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Authors: Stephen Dando-Collins
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The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City (33 page)
BOOK: The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City
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When Thrasea would not halt his discourse, the quaestor spoke with one of Thrasea’s friends, Domitius Caecilianus, and imparted the consul’s message. The Senate, said the messenger, had found Thrasea, Soranus, and Soranus’ daughter Servilia guilty of capital offenses. But the senators had voted to permit all three to choose how they died. Helvidius and Agrippinus had been ordered to leave Italy. Montanus the poet had been saved from similar punishment when his father had stood up in the Senate and proposed that the young man be punished by being banned from ever entering political life, which the House agreed to. The prosecutors in Thrasea’s case, Capito and Marcellus, had each been given 5 million sesterces by the Senate for their work, while Ostorius, Soranus’ prosecutor, was awarded 1.2 million sesterces and the decorations of a quaestor.
Domitius went to Thrasea and interrupted him, announcing the convictions and sentences to all present. Many of those around Thrasea, men as well as women, burst into tears at the news. Others complained bitterly at the injustice of it all. Thrasea’s wife Arria immediately declared that she wished to die with him, taking her own life the same way that her own mother had done some years before.
“No, preserve your life,” Thrasea urged his wife, “and don’t rob our daughter of her only support.” Turning to his friends, he said, “Go quickly now, and don’t imperil yourselves by becoming embroiled in the fate of a man who is doomed.”
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The quaestor was under orders to deliver the verdict to Thrasea in person and to then return to the consul with word of Thrasea’s response to his sentence. A failure by Thrasea to take matters into his own hands would result in the consul’s consigning the condemned man’s fate to the Praetorian prefect. As most of Thrasea’s companions hurried away, the quaestor found the man himself beneath a garden colonnade. The quaestor read the consul’s message aloud. Thrasea seemed oddly elated, before explaining that he was joyful because the life of his son-in-law had been spared.
After parting from his wife, Thrasea took his son-in-law Priscus and Demetrius the Cynic and withdrew into a room. There, he took out a dagger and sliced open the veins of each arm. Letting the blood flow freely, he sprinkled it onto the floor. He then called in the quaestor, so that he could report that he had seen the condemned man follow the noble course.
“We pour out a libation to Jupiter the Deliverer,” Thrasea said to the quaestor, indicating the dripping blood. “Look well, young man—and may the gods ignore the omen—you have been born into times when it is wise to fortify the spirit with examples of courage.”
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XXII
THE NEW ALEXANDER
T
hrasea and Soranus were dead, and King Tiridates was on his way back to the East. Nero was feeling on top of the world. At some point during Tiridates’ visit to Rome, someone—probably the king himself—seems to have likened Nero to Alexander the Great. Now, Nero was convinced that he could indeed become the new Alexander the Great.
hrasea and Soranus were dead, and King Tiridates was on his way back to the East. Nero was feeling on top of the world. At some point during Tiridates’ visit to Rome, someone—probably the king himself—seems to have likened Nero to Alexander the Great. Now, Nero was convinced that he could indeed become the new Alexander the Great.
Like Alexander, Nero had eliminated potential rivals and leaders of dissent from within his own camp. Now, Nero would emulate Alexander in other ways. Reputedly, Alexander had sent an expedition south from Egypt into what the Romans called Ethiopia, to search for the source of the Nile River. Nero decided that he would do likewise and issued orders for an expeditionary force to be prepared for just such an operation the following year or, at the latest, the year after that. Nero intended to personally lead this expedition.
In addition to ordering the 15th Apollonaris Legion to transfer to Egypt from Syria to join the two legions already stationed there (the 3rd Cyrenaica and 22nd Deiotariana), the Palatium would partly meet the manpower needs of the Ethiopian operation by reforming an old legion. It was a re-creation of the 18th Legion, one of three legions famously wiped out in the Teutoburg Forest by the German tribes led by Arminius in AD 9. Neither Augustus nor his successors had re-formed any of the three annihilated legions, the 17th, 18th and 19th, because it had been considered unlucky to do so. Consequently, why Nero chose to re-form the 18th Legion is a mystery. Making the re-creation of the legion more difficult, half of its ten cohorts were recruited in Europe, and half in Libya, adjacent to Egypt.
To provide more troops for the Ethiopian expedition, the Palatium also called up Evocati reservists in Europe. With these reservists acting as garrison troops in Egypt, the two legions that had been stationed in Egypt could march south with Nero in his force of four legions. For the Ethiopian operation, Nero would make his headquarters in Alexandria, at the palace of the Egyptian sovereigns of old. That palace’s first occupant had been Alexander’s general Ptolemy, founder of the Macedonian dynasty that had gone on to rule Egypt for centuries. The last occupants had been Cleopatra and Nero’s great-great-grandfather Mark Antony. The palace was grand, but not grand enough for Nero, who instructed the prefect of Egypt to erect a luxurious new bathhouse in time for his arrival. Later, after the prefect tried out the newly built bathhouse, an incensed Nero would remove him from his post.
