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F2Hlr
THE BURNING OF ROME-EARLY
CHRISTIANITY.
H A D it not been for one crime with which all
ancient writers have mixed u p his name, Christianity might have left Nero on one side, not speaking of him, but simply looking and passing by,
while he, on his part, might scarcely so much as
have heard of the existence of Christians amid the
crowded thousands of his capital. That crime was
he burning of Rome; and by precipitating the Era
of Martyrdom, it brought him into immediate and
terrible connection with the Church of Christ.
Whether he was really guilty or not of having
ordered that immense conflagration, it is certain
that he was suspected of it by his contemporaries,
and has been charged with it by many historians of
Ms country* It is certain, also, that his head had
J>een full for years of the image of flaming cities;
that he used to say that Priam was to be congratulated on having seen the ruin of T r o y ; that he
was iitever able to resist the fixed idea of a crime; that
the year following he gave a public recitation of a
poem called Troica, from the orchestra of the
theatre, and that this was only the burning of Rome
under a thin disguise; and that just before his
flight he meditated setting fire to Rome once more.
I t was rumored that when some one h a d told him
h o w Gaius used to quote the phrase of Euripides—
" When J. am dead, sink the whole earth in flames 1"

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he replied, " N a y , but while I live !" He was accused
of the ambition of destroying Rome, that he might
replace its tortuous and narrow lanes with broad,
regular streets and uniform Hellenic edifices, and so
have an excuse for changing its name from Rome
to Neropolis. I t was believed that in his morbid
appetite for new sensations he was quite capable of
devising a truly artistic spectacle which would thrill
his jaded sestheticism, and supply him with vivid
imagery for the vapid antitheses of his poems. It
was both believed and recorded, that during the
terrors of the actual spectacle, he had climbed the
Tower of Maecenas, had expressed his delight at
what he called " t h e flower and loveliness of the
flames," and in his scenic dress had sung jon his own
private stage the " Capture of Ilium." jit was said
that all attempts to quench the tire had belen forcibly
resisted; that men had been seen hurling lighted
brands upon various buildings, and shotting that
they had orders for what they did; that men of even
Consular rank had detected Nero's slaves on their
own property with tow and torches, and had not
ventured to touch them; that when the wind had
changed, and there was a lull in the conflagration, it
had burst out again from houses that abutted on the
gardens of his creature Tigeliinus. At any rate, the
Romans could hardly have been mistaken in thinking that Nero might have done m u c h more than he
did, to encourage the efforts made to extinguish the
flames. It was remembered that, a few years earlier,
Claudius, during a conflagration, had t»een seen,
two nights running, seated in a little courtiag-ofliee

TEE BURNING

OF ROME.

%

with two baskets full of silver at his side, to encourage the firemen, and secure the assistance of
the people and the soldiers. Nero certainly, in this
far more frightful crisis, did nothing of the kind.
Even if some of the rumors which tended to implicate him in having caused the calamity had no better foundation than idle rumor, or the interested
plots of robbers who seized the opportunity for
promiscuous plunder, they acquired plausibility
from the whole color of Nero's character and conversation, and they seemed to be justified by the
way in which he used for his own advantage the
disaster of his people. For immediately after the fire
he seized a much larger extent of ground than he had
previously possessed, and began to rear with incredible celerity his " Golden House," a structure unexampled in the ancient world for gorgeous magnificence. It was in this amazing structure, on
which the splendor of the whole Empire was recklessly squandered, that Nero declared, with a smirk
of self-satisfaction, that now at last he was lodged
like a human being!
But whether Nero was guilty of this unparalleled
outrage on the lives and fortunes of his subjects or
not, certain it is that on July 19, A. D. 64, in the
tenth year of his reign, a fire broke out in shops
full of inflammable materials which lined the valley
between the Palatine and Caelian Hills. For six
days and seven nights it rolled in streams of resistless flame over the greater part of the city, licking
up the palaces and temples of the gods which covered the low hills, and raging through whole streets

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of the wretched wooden tenements in which dwelt
myriads of the poorer inhabitants who crowded the
lower regions of Rome. When its course had been
checked by the voluntary destruction of a vast mass
of buildings which lay in its path, it broke out a
second time, and raged for three days longer in the
less crowded quarters of the city, where its spread
was even more fatal to public buildings and the
ancient shrines of the gods. Never since the Gauls
burnt Rome had so deadly a calamity fallen on the
afflicted city. Of its fourteen districts four alone
escaped untouched; three were completely laid in
ashes ; in the seven others were to be seen the
wrecks of many buildings, scathed and gutted by the
flames. The disaster to the city was historically
irreparable. If Nero was indeed guilty, then the
act of a wretched buffoon, mad with the diseased
sensibility of a depraved nature, has robbed the
world of works of art, and memorials, and records,
priceless and irrecoverable. We can rather imagine
than describe the anguish with which the Romans,
bitterly coiicious of their own degeneracy, contemplated the destruction of the relics of their national
glory in the days when Rome was free. What could
ever replace for them or their children such monuments as the Temple of Luna, built by Servius
Tullius; and the Ara Maxima, which the Arcadian
Evander had reared to Hercules •. and the Temple
of Jupiter Stator, built in accordance with the
vow of Romulus; and the little humble palace of
Numa; and the srhine of Yesta with the Penates
of the Roman people and the spoils of

THE BURNING

OF ROME.

