The Splendor Before the Dark Read online

  “What of the firefighters? Are they out?”

  “Yes, but helpless to stop it. The fire is spreading faster than they can contain it. The sparks jump over roofs and fields and flare up in new places. It was starting to climb the Palatine when I left!”

  I turned to Poppaea. I felt numb, not even able to truly believe what I was hearing. “I must go,” I said. Then I turned to the messenger. “We’ll ride together. A fresh horse for you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  It was midday when we set out, trailed by two guards, but darkness had fallen before we approached Rome. All along the ride I felt myself becoming more and more agitated, hoping that the messenger had exaggerated, or that the fire was already contained, or that it had not destroyed much besides the shops in the Circus.

  Calm, calm, Nero, you must keep calm, think clearly.

  But inside another picture was emerging—of Rome destroyed, people dead or destitute, historical treasures lost forever, all when I was emperor, all happening while I was responsible for the safety of my people.

  Rome was ruined under Nero, the city incinerated, nothing left but ashes.

  As we neared the top of a hill near Rome, before we could see the city itself, a lurid color stained the night sky, orange and red and yellow, ugly fingers reaching up into the heavens, pulsating. Then we crested the hill and I gazed down on the city aflame. Clouds of smoke roiled upward, and spurts of color, clouds of sparks, and bursts of exploding stone and wood punctuated the darkness. The brisk wind blew ashes in my face, carrying the stench of burning cloth, garbage, and things unnamable.

  It was true, all true.

  “It’s worse!” the messenger cried. “It’s still spreading! It’s much bigger than when I left. Look, it’s engulfed the hills!”

  Rome was being devoured. Suddenly I remembered the time when I had visited the Temple of Vesta and been overcome with a strange weakness and trembling, and rendered helpless. I was puzzled by it then, but now I knew it meant I was powerless to protect the sacred flame of Rome. And I understood the meaning of the sibyl and her prophecy that fire would be my doom.

  I stood at the turning point of my life. This was my battlefield, the battlefield I had wondered if I would ever face. My ancestor Antony had faced his twice: at the battle of Philippi, when he crushed the assassins of Caesar, and the battle of Actium, when he himself was crushed by Octavian.

  Either Rome and I perished together, or we survived together.

  But no matter the outcome, there was only one choice: to go forward, to wade into battle.

  “Come,” I said, urging my horse forward. “Rome awaits.”

  And we descended the hill, heading into the maelstrom.

  II

  The hill was not steep, but it was treacherous with winding paths, rocks and tree roots studded everywhere. The moonlight made it possible for us to see, and the increasing glow from the fire added more illumination.

  My heart was thudding as if I had just run a stadion, and my head was swirling. The air was hot, muggy, and stifling, and the acrid smell of fire made it torture to breathe. We should have been attacked by swarms of insects, but the smoke and soot had banished them. The fire was still too far away for us to feel the heat directly, but I imagined I could anyway. From this distance the city looked as if it were just one mass; I could not discern the individual areas yet.

  I stopped. “You say it is bigger now?” I asked the messenger.

  “Yes! When I left, it was contained in one area and, from a distance, looked like one campfire. Now it has ignited new sites all around itself.”

  “It will be light before we get there,” I said. And by then, who knew what we would see?

  We continued our ride downhill, picking our way slowly. Ahead of us, the demonic glow drew closer.

  Fire. What did I know about fire? Very little, to be honest. I had never personally experienced one, not even a house fire; the only fire I knew was the imaginary one at Troy hundreds of years ago. But I had been generous in equipping the Vigiles with whatever they needed, and it was expensive: horse-drawn fire wagons with water pumps, hundreds of buckets, picks, axes, hooks, and even catapults for knocking down houses to create fire breaks. Surely such a trained and equipped force could contain the fire.

  But if that was so, why was it spreading? If they could not put it out when it was small, what chance did they have of stopping it as it grew larger?

  The wind suddenly shifted, and as it did, I saw a burst of fire in a new place as it ignited there. A column shot up toward the sky, sending embers swirling in a cloud that vanished quickly.

