In July 64 ce Rome experienced one of the worst cataclysms in its history. For nine days a major fire ravaged the megalopolis. This small book, which consists of five chapters, two appendices (one on literary sources, the other on the chronology of the fire's spread), a few bibliographical orientations and an index, is the account of this disaster. It is also about how the Romans experienced the trauma. This holistic approach explains the plan chosen by W.: analysis of the vulnerability of the megalopolis to disasters; restitution of the fire and its damage; Nero's reaction; the reconstruction of Rome; and the legacy of the Great Fire.
The first chapter, ‘Perils of Life in Rome’, the longest one, justifies the subtitle. Indeed, according to W., life in the megalopolis would have functioned as a sounding board: overcrowding, poor quality housing, crime, pollution, malnourishment, infectious diseases … all these factors would have belonged to the daily life of a particularly exposed and ‘abysmally poor people’ (p. 1). The origin of this topical presentation is known: an article by A. Scobie (Klio 68 [1986], 399–433), compiling and combining the same literary sources (Cicero, Seneca, Martial, Juvenal …), without thinking about the genre of these texts. R. Laurence, E. Lo Cascio, S. Panciera and others have already drawn attention to the biases of this ‘dystopian’ model that no longer seems useful. Beyond historiographical disagreements, such a simplistic description of life in the capital (p. 17: ‘Once night fell, Rome was the Wild West’; p. 23: ‘Rome stank’; p. 33: ‘Politics in the Roman Republic was like a grand and nasty game of Monopoly’), based on essentialist models (p. 3: ‘A society's response to disaster tells us a great deal about that society's character, that is, its nature’) and miserabilism once theorised by J. Carcopino (Daily Life in Ancient Rome [1941, 2nd ed. 2003], referred to by W. on p. 161), no longer has its place, even in a work intended for a wide audience. But this apocalyptic vision, which gives rise to multiple repetitions, allows W. to insist on the inevitability of the catastrophe that threatened the Romans, conscious but helpless agents in their ultimate fate. Better, the precariousness of their condition would have had them mentally prepared.
The fire (as described in Chapter 2: ‘Inferno’) broke out under the arches of the Circus Maximus and then reached almost the entire City through the valleys. A useful appendix (pp. 134–6), associated with an efficient cartography (although we are surprised to see the ‘Colosseum Valley’ appear on a map of 64 ce), offers a reconstruction of the pathway followed by the fire. The topographic elements are based on C. Panella's works for the catalogue of the exhibition held at the Colosseum, Rome, 12 April–18 September 2011 (M.A. Tomei and R. Rea [edd.], Nerone [2011]), the restitution of the trauma on Tacitus’ account and, to a lesser extent, on Suetonius and Cassius Dio. Concerning the literary evidence, W. has not hesitated ‘to fill in blanks where it seemed warranted and necessary to convey a sense of what happened and how Rome's residents experienced a fire’ (p. 142 n. 1). The result, supported by comparisons with more recent catastrophes (London 1666, Chicago 1871, San Francisco 1906, Tokyo 1923, Hurricane Katrina in 2005), is a vivid narration. But it leaves readers faced with doubts (Who is speaking? Tacitus? W. himself?), without sparing them from sociological or psychologising banalities (p. 45: ‘Rich and poor alike fell to the flames and the crowds, but chances were better for the prosperous’; p. 46: ‘Fear and despair, coupled with the physical and mental exhaustion of trying to stay ahead of the fire, broke the will of some. Others who could have escaped simply gave up and embraced their end’). The extent of the damage was undoubtedly terrible, even if, contrary to what W. affirms, it has been admittedly exaggerated by sources hostile to Nero. Besides, W. does not quote the sole text that, as far as I know, gives a quantified estimate of domestic destruction: 4000 insulae and 132 domus (Pseudo-Seneca, Epistula ad Paulum 12). Although provided by an apocryphal and late antique text, the rather reasonable order of magnitude is generally considered to be plausible. The Great Fire was not the mother of all following catastrophes. However, W. deals at length with Nero's behaviour. The emperor and the key elements of his black legend form the heart of the following three chapters.
Did Nero sing or fiddle the fall of Troy while watching a burning Rome? Without excluding an anti-Neronian fabrication, W. considers the story credible because it conforms to the features of an emperor who considered the world as a stage and who believed that he was the best actor on it (Chapter 3: ‘The Day After’). Did he start the fire? W. reconstructs a mock trial (pp. 81–5), where prosecution and defence exchange arguments and counter-arguments, without reaching a conclusion whether the emperor was guilty or not. Why divert suspicion towards Christians (pp. 85–93)? They were perfect scapegoats (contra B. Shaw, ‘The Myth of the Neronian Persecution’, JRS 105 [2015], 73–100). W. justifies his ‘fideist’ approach to sources (see Appendix A, pp. 129–33) by concluding the portrait of a Nero with selective madness, in a city sociologically receptive to his irrational behaviour: ‘In a world with very little social mobility, where most people were trapped in a life full of discomfort, insecurity, and danger, and where the lower classes were subject to the whims and coercion of Rome's elites, some would be amused by a bit of subversion from the emperor’ (p. 94).
We find the same logic in Chapter 4 (‘Neropolis’). W. presents the principles that guided the reconstruction of Rome and limited the vulnerability of the capital to future disasters: regularisation of the urban plan, generalisation of the use of fire-resistant materials, fire-fighting plan, limiting the height of buildings … even if Rome ‘remained an unprecedentedly overcrowded and complex preindustrial city whose inhabitants were inured to discomfort and risk’ (p. 100). Nero especially seized the opportunity to rebuild the palace and therefore the City in his image. W. devotes a lot of attention to the Oppian pavilion, integrates the latest discoveries on the Domus Aurea (such as the so-called cenatio rotunda of the Palatine) to better come back to one of his theses: ‘The Great Fire provided Nero with [the] splendid opportunit[y] to fulfill his aspiration to live his life as a theater’ (p. 110).
For W., it was the Great Fire that made Nero (Chapter 5: ‘Legacy’). In contemporary culture, the image of the emperor is always linked to the catastrophe of 64 ce. In a somewhat disjointed way, W. tries to inventory its heritage, from the Flavian restoration to the Christian persecutions of the third century, passing through the supposed martyrdom of Peter in the Circus of Caligula: ‘Like the Colosseum, St. Peter's Basilica is a grandchild of the Great Fire’ (p. 125). Such punchlines reveal how this book should be read: a vivid description of one of the most traumatic events the Romans experienced, but where sensationalism competes with historical analysis.