5

conquered kings ? What structural magnificence could atone for the loss of memorials which
the song of Virgil and of Horace had rendered
still more dear? The city might rise more regular from its ashes, and with broader streets,
but its artificial uniformity was a questionable
boon. Old men declared that the new streets
were far less healthy, in consequence of their
more scorching glare, and they muttered among
themselves that many an object of national interest
had been wantonly sacrificed to gratify the womanish freak of a miserable actor.
But the sense of permanent loss was overwhelmed
at first by the immediate confusion and agony of
the scene. Amid the sheets of flame that roared on
every side under their dense canopy of smoke, the
shrieks of terrified women and the wail of infants
and children were heard above the crash of falling
houses. The incendiary fires seemed to be burst,
ing forth in so many directions, that men stood
staring in dumb stupefaction at the destruction of
their property, or rushed hither and thither in helpless amazement. The lanes and alleys were blocked
up with the concourse of struggling fugitives. Many
were suffocated by the smoke, or trampled down in
the press. Many others were burnt to death in
their own burning houses, some of whom purposely
flung themselves into the flames in the depth of
their despair. The density of the population that
found shelter in the huge many-storied lodginghouses increased the difficulty of escape; and when
they had escaped with bare life, a vast multitude 9i

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homeless, shivering, hungry human beings—many
of them bereaved of their nearest and dearest relatives, many of them personally injured, and most of
them deprived of all their possessions, and destitute
of the means of subsistence—found themselves huddled together in vacant places in one vast brotherhood of hopeless wretchedness. Incidents like
these are not often described by ancient authors.
As a rule, the classic writers show themselves singularly callous to all details of individual misery.
But this disaster was on a scale so magnificent, that
it had impressed the imaginations of men who often
treat the anguish of multitudes as a matter of course.
Even if he had been destitute of every human
feeling, yet policy and necessity would have induced Nero to take what steps he could to alleviate the immediate pressure. To create discontent and misery could never have formed any
part of his designs. He threw open the Campus
Martius, the Monumenta Agnppag, even his own
gardens, to the people. Temporary buildings were
constructed ; all the furniture which was most indis
pensable was brought from Ostia and neighboring
towns; wheat was sold at about a fourth of the
average price. It was all in vain. The misery which
it was believed that his criminal folly had inflicted
kindled a sense of wrong too deeply seated to be removed by remedies for the past, or precautions for
the future. The resentment was kept alive by the
benevolences and imposts which Nero now demanded, and by the greedy ostentation with which he
seized every beautiful or valuable object to adorn the

THE BURNING

OF ROME.

7

insulting splendor of a palace built on the yet warm
ashes of so wide an area of the ruined city.
Nero was so secure in his absolutism, he had
hitherto found it so impossible to shock the feelings
of the people or to exhaust the terrified adulation of
the Senate, that he was usually indifferent to the
pasquinades which were constantly holding up his
name to execration and contempt. But now he felt
that he had gone too far, and that his power would
be seriously imperilled if he did not succeed in diverting the suspicions of the populace He was perfectly aware that when the people in the streets
cursed those who set fire to the city, they meant to
curse Mm. If he did not take some immediate step
he felt that he might perish, as Gaius had perished
before him, by the dagger of the assassin.
It is at this point of his career that Nero becomes
a prominent figure in the history of the Church. It
was this phrase of cruelty which seemed to throw a
blood-red light over his whole character, and led
men to look on him as the very incarnation of the
world-power in its most demoniac aspect—as worse
than the Antiochus epiphanes of Daniel's Apocalypse
—as the Man of Sin whom (in language figurative
indeed, yet awfully true) the Lord should slay with
the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. For Nero endeavored to fix
the odious crime of having destroyed the capital of
the world upon the most inocent and faithful of his
subjects—upon the only subjects who offered heartfelt prayers on his behalf—the Roman Christians.

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They were the defenceless victims of this horrible
charge ; for though they were the most harmless,
they were also the most hated and the most slandered
of living men.
W h y he should have thought of singling out the
Christians has always been a curious problem, for
at this point St. Luke ends the Acts of the Apostles,
perhaps purposely dropping the curtain, because it
would have been perilous and useless to narrate the
horrors in which the hitherto neutral or friendly
Roman Government began to play so disgraceful a
part.
Neither Tacitus, nor Suetonius, nor the
Apocalypse, help us to solve this particular problem.
The Christians had filled no large space in the eye
of the world.
Until the days of Domitian we do
not hear of a single noble or distinguished person
who had joined their ranks. That the Pudens and
Claudia of Rom. xvi. were the Pudens and Claudia
of Martial's Epigrams seems to me to be a baseless
dream. If the " foreign superstition" with which
Pomponia Grsecina, wife of Aulus Plautius, the
conqueror of Britain, was charged, and of which
she was acquitted, was indeed, as has been suspected, the Christian religion, at any rate the name
of Christianity was not alluded to by the ancient
writers who had mentioned the circumstance. Even
if Rom. xvi. was addressed to Rome, and not, as I
believe, to Ephesus, " t h e y of the household of
Narcissus which were in the Lord " were unknown
slaves, as also were " t h e y of Caesar's household."
The slaves and artisans, Jewish and Gentile, who
formed the Christian community at Rome, had

TEE BURNING

OF ROME.