  On we went; the moon began dipping toward the west, and a very faint hint of light appeared on the eastern horizon. But it was still very dark, except for the lurid throbbing red ahead of us. We climbed another hill and the city disappeared, but as we reached the summit, we were suddenly close, and the first heat of the fire reached my face. The horses sensed it and began to shy. It was hard to hold them. But I calmed mine, and he obeyed. If only I could calm myself. My hands gripped the reins so tightly the leather was biting into my palms.

  “We will have to enter the city from the east,” I said. From where we stood, it looked as if the center of the city was not safe, and the fire came up to the Tiber on the west. “Where is Tigellinus? Where is Nymphidius?”

  “They were moving to the Esquiline to direct operations from there,” the messenger said. “They had to vacate the Palatine and the Forum.”

  We swung around toward the east, as day finally broke. Now we could see. Clouds of thick black smoke were sending plumes up into the sky, and the fire was roaring, growling like a beast. We got onto the Via Praenestina and immediately were in a sea of fleeing people, tumbling out of the city, carrying their goods on their shoulders, crying and panting.

  “Don’t go in there!” a family shrieked. “Only a madman would go toward a fire. Run, run!”

  “It’s the emperor!” another man yelled.

  “Save us, save us!” they began to wail.

  I stared at them. They truly thought I could save them, somehow command the fire to stop.

  “Help, help!” A woman flung herself against the side of my horse.

  “I am going to help,” I said. “I will direct the firefighters. We will put it out.”

  Oh, how sure I sounded. What a lie.

  More people were pouring out of the city, flooding the road. Donkeys, pushcarts, bags and bundles, screaming children. Slowly we made our way through the crowd, trying to reassure them. We approached the city walls, where the Esquiline gate loomed ahead, jammed with people trying to fit themselves through the narrow opening on the way out. Only when the guards recognized me as emperor did they hold back the crowd to let me in.

  I entered the city, and suddenly I was in the arena with the fire. What had been a distant enemy was now facing me. The smoke was much thicker here, and in spite of the sunrise, it cast a dark pall.

  “Turn right!” I said, seeking the spot on the Esquiline where Tigellinus would have set up shop. There was a watching post near the Gardens of Maecenas that overlooked the city.

  The Gardens of Maecenas! Part of my new palace, the Domus Transitoria, was there! But no, it was safe, it was too far away from the fire.

  Too far? It was not so far that it was impossible to link the Domus Transitoria to the old Palatine palace of Tiberius. I had done it, had I not? It was only a mile between them. And the Palatine had had to be evacuated.

  I glanced over toward the Domus Transitoria but could not see any damage; it looked intact. This whole area was intact.

  At last we reached the top of the Esquiline, and I rushed to the stone house that served as watching post even in tranquil times. Now it was swarming with men, soldiers and firefighters.

  I saw Nymphidius, standing beside the door, charts in his hand. Hi
s usually placid face was puckered in a grimace. He was conferring with several men, stabbing at a spot on a chart. He glanced up and saw me.

  “Caesar! Thank the gods you are here!”

  As if I myself were a god. Well, I would have to act like one, hope that somehow for this brief time I could be transformed into something more than myself. “I came as quickly as possible,” I said. “Tell me the extent of the fire. Tell me everything.”

  He pivoted to face the city below us. From this height I saw with horror what looked like a hundred separate fires, each sending up its dark plume, with one massive fire in the middle.

  “It started at the end of the Circus where the starting gates are. We think some flammable goods in one of the shops caught fire—they keep oils there to cook snacks for the crowds. It spread immediately to shops next door that store wood, clothes, and such. The shopkeepers, who were sleeping in the quarters above the shops, got out in time but couldn’t do anything but run. A strong wind swept the flames down the sides of the Circus, catching the wooden stands, and from there—” He gave an anguished sigh.

  “This was at night?”

  “Dead night. There was a full moon, though.”

  The beautiful full moon I had admired at Antium, a benign presence there.

