have to be funded; but the economic dislocation means that there is likely to be less revenue available.”

“All buildings are to a greater or lesser degree ephemeral. Eventually they collapse or decay, or are restored and refurbished to the extent that virtually none of their original fabric remains intact.”

Arguing in chapter 6 that Nero’s post-fire rebuilding projects were incredibly innovative architecturally, marking a pioneering transformation in the use of concrete, arching, and the removal of beams. Barrett argues the “Golden House” can be regarded as having made the “single most significant advance in architectural innovation.”

The Colosseum’s name comes from the enormous statue Nero commissioned after the great fire, which was moved next to the stadium by Hadrian.

“But we must be open to the possibility that if there was in fact actions against the Christians after the fire, it might have had little or nothing to do with Nero,” but rather the result of local administrators in Rome.

Interesting point that Christians may have been blamed in its wake for the great fire, because the area of the city they likely settled in by the 60s CE was on the other side of the Tiber to the fire, and so was undamaged.

Fascinating, in order to combat the fire, firebreaks were needed. In the urban setting, this required tearing down flammable houses/structures in the fire’s wake. Yet, the fire moved so quickly that the only way to do so was by controlled burns. Thus, fires were being started to prevent the larger conflagration’s spread, a phenomenon Tacitus misidentifies to implicate Nero as causing the fire.

“In antiquity, fires were not simply unpredictable hazards of urban life; they were invested with a powerfully numinous significance.”

It’s interesting how Barrett’s using not just archeological sources, but also the notebooks of architects from the 19th and 20th century, to see how they understood their finds and quotidian aspects of finds that might not have made it into published research, but nevertheless can hint at fire damage.

The fire started in the Circus Maximus - a fire trap, filled with wooden stalls/standa. But infrastructure/the city isn’t independent, but always related to political decisions about space and the wider physical environment. It could have been worsened by Nero’s regulations concerning the cooking of food at Circus-adjacent stalls, and was made into a “great” fire by swirling Mediterranean Sirocco winds.

Indeed, fire fighting was seen as a responsibility of the emperor (and even female family members) took part. This includes Nero, Claudius, and even Commodus and Caligula.

Interesting argument for the link/nexus between state centralization under the new imperial system, transformations in local urban governance in Rome, and the impetus of fire (as a socially destabilizing and politically delegitimizing factor).

The fire brigades only become strongly centralized and professionalized under imperial direction (Augustus), which helped remove the destabilizing popularity or animosity private firefighting units of slaves directed by wealthy individuals elicited (either Crassus’ profiteering, or Marcus Egnatius Rufus’ use to gain political legitimacy/support).

Part of the reason ancient cities were such prolific consumers of wood (deforesters of their riverbanks, see James Scott’s work on rivers) and stone is because of the ubiquity of fire, which required frequent reconstruction. This was a point Strabo recognized in the time of Augustus.

Interesting point that the distinction between police and firefighting is very recent, as arson and looting were necessarily linked to the phenomenon of urban fire in pre-modern cities. Therefore, Rome’s early centralized fire fighting service was essentially a constabulary.

Late Republican Rome was characterized by “political breakdown and social unrest, which “spilled over onto the fabric of the city” in frequent arson.

Wait, but this is actually a later point in Livy, whereas new archeology argues that the sack had only a minimal impact on the city’s physical environment. The sack’s “mystique” was immense, but perhaps not its actual damage.

Rome was so devastated by the 390 sack/burning of the city that many Romans recommended abandoning the city entirely.

The sack of Rome in 390 occurred on the same day of the year as the great fire under Nero, a coincidence that was readily recognized by the latter’s contemporaries.

We can speculate, although with exceedingly little certainty, that the population of Rome in Nero’s time was probably between 500,000 and 1 million.

The word palace originally comes from the Palatine Hill, which housed imperial residences.

In this respect, the Tiber shaped the course of the fire, including by preventing it reaching beyond the river’s east bank.

“The great fire occurred with a particular historical and political context, but it was in itself a physical phenomenon, happening in and to an extent shaped by a specific physical environment.” Thus, we should approach Rome as a text itself.

Not least because Nero cleared away much of the material evidence for the fire in his building programs afterward, while other fires in the decades before or after the great fire obfuscate what damage happened when.

Important point that we shouldn’t take archeological evidence as more objective prima facie than textual evidence.

The Flavian emperors made the “denigration of Nero one of the central props of its propaganda.”

Nero was “fundamentally a people’s emperor.”

Remarkable point that Nero remained incredibly popular after ordering the assassination of his mother, with local towns going so far as to celebrate it and hold sacrifices in honor of her killing. This was because Nero had a “fine sense of knowing what would make the public happy,” particularly with regard to the Roman masses.