9

never in any way come into collision with the
Roman Government. They must have been the
victims rather than the exciters of the Messianic
tumults—for such they are conjectured to have
been—which led to the expulsion of the Jews from
Rome by the futile edict of Cludius. Nay, so
obedient and docile were they required to be by the
very principles on which their morality was based
—so far were they removed from the fierce independence of the Jewish zealots—that, in writing to
them a few years earlier, the greatest of their
leaders had urged upon them the payment of tribute
and a submission to the higher powers, not only for
wrath but also for conscience sake because the earthly
ruler, in his office of repressing evil works, is a minister of God. That the Christians were entirely innocent of the crime charged against them was well
known both at the time and afterwards. But how
was it that Nero sought popularity and partly averted the detep rage which was rankling in many hearts
against himself, by torturing men and women, on
whose agonies he thought that the populace would
gaze not only with a stolid indifference, but even
with fierce satisfaction ?
Gibbon has conjectured that the Christians were
confounded with the Jews, and that the detestation
universally felt for the latter fell with double force
upon the former. Christians suffered even more
than the Jews because of the calumnies so assiduously circulated against them, and from what appeared to the ancients to be the revolting absurdity
of their peculiar tenets. "Nero," says Tacitus,

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" exposed to accusation, and tortured with the most
exquisite penalties, a set of men detested for their
enormities, whom the common people called ' Christians. ' Christus, the founder of this sect, was executed during the reign of Tiberius by the Procurator,
Pontius Pilate, and the deadly superstition suppressed for a time, began to burst out once more,
not only throughout Judaea, where the evil had its
root, but even in the City, whither from every quarter all things horrible or shameful are drifted, and
find their votaries." The lordly disdain which prevented Tacitus from making any inquiry into the
real views and character of the Christians, is shown
by the fact that he catches up the most baseless allegations against them. He talks of their doctrines
as savage and shameful, when they breathed the
very spirit of peace and purity. He charges them
with being animated by a hatred of their kind, when
their central tenet was a universal charity. " The
masses," he says, " called them ' Christians;' " and
while he almost apologizes for staining his page
with so vulgar an
appellation, he merely
mentions in passing, that, though innocent
of the charge of being turbulent incendiaries, on which they were tortured to death, they
were yet a setof guilty and infamous sectaries, to be
classed with the lowest dregs of Roman criminals
But the haughty historian throws no light on one
difficulty, namely, the circumstances which led to the
Christians being thus singled out. The Jews were in
no way involved in Nero's persecution. To persecute the Jews at Rome would not have been an easy

THE BURNING

OF ROME.

11

matter. They were sufficiently numerous to be
formidable, and had overawed Cicero in the zenith
of his fame. Besides this, the Jewish religion was recognized, tolerated, licensed. Throughout the length
and breadth of the Empire, no man, however much
he andhis race might be detested and despised, could
have been burnt or tortured for the mere fact of
being a Jew. W e hear of no Jewish martyrdoms or
Jewish presecutions till we come to the times of the
Jewish war, and then chiefly in Palestine itself. It
is clear that a shedding of blood—in fact, some form
or other of human sacrifice—was imperatively demanded by popular feeling as an expiation of the
runious crime which had plunged so many thousands into the depths of misery. In vain had the
Sibylline Books been once more consulted, and in
vain had public prayer been offered, in accordance
with their directions, to Vulcan and the goddesses
of Earth and Hades. In vain had the Roman
matrons walked in procession in dark robes, and
with their long hair unbound, to propitiate the insulted majesty of Juno, and to sprinkle with seawater her ancient statue. In vain had largesses
been lavished upon the people, and propitiatory
sacrifices offered to the gods. I n vain had public
banquets been celebrated in honor of various deities. A crime had been committed, and Romans
had perished unavenged. Blood cried for blood,
before the sullen suspicion against Nero could be
averted, or the indignation of Heaven appeased.
Nero had always hated, persecuted and exiled the
philosophers, and no doubt, so far as he knew any-

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thing of the Christians—so far as he saw among his
own countless slaves any who had embraced this
superstition, which the elite of Rome described as
not only new, but " e x e c r a b l e " and malefic"
—he would hate their gravity and purity, and feel
for them that raging envy which is the tribute that
virtue receives from vice. Moreover, St. Paul, in
all probability, had recently stood before his tribunal;
and though he had been acquitted on the special
charges of turbulence and profanation, respecting
which he had appealed to Csesar, yet during the
judicial inquiry Nero could hardly have failed to
hear from the emissaries of the Sanhedrin many
fierce slanders of a sect which was everywhere
spoken against. The Jews were by far the deadliest
enemies of the Christians; and two persons of Jewish
proclivities were at this time in close proximity to
the person of the Emperor. One was the pantomimist Alitnrus, the other was Poppaea, the harlot
Empress. The Jews were in communication with
these powerful favorities, and had even promised
Nero that if his enemies ever prevailed at Rome he
should have the kingdom of Jerusalem. It is not
even impossible that there may have been a third
dark and evil influence at work to undermine the
Christians, for about this very time the unscrupulous
Pharisee Flavius Josephus had availed himself of
the intrigues of the palace to secure the liberation of
some Jewish priests. If, as seems certain, the Jews
had it in their power during the reign of Nero more
or less to shape the whisper of the throne, does not
historical induction drive us to conclude with some