  “Who sounded the alarm?”

  “The cohort of Vigiles stationed nearest the fire—Cohort Seven.” He pointed to its place on the map.

  “That’s far away, across the Tiber!”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “Our bad luck.”

  “Very bad luck.”

  “By the time the firefighters were roused and equipped, the fire had spread. The flames were roaring through the stands of the Circus, now on both sides. With the wide-open space, there was nothing to stop the spread, and the strong wind fanned it.”

  A strong wind. More bad luck.

  “It leapt up the Palatine hillside on the south side, then fell back down again. Getting the fire wagons in place didn’t help; the hoses could not send water that far. So the men fell back, and we called the other cohorts to help. And all this was taking place at night.”

  A gust of wind flung ashes in our faces, stinging and burning.

  “Here.” Nymphidius handed me a soaked handkerchief to shield my nose and mouth. I breathed in the cooled air.

  “And all the next day?”

  “It spread. We were powerless to stop it. The fire seemed to burst out by magic in places far from the source, so we were unable to pull down houses to create an open space. Neighbors helped neighbors fight fire, handing the buckets back and forth, and then would turn and see that their own house was on fire. Some people ran back inside, hiding from the fire, and had to be pulled out, fighting all the way, having lost their senses with fright. We tried dousing the houses with acetum, water mixed with vinegar, which fire doesn’t like, but there was too little, and we couldn’t reach the upper stories.”

  “By this time, the end of the first day, where was the fire?”

  “It was spreading around the Palatine and the Capitoline. Then night fell. We soaked blankets and mattresses so we could lay them out beneath the insulae in the adjoining regions. It was just a matter of time before the fire reached those apartments, and anyone trapped inside would need to jump. We ran through the streets ordering people to evacuate. But some resisted. Denial mixed with fear.”

  Always. Denial and fear run hand in hand to doom. “The next morning?”

  “We had to change shifts, bring in fresh men. We had regrouped here on the Esquiline. The seven cohorts pooled their equipment and men. I ordered the ballistae—the catapults—to be brought out and made ready. We had to find a place to create a firebreak. But every place we selected had already been hit by flying embers, and so we had to keep pulling back. At that point we sent the messenger to you. We should have sent him sooner, but even for us it was hard to admit how serious it was.”

  “Now we are up to this morning. What did you find when daylight returned?”

  “The Palatine and Capitoline had been encircled on the east and west sides, with only the north, the Forum, still safe.”

  “And now?” Never had I regretted my poor eyesight more. I could not pick out the individual areas that were on fire.

  “We will have to go into the areas to find out,” Nymphidius said. “And to do that we need to be prepared. Wet clothes, masks, hooks and buckets and axes. And the fire engines must be refilled with fresh water.”

  “We must go immediately!” I said.

  He looked at me. “Caesar, you have been up all night. You need rest. Do not join the ranks of the panicked citizens. You need all your strength of mind before confronting the fire.”

  I did not feel tired. But I did not feel normal, either. “Very well. Where should I go?”

  “We have makeshift quarters up here.” He motioned to an aide. “Take the emperor to a place where he can rest,” he ordered him. “Stay there until the afternoon,” he told me. “I will come for you. We will go out together.”

  The young soldier led me away to a large tent erected on the summit. Inside, on camp beds, exhausted firefighters slept in rows. In the middle a table supplied aid workers with water and food, and physicians were tending to burns.

  “In here,” the soldier directed me. There was a screened area with private beds. The light was dim, filtered through the canvas walls, and the beds were ready with blankets and pillows. I gladly fell on the nearest one, and the soldier kindly pulled off my sandals and covered me with a blanket. Sleep enveloped me immediately, as my utter fatigue overcame even my horror, and I fell into a dark vortex, as dark as the smoke above the city.

  III

  I awoke before Nymphidius came in. The last time I had awakened, yesterday at Antium, I had had a moment of disorientation; and so it was here also. I stared up at a dull canvas overhead. I shifted on a narrow cot. I heard odd noises outside, the sound of faraway crowds, and nearby groans. Then I knew. I was in Rome, and Rome was on fire.

