Great Fire of Rome - Background

Background

According to Tacitus, the fire spread quickly and burned for six days. Only four of the fourteen districts of Rome escaped the fire; three districts were completely destroyed and the other seven suffered serious damage. The only other contemporaneous historian to mention the fire was Pliny the Elder, who wrote about it in passing. Other historians who lived through the period (including Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch and Epictetus) make no mention of it. The only other account on the size of fire is an interpolation in a forged Christian letter from Seneca to Paul: "A hundred and thirty-two houses and four blocks (insulae) have been burnt in six days; the seventh brought a pause". This account implies less than a tenth of the city was burnt. Rome contained about 1,700 private houses and 47,000 insulae or tenement block.

It was said by Cassius Dio that Nero, the emperor at the time, sang the "Sack of Ilium" in stage costume as the city burned. However, Tacitus' account has Nero in Antium at the time of the fire. Tacitus said that Nero's playing his lyre and singing while the city burned was only a rumor.

According to Tacitus, upon hearing news of the fire, Nero rushed back to Rome to organize a relief effort, which he paid for from his own funds. After the fire, Nero opened his palaces to provide shelter for the homeless, and arranged for food supplies to be delivered in order to prevent starvation among the survivors. In the wake of the fire, he made a new urban development plan. Houses after the fire were spaced out, built in brick, and faced by porticos on wide roads. Nero also built a new palace complex known as the Domus Aurea in an area cleared by the fire. The size of this complex is debated (from 100 to 300 acres or 40.5 to 121.4 hectares). To find the necessary funds for the reconstruction, tributes were imposed on the provinces of the empire.