THE BURNING

OF BOMB,

13

confidence that the suggestion of the Christians as
scapegoats and victims came from them ? St. Clement says in his Epistle that the Christians suffered
through jealously. Whose jealousy? Who can tell
what dark secrets lie veiled under that suggestive
word? Was Acte a Christian, and was Poppaea
jealous of her? That suggestion seems at once
inadequate and improbable, especially as Acte was
not hurt. But there was a deadly jealousy at
work against the New Religion. To the Pagans,
Christianity was but a religious extravagance
—contemptible, indeed, but otherwise insignificant. To the Jews, on the other hand, it was
an object of hatred, which never stopped short
of bloodshed when it possessed or could , usurp
the power, and which, though long suppressed by circumstances, displayed itself in all the
intensity of its virulence during the brief spasm of
the dictatorship of Barcochba. Christianity was
hateful to the Jews on every ground. It nullified
their Law. It liberated all Gentiles from the heavy
yoke of that Law, without thereby putting them on
a lower level. It even tended to render thos« who
were born Jews mdifferent to the institutions of
Mosaism. It was, as it were, a fatal revolt and
schism from within, more dangerous than any
assault from without. And, worse than all, it was
by the Gentiles confounded with the Judaism which
was its bitterest antagonist. While it sheltered its
existence under the mantle of Judaism, as a religio
liciia, it drew down upon the religion from whose
bosom it sprang all the scorn and hatred which were

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attached by the world to its own especial tenets;
for however much the Greeks and Romans despised
the Jews, they despised still more the belief that the
Lord and Savior of the world was a crucified malefactor who had risen from the dead. I see in the
proselytism of Poppsea, guided by Jewish malice,
the only adequate explanation of the first Christian
persecution. Hers was the jealousy which had
goaded Nero to matricide; hers not improbably was
the instigated fanaticism of a proselyte which urged
him to imbrue his hands in martyr blood. And she
had her reward. A woman of whom Tacitus has
not a word of good to say, and who seems to have
been repulsive even to a Suetonius, is handed down
by the renegade Pharisee as " a devout woman "—
as a worshipper of God!
And, indeed, when once the Christians were
pointed out to the popular vengeance, many reasons
would be adduced to prove their connexion with
the conflagration. Temples had perished—and were
they not notorious enemies of the temples? Did not
popular rumor charge them with nocturnal orgies
and Thyestsean feasts? Suspicions of incendiarism
were sometimes brought against Jews, but the Jews
were not in the habit of talking, as these sectaries
were, about a fire which should consume the world,
and rejoicing in the prospect of that fiery consummation. Nay, more, when Pagans had bewailed the
destruction of the city and the loss of the ancient
monuments of Rome, had not these pernicious people used ambiguous language, as though they joyously recognized in these events the signs of a com-

THE BURNING

OF ROM®.

15

ing end. Even when they tried to suppress all outward tokens of exultation, had they not listened to
the fears and lamentations of their fellow-citizens
with some sparkle in the eyes, and had they not
answered with something of triumph in their tones?
There was a Satanic plausibility which dictated the
selection of these particular victims. Because they
hated the wickedness of the world,'with its ruthless
games and hideous idolatries, they were accused of
hatred of the whole human race. The charge of incivisme, go fatal in this Reign of Terror, was suffi.
cient to ruin a body of men who scorned the sacrifices of heathendom, and turned away with abhorrence from its banquets and gaieties. The cultivated
classes looked down upon the Christians with a disdain which would hardly even mention them without
an apology. The canaille of Pagan cities insulted
them with obscene inscriptions and blasphemous
pictures on the very walls of the places where they
met. Nay, they were popularly known by nicknames, like Sarmenticii and Semaxii—untranslatable
terms of opprobrium derived from the fagots with
which they were burned and the stakes to which
they were chained. Even the heroic courage which
they displayed was described as being sheer obstinacy and stupid fanaticism.
But in the method chosen for the punishment of these saintly innocents Nero gave one
more proof of the close connection between effeinfc
nate sestheticism and sanguinary callousness.
As in old days, " on that opprobrious hill,"
the temple of Chemosh had stood close by that of

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Moloch, so now we find the spoliarium beside the
fornices—Lust hard by Hate. The carnificina of
Tiberius, at Caprese, adjoined the sella/viae. History
has given many proofs that no man is more systematically heartless than a corrupted debauchee. Like
people, like prince. In the then condition of Rome,
Nero well knew that a nation, "cruel, by their sports
to blood inured," would be most likely to forget their
miseries, and condone their suspicions, by mixing
games and gaiety with spectacles of refined and
atrocious cruelty, of which, for eighteen centuries,
the most passing record has sufficed to make men's
blood run cold.
Tacitus tells us that "those who confessed were
first seized, and then on their evidence a huge multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of
incendiarism as for their hatred to mankind," Compressed and obscure as the sentence is, Tacitus clearly means to imply by the "confession " to which he
alludes the confession of Christianity; and though
he is not sufficiently generous to acquit the Christians absolutely of all complicity in the great crime*
he distinctly says that they were made the scapegoats of a general indignation. The Phrase—" a huge
multitude "—is one of the few existing indications of
the number of martyrs in the first persecution, and
of the number of Christians in the Roman Church.
When the historian says that they were convcted on
the charge of "hatred against mankind" he shows
how completely he confounds them with the Jews,
against whom he elsewhere brings the accusation of
" hostile feelings toward all except themselves."

THE BURNING

OF HOME.