  I sat bolt upright. I looked down at my dirty hands, streaked with grime and blistered from the long ride. My tunic was filthy, coated with ash and briars. My grit-filled sandals were arranged neatly under the cot. I hastily put them on and ventured out into the tent, where row upon row of beds stretched out in the dim light. Young men, some bandaged and moaning, others unconscious, lay upon them. Casualties of the fire already.

  Attendants and nurses were busy and barely glanced at me. That was just as well. I needed to think. Think, Nero, think! But my mind was sluggish, stunned.

  The areas of Rome—what was in the path of the fire? Here on the Esquiline we were northeast of the city center, more than a mile from where the fire had started. But fire could run faster than a horse, and it could gallop through the city speedily. How ironic that it had started at a racetrack. Were the gods teasing us?

  The Palatine was right next to it. Nymphidius had said the fire had started to climb one side of the hill but then had halted. If it reached the Palatine, all the treasures there would be lost. Historic things, not just luxury goods. Shrines commemorating the foundation of Rome, and—O gods! The sacred laurel grove at Augustus’s house. The laurels that foretold the death of an emperor! My laurel!

  Fire will be your undoing.

  Then there were the sacred temples on the Capitoline, and the official buildings in the Forum, and beyond that, closer to us, the Subura where many people lived, many poor, but the wealthy as well in neighboring regions.

  Where people lived . . . where did Apollonius, my athletic trainer, live? I knew only it was in the city. What of the genius citharoede, Terpnus? What of Appius, my voice teacher? What of Paris, my actor friend? And the freedmen who served me—Epaphroditus, Phaon? And my childhood nurses, Ecloge and Alexandra, still serving in my household more as friends than servants? And the writers—Lucan, Petronius, and Spiculus? And my frien
ds Piso and Senecio and Vitellius. And . . . and . . . the list went on and on, people dear to me, from all walks of life. For unlike previous emperors, I had sought out people of other classes to mingle with, much to the disapproval of the Senate. There was no part of the city that would not harbor people I was personally connected to. And for the others, I was their emperor and should be their protector, their shield against misfortune.

  But the fire . . . the fire . . . it made the beasts faced by Hercules in his Twelve Labors weak and gentle in comparison.

  My questions to the firefighters about where my staff and friends had gone were met with shrugs and the admission that no one knew. People had fled when the fire crept close, leaving no word behind.

  Just then Tigellinus entered the tent, looking for me. His muscular arms were smeared with soot, his face shiny with sweat. He strode over, grimacing. “You are here,” he stated. “Good. Nymphidius says you want to come out with the firefighters. I would advise against that.”

  “Why?”

  “It is too dangerous,” he said.

  “Like the chariot racing? You would forbid me anything not as safe as a covered carriage trundling out on the Appian Way on a feast day.”

  “Why do you insist on doing things that are such a risk? It is—”

  “Yes, I know. Irresponsible. But the most irresponsible thing an emperor can do is abandon his people in a crisis.”

  “You don’t need to go in person to battle the flames to take care of your people. Someone has to stay safe to direct operations. I am not down there; I am up here, organizing.”

  “I will go out and see it firsthand. I must do that.”

  “I—”

  He started to say I forbid it. But I was emperor, and no one had the authority to forbid me anything. No one.

  “I will wait for Nymphidius. He was going to return to the city in the early afternoon. I will accompany him.”

  I left the tent and stood outside, looking down the hill, seeing the bright rays of sunlight falter and fade as they hit the clouds of smoke hanging over the city. I was on the very summit of the hill. I remembered the day Poppaea and I had come here, walking through the still-unfinished Domus Transitoria linking the old palace of Tiberius on the Palatine to the Gardens of Maecenas here. Its entrance lay farther down the slope. I walked to it; a few nervous slaves were still at their posts guarding the door. I passed them to descend into the tunnel-like passageway that snaked through the lower part of the city to emerge at the base of the Palatine palace.