17

Then the historian adds one casual hut frightful
sentence—a sentence which flings a dreadful light
on the cruelty of Nero and the Roman mob. He adds
"And various forms of mockery were added to enhance their dying agonies. Covered with the skins
of wild beasts, they were doomed to die by the
mangling of dogs, or by being nailed to crosses; or
to be set on fire and burnt after twilight by way of
nightly illumination. Nero offered his own garden
for this show, and gave a chariot race, mingling
with the mob in the dress of a charioteer, or
actually driving about among them. Hence, guilty
as the victims were, and deserving of the worst
punishments, a feeling of compassion towards
them began to rise, as men felt that they were being
immolated not for any advantage to the commonwealth, but to glut the savagery of a single man."
Imagine that awful scene, once witnessed by the
silent obelisk in the square before St. Peter's atRome!
Imagine it, that we may realize how vast is the
change which Christianity has wrought in the feelings of mankind! There, where the vast dome now
rises, were once the gardens of Nero. They were
thronged with gay crowds, among whom the Emperor moved in his frivolous degradation—and on
every side were men dying slowly on their cross of
shame. Along the paths of those gardens on the
Autumn nights were ghastly torches, blackening
the ground beneath them with streams of sulphurous pitch, and each of those living torches was a
martyr in his shirt of fire. And in the ampitheatre
hard by, in sight of twenty thousand spectators,

18

THE ELZEVIR

LIBRARY.

famished dogs were tearing to pieces some of the
best and purest of men and women, hideously disguised in the skins of bears or wolves. Thus did
Nero baptize in the blood of martyrs the city which
was to be for ages the capital of the world!
The specific atrocity of such spectacles—unknown
to the earlier ages which they called barbarous—was
due to the cold-blooded selfishness, the hideous
realism of a refined, delicate, aesthetic ages. To
please these "lisping hawthorn-buds," these debauched and sanguinary dandies, Art, forsooth,
must know nothing of morality; must accept and
rejoice in a " h e a l t h y animalism;" must estimate
life by the number of its few wildest pulsations;
must reckon that life is worthless without the most
thrilling experiences of horror or delight! Comedy
must be the actual shame, and tragedy genuine
bloodshed. When the play of Afranius called " T h e
Conflagration" was put on the stage, a house must be
really burnt, and its furniture really plundered. I n
the mime called " L a u r e o l u s , " an actor must really
be crucified and mangled by a bear, and really fling
himself down ana deluge the stage with blood. W h e n
heroism of Mucius Scsevola was represented, a real
criminal must thrust his hand without a groan into
the flame, and stand motionless while it is being
burnt. Prometheus must be really chained to his
rock, and Dirce in very fact be tossed and gored by
the wild bull; and Orpheus be torn to pieces by a
real bear; and Icarus must really fly, even though
he fall and be dashed to death; and Hercules must
ascend the funeral pyre, and there be veritably

THE BUBMJSfG

OF ROME.

10

burnt alive; and slaves and criminals must play
their parts heroically in gold and purple till the
flames envelop them. It was the ultimate romance
of a degraded aad brutalized society. The Roman
people, "victors once, now vile and base," could
now only be amused by sanguinary melodrama.
Fables must be made realities, and the criminal
must gracefully transform his supreme agonies into
amusements for the multitude by becoming a gladiator or a tragedian. Such were the spectacles at
which Nero loved to gaze through his emerald eyeglass. And worse things than these- -things indescribable, unutterable. Infamous mythologies were
enacted, in which women must play their part in
torments of shamefulness more intolerable than
death. A St. Peter must hang upon the cross in
the Pincian gardens, as a real Laureolus upon the
stage. A Christian boy must be the Icarus, and a
Christian man the Scajvola, or the Hercules or the
Orpheus of the amphitheatre; and Christian women,
modest maidens, holy matrons, must be Danaids, i/r
the Proserpine, or worse, and play their parts as
priestesses of Saturn and Ceres, and in blood-stained
dramas of the dead. No wonder that Nero became
to Christian imagination the very incarnation or
evil; the Antichrist; the Wild Beast from the abyss;
the delegate of the great red Dragon, with a diadem
and a name of blasphemy upon his brow. N o wonder
that he left a furrow of horror in the hearts of men,
and that, ten centuries after his death, the church of
Bta. Maria del Popolo had to be built by Pope Pas-

20

THE ELZEVIR

LIBRARY.

cal I I . to exorcise from Christian Rome his restless
and miserable ghost.
And it struck them with deeper horror to see that
the Antichrist, so far from being abhorred, was
generally popular. He was popular because he presented to the degraded populace their own image
and similitude. The frog-like, unclean spirits which
proceeded, as it were, out of his mouth, were potent
with these dwellers in an atmosphere of pestilence.
They had lost all love for freedom and nobleness;
they cared only for doles and excitement. Even
when the infamies of a Petronius had been superseded by the murderous orgies of Tigellinus, Nero
was still everywhere welcomed with shouts as a god
on earth, and saluted on coins as Apollo, as Hercules,

as " T H E

SAVIOR

OP T H E

WORLD."

The

poets still assured him that there was no deity in
heaven who would not think it an honor to concede
to him his prerogatives; that if he did not place himself well in the centre of Olympus, the equilibrium
oi'the "universe would be destroyed. Victims were
slain along his path, and altars raised for him—for
this wretch whom an honest slave could not but
despise and loathe—as though he was too great for
mere human honors. Nay, more, he found adorers
and imitators of his execrable example—an Otho, a
Yitellius, a Domitian, a Commodus, a Caracalla, an
Heliogabalus—to poison the air of the world. The
lusts and hungers and turies of the world lamented
him and cherished his memory, and longed for his
return.
And yet, though all bad men—who were the ma-

TEE BURNING

OF BOME.

M

jority—admired and even loved him, he died the
death of a dog. Tremendous as was the power of
Imperialism, the Romans often treated their individual emperors as Nero himself treated the Syrian
goddess, whose image he first worshipped with
awful veneration and then subjected to the most
grotesque indignities. For retribution did not linger
and the vengeance fell at once on the guilty Emperor and the guilty city.
" Careless seems the Great Avenger; History's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt false systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standetb. God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own."

The air was full of prodigies. There were terrible
storms; the plague wrought fearful ravages, ~Ru<mors spread from lip to lip. Men spoke of monstrous births; of deaths by lightning under strange
circumstances; of a brazen statue of Nero melted by
the flash; of places struck by the brand of heaven
in fourteen regions of the city; of sudden darkenings of the sun. A hurricane devasted Campania;
comets blazed in the heavens; earthquakes shook
the ground. On all sides were the traces of deep
uneasiness and superstitious terror. To ail these
portents, which were accepted as true by Christians
as well as by Pagans, the Christians would give a
specially terrible significance. They strengthened
their conviction that the coming of the Lord drew
nigh. They convinced the better sort of Pagans
that the hour of their deliverance from a tyranny
so monstrous and disgraceful was near at hand.
In spite of the shocking servility with which alike

23

THE ELZEVIR

LIBRARY.

the Senate and the people had welcomed him back
to the city with shouts of triumph, Nero felt that
the air of Rome was heavy with curses against his
name. He withdrew to Naples, and was at supper
there on March 19 A. D. 68, the anniversary of his
mother's murder, when he heard that the first note
of revolt had been sounded by the brave C. Julius
Vindex, Prsefect of Farther Gaul. He was so far
from being disturbed by the news, that he showed a
secret joy at the thought that he could now order
Gaul to be plundered. For eight days he took no
notice of the matter. H e was only roused to send an
address to the Senate because Vindex wounded his
vanity by calling him " Ahenobarbus," and " a bad
singer." But when messenger after messenger came
from the provinces with tidings of menace he
hurried back to Rome. At last, when he heard
that Viiginius Rufus had also rebelled in Germany, and Galba in Spain, he became aware of
the desperate nature of his position.
On receiving this intelligence he fainted away, and remained for some time unconcious. He continued,
indeed, his grossness and frivolity, but the wildest
and fiercest schemes chassd each other through his
melodramatic brain. He would slay all the exiles;
he would give up all the provinces to plunder; he
would order all the Gauls in the city to be butchered;
he would have all the Senators invited to banquets,
and would then poison them; he would have the
city set on fire, and the wild beasts of the amphitheatre let loose among the people; he would depose both the Consuls, and become sole Consul him-

THE BURNING

OF ROME.

23

self, since legend said that only by a Consul could
Gauls be conquered; he would go with an army to
the province, and when he got there would do nothing but weep, and when he had thus moved the
rebels to compassion, would next day sing with
them at a great festival the ode of victory which he
must at once compose. Not a single manly resoluflon lent a moment's dignity to his miserable fall.
Sometimes he talked of escaping to Ostia, and arming the sailors; at others, of escaping to Alexandria,
and earning his bread by his " divine voice." Meanwhile he was hourly subjected to the deadliest insults, and terrified by dreams and omens so sombre
that his faith in the astrologers who had promised
him the government of the East and the kingdom of
Jerusalem began to be rudely shaken.
When he
heard that not a single army or general remained
faithful to him, he kicked over the table at which
he was dining, dashed to pieces on the ground two
favorite goblets embossed with the scenes from the
Homeric poem=;, and placed in a golden box some
poison furnished to him by Locusta.
The last
effort which he contemplated was to mount the
Rostra, beg pardon of the people for his crimes,
ask them to try him again, and, at the worst, to
allow him the Prefecture of Egypt.
But, this design he did not dare to carry out, for fear that he
would be torn to pieces before h e reached the
Forum.
Meanwhile he found that the palace had
bean deserted by his guards, and that his attendants
had robbed his chamber even of the golden box in
which he had stored his poison. Rushing out, as
though to drown himself in the Tiber, he changed
his mind, and begged for some quiet hiding-place in
which to collect his thoughts.
The freedman
Phaon offered him a lowly villa about four miles
from the city.
Barefooted, and with a faded
coat thrown over his tunic, he hid his head

24

THE ELZEVIR

LIBRARY.

and face in a kerchief, and rode away with only
four attendants. On the road, he heard the tumult
of the Praetorians cursing his name. Amid evil
omens and serious perils he reached the hack of
Phaon's villa, and creeping towards it through a
muddy reed-bed, was secretly admitted into one of
its mean slave-chambers by an aperture through
which he had to crawl on his hands and feet.
There is no need to dwell on the miserable spectacle of his end, perhaps the meanest and most pusillanimous which has ever been recorded. The poor
wretch who, without a pang, had caused so many
brave Romans and so many innocent Christians to
be murdered, could not summon u p resolution to
die. He devised every operatic incident of which
he could think. When even his most degraded
slaves urged him to have sufficient manliness to save
himself from the fearful infamies which otherwise
awaited him, he ordered his grave to be dug, and
fragments of marble to be collected for its adornment, and water and wood for his funeral pyre,
perpetually whining: " What an artist to perish!"
Meanwhile a courier arrived for Phaon. Nero
snatched his despatches out of his hand, and read
that the Senate had decided that he should be
punished in the ancestral fashion as a public enemy.
Asking what the ancestral fashion was, he was informed that he would be stripped naked and scourged
to death with rods, with his head thrust into a fork.
Horrified at this, he seized two daggers, and after
theatrically trying their edges, sheathed them again,
with the excuse that the fatal moment had not yet
arrived! Then he bade Sporus begin to sing his
funeral song, and begged some one to show him how
to die. Even his own intense shame at his cowardice
was an insufficient stimulus, and he wiled away t h e
time in vapid epigrams and pompous quotations.
The sound of horses' hoofs then broke on his ears,
and, venting one more Greek quotation, he held the
dagger to his throat. It was driven home by Epaph-

THE

Burning

OF ROME,

25

roditus, one of his literary slaves. At this moment
the centurion who came to arrest him rushed in.
Nero was not yet dead, and under pretence of helping him, the centurion began to staunch the wound
with his cloak. " Too late," he said; " i s this your
fidelity?"
So he died; and the bystanders were
horrified with the way in which his eyes seemed to
be starting out of his head in a rigid stare. He had
begged that his body might be burned without posthumous insults, and this was conceded by Icelus,
the freedman of Galbo.
So died the last of the Caesars! And as Robespierre was lamented by his landlady, so even Nero
was tenderly buried by two nurses who had known
him in the exquisite beauty of his engaging childhood, and by Acte, who had inspired his youth with
a genuine love.
But, as we shall see hereafter, his history does not
end with his grave. He was to live on in the expectation alike of Jews and Christians. The fifth
head of the Wild Beast of the Revelation was in
some sort to re-appear as the eighth; the head with
its diadem and its names of blasphemy had been
wounded to death, but in the iVpocalyptic sense the
deadly wound was to be healed. The Roman world
could not believe that the heir of the deified Julian
race could be cut off thus suddenly and obscurely
and vanish like foam upon the water. The Christians felt sure that it required something more than
an ordinary death-stroke to destroy the Antichrist,
and to end the vitality of the Wild Beast from the
Abyss, who had been the first to set himself in deadly antagonism against the Redeemer, and to wage
war upon the saints of god.
PUBLISHER'S
Note,
The preceding interesting chapter is taken from " T h e
Early Days of Christianity," by F. W. Farrar, which makes
a beautiful volume of about 800 pages in the " Cyclopedia of
Religious Literature." See full particulars elsewhere.

The Works of

WASHINGTON IRVING.
The expiration of the copyright on his writings frees them
.rom the unenterprising and short-sighted monopoly which
has heretofore kept the incomparable productions of this
most famous of American prose writers beyond the reach of
the masses of book buyers.

N o w Ready.
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Elzevir Edition.—In Press.
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The Voice of

Fame—Irving

" T h e names of Cooper, Channing and Washington Irving,
amply demonstrate that the American soil is not wanting in
genius of the most elevating and fascinating character."—
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" There are individuals resident in New York whose acquaintance I should be happy to make. Mr, Washington
Irving is one. I have read his works, and admire him both
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meeting him."—Louis NAPOLEAN, EMPEROR.
"Amiableness is so strongly marked in all Mr. Irving's
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is doubled in the same manner as in lively conversation
with one for whom you have a deep attachment and esteem.
There is also in it the gayety and airiness of a light, pure
spirit—a fanciful playing with common things, and here and
there beautiful touches, till the ludricrous becomes half picturesque. "—RICHARD H. DANA, SR.

" I f he wishes to study a style which possesses the characteristic beauties of Addison's, its ease, simplicity and elegance, with greater accuracy point and spirit, let him give
hio days and nights t o the volumes of Irving,"—North American Review.
k
One of the best and pleasantest acquaintances I have
made for many a d a y . " — S I R WALTER SCOTT.

' ' His genius has experienced a still more unequivocal homage, in the countless imitations to which he has given rise:
imitations whose uniform failure, notwithstanding all the
appliances of accomplishment and talent, prove their model
to be inimitable."—WILLIAM H. PRLScoxr,
" I t can never be disputed that the mild and beautiful
genius of Mr. Irving was the Morning Star that led up the
m a r c h of our host. 1 '—ALBXANDER H. EVERETT.
"Few, very few, can show a long succession of volumes so
pure, so graceful, and so varied as Mr, Irving."—MARY R U S SEL MITFORD.

Salmagundi.
" A s a whole, the work is quite superior to anything of the
kind which this age has produced. "—JOHN NEAL.
Wolfert's R o o s t .
" We envy those who will now read these tales and sketches
of character for the first time. Washington Irving is here,
as he always is, equal to himself. He has the finish of our
best writers; he has the equality and gentle humor of Addison and Goldsmith."— Westminster
Review.
U.

Cyclopedia of

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.
This series will include the religious classics in history, biography, and dissertation, the possession of
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V o l u m e I . Containing Farrar's " Seekers after God" and
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This edition is a very great improvement upon the former
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44
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"
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CYCLOPEDIAS OF
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In response to the very great and very just popular demand for useful knowledge and choice literature at reasonable prices, I have undertaken the publication of a series of
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"
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VI.

From Defeat to Victoty.
I congratulate you on the magnificent work you are doing,
and the energy and courage by which you are turning defeat
into victory. I enclose order upon your terms for book Exchange stockholders.—M. S. KIMBALL, Pana, 111.
When you failed I was neither angry nor astonished, but
I was sorry, and not for m y sake but for yours. I got t h e
Library of Universal Knowledge a t a reduction, and that
paid me I see you are offering to p a y back t h e stock. I
think you hardly do yourself justice to t r y to do so much for
us. We can't always make our investments pay. Nobody
felt the loss half so keenly as did you; it h u r t you worse than
any one else, and I felt to pity you for I believed your effort
was an honest one. I expect to buy books of you, and should
do so whether you paid back m y stock or not.—JOSHUA
NICKERSON, New Burlington, O.

Permit me to congratulate you on being right side up again.
The greatness and success of a m a n consisteth n o t in his
being able always to stand up, but in his being able to get u p
as often as he falls or is knocked down.—DR. JOSIAH CURTIS,
Nacoochee, Ga.
I a m watching with much interest and hope, your struggle
With one of your pluck, repulse is not defeat, and if your
health is spared a few years, I am sure you will redeem every
pledge you have made to the patrons of the old American
Book Exchange, and reap a rich pecuniary reward for yourself .—M. E. BOYNTON, Boiling Springs, Ala.
The Irving, in three Vols., is the finest thing I ever saw a t
the price. Indeed, it is not the fault of the hero of the literary
rebellion if lovers of good literature go without books There
Is a place in the future history of America for this same hero,
Should he conquer, a final success, second to that of Rowland
Hill in t h e History of England.—MRS. E. A. RUSSELL, White
Pigeon, Mich.
I am rejoiced to hear from you again. When m y husband
came in to-day with his arms full of mail, and the first thing
in my hands was " Choice Literature," I fairly clapped m y
hands in delight. I was glad for myself and glad for you. I
will be your agent, a n d do what I can to forward t h e good
work.—MRS. RUBY S.CAYTON, Youngstown, 111.

" Choice Literature " h a s been received, which gave m e
new hope for your success. I feared something unfavorably
had happened to your publishing interest. You are engaged
in the greatest literry enterprise of the age, and one that
will confer untold blessings on the people of this land.—-Rsv.
R. W. ALLEN, Maiden, Mass.
VII.

Library of
U N I V E R S A L KNOWLEDGE.
Large Type Edition.
I have again secured control of the publication of this
greatest of American Cyclopedias, and therefore am again
able to adopt, substantially, m y old price-list. The present
are uniform with the old American Book Exchange editions,
except that the latter issues are improved in quality of
paper and press-work. All are now ready for delivery.
This is a verbatim imprint of the 1880 London edition of
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, with copious additions by
American editors. It gives an amount of matter about 10
per cent, more than Appletons Cyclopaedia, (price in
cloth, $80.00), and 20 per cent, more than Johnson's Cyclopaedia (price $51.00 in cloth). For the general reader it is
the best Encyclopaedia ever published, whatever the price.
Prices for the set of 15 volumes are as follows:
In extra cloth, $15.00
In half Russia, $20.00
In full library sheep, marbled edges, $23.00
A C l u b A g e n t wanted in every neighborhood. Large
discounts given.
This work, although based upon Chambers's Encyclopaedia,
whose distinguished merit is widely known differs from it in
important respects. It could scarcely be expected that an
Encyclopaedia edited and published for a foreign m a r k e t
would give as much prominence to American topics a s
American readers might desire. To supply these and other
deficiencies the American editors have inserted about 18.000
titles arranging the whole in a single alphabet. The total
number of titles is now about 46,000. There are numerous
^lustrations such as are necessary to elucidate the text.
The superlative value and importance of this great Encyclopaedia lies especially in the fact that it is brought within
the reach of every one who aspires after knowledge and culture. It is really a " L i b r a r y of Universal Knowledge,"
which brings a liberal education within the reach of every
plowboy. Every farmer and every mechanic owes it to himself and to his children that such an Encyclopaedia shall
henceforward form part of the furniture of his home. To
every intelligent man, an Encyclopaedia is indispensable.

A GREAT SPECIAL* O F F E R
Until February 15th.

The beautiful Elzevir edition of the delightful
CRAYON P A P E R S , by Washington Irving, is now
ready for deli very. It is one of the prettiest volumes
of Irving ever published at any price, and no other
edition at less than five times its cost will at all compare with it. With a view to securing promptly the
immense sale necessary to warrant the low cost, I
will send, prepaid, a s p e c i m e n c o p y to any address in the United States or Canada for the following
net price:
IRVING'S CRAYON PAPERS, with Life of Trving by R. H.
Stoddard, over 350 pages. Beautifully bound in extra
cloth, net price 3 5 c e n t s .
The same elegantly bound in half Russia, red edges, net price
45 cents.
The same richly bound in extra cloth, gilt edges, ornamented,
net price 55 c e n t s .
Under this special offer orders must be received not later
than February 15th. Club agents allowed the usual discounts
from these prices.

Second Great Offer.
I have also now ready for delivery the handsomest
and best edition published of Canon'Farrar's new and
already famous work, T H E E A R L Y D A Y S O F
CHRISTIANITY. By F . W. Farrar, author of
•'The Life of Christ," " T h e Life and Work of
Saint Paul," etc. It is a large 12mo volume of about
800 pages; large Long Primer type (two sizes larger
than the type in this number of T H E ELZEVIR L I BRARY), with all the author's notes and references. It
is manufactured for me by the Trow Printing House,
one of the best-known and largest houses in the
United States, and I offer it as t h e h a n d s o m e s t
v o l u m e of r e l i g i o u s l i t e r a t u r e ever sold
f o r t h e p r i c e . I will send a s p e c i m e n c o p y
by mail postpaid, with a view to securing an immense
future sale, at the following net price:
Handsomely bound in extra cloth (size of the volume 5£ x 7§
inches), for the net price of 6 5 c e n t s .
The same elegantly bound in half Russia, red edges, net price
80 cents.
On this special offer orders must be received not later than
February 15th. Club agents will be allowed the usual discounts.

P. O. Box l n o 7 .

J O H N B. ALDEN, Publisher,
18 Vesey Street, New York,