Nero would, of course, be accompanied on the Ethiopian expedition by most of the Praetorian Cohorts. It would take the Praetorians’ minds off the loss of half their tribunes following the Piso Plot and give them the opportunity for action and, more importantly, for booty. In conceiving this operation, Nero took a leaf from his uncle Claudius’ book. After a revolt among the legions in Dalmatia had been put down in AD 41, Claudius, who, like Nero, had no military experience, had initiated the AD 43 invasion of Britain. This aggressive action, which had added the province of Britain to the empire, had been cleverly conceived by Claudius to prove to his discontented army that he could be a successful military leader and could give them new sources of blood and booty.
Nero did not stop at the Ethiopian plan, for he wanted to prove his military credentials to the army and cement its loyalty. Alexander the Great had also conquered the Persians, precursors to the Parthians, and had defeated the aggressive Getae north of the Danube. Julius Caesar, just before he died, was planning a similar operation, which would have taken him through the Caspian Gates, around the Caspian Sea, and into the heartland of the Getae, at the head of a hundred thousand troops. Nero decided that he would both emulate Alexander and take up where Caesar had left off. Movement orders went out to legions around the empire to prepare to move to new bases for the Caspian Gates operation. The 14th Gemina Legion, considered the best legion in the Roman army since it had defeated Boudicca’s rebel army, would, for example, leave its longtime base in Britain and relocate to Carnuntum in Pannonia, on the Danube, in preparation for the Getae offensive.
For the Caspian Gates operation, too, Nero ordered the formation of a new legion. The first entirely new Roman legion raised in a century, this unit would also be the first legion recruited in Italy south of the Po River since the days of Julius Caesar. Both aspects were reflected by the unit’s title, Legio I Italica, literally, the first Italian legion. It was Augustus who had initiated the practice of raising all recruits for the legions in the provinces, including Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy), with only the Praetorian Cohorts enlisting their recruits among Italians south of the Po. Nero changed this with his latest directive.
This summer of AD 66,
conquisitors
, recruiting officers, would bustle around southern Italy, consulting with local magistrates as they compiled lists of potential conscripts with an average age of twenty, to fill the ranks of Nero’s new 1st Italica Legion. Simultaneously, orders went out for the manufacture of arms and equipment for 5,245 men. By Nero’s decree, every man recruited into the 1st Italica would have to be a minimum of six Roman feet tall—around five feet ten inches in today’s measurement. This was tall by the standards of the day, with legionaries at that time averaging some five feet four inches in modern terms. Under Nero’s decree, too, the troops of his new 1st Italica Legion would be equipped as spearmen. In the ancient Greek fashion, they would carry spears thirteen feet long, and in action they would employ the battle formations and tactics of the Greek phalanx of centuries past. Nero nicknamed his new unit “the Phalanx of Alexander the Great.”
conquisitors
, recruiting officers, would bustle around southern Italy, consulting with local magistrates as they compiled lists of potential conscripts with an average age of twenty, to fill the ranks of Nero’s new 1st Italica Legion. Simultaneously, orders went out for the manufacture of arms and equipment for 5,245 men. By Nero’s decree, every man recruited into the 1st Italica would have to be a minimum of six Roman feet tall—around five feet ten inches in today’s measurement. This was tall by the standards of the day, with legionaries at that time averaging some five feet four inches in modern terms. Under Nero’s decree, too, the troops of his new 1st Italica Legion would be equipped as spearmen. In the ancient Greek fashion, they would carry spears thirteen feet long, and in action they would employ the battle formations and tactics of the Greek phalanx of centuries past. Nero nicknamed his new unit “the Phalanx of Alexander the Great.”
In Alexander’s army, the cavalry had done most of the hard work in battle, supported by archers, slingers, and javelin men. The nine thousand men of Alexander’s phalanx had been his elite infantry troops, like Napoleon Bonaparte’s Imperial Guard in more recent times. Held in reserve, the phalanx was thrown into a battle at a critical point as required, driving all before it at the point of its spears. It was Nero’s intent that his phalanx would serve a similar purpose, bristling with spears and acting like a giant porcupine. Once the men of the 1st Italica were conscripted, they would be sent to the Adriatic naval base of Ravenna in the province of Cisalpine Gaul to undergo their training and to be ready for service the following year.
Even the centurions transferred from other legions to positions of command with the 1st Italica Legion would have to learn new skills, for the use of the long spear was alien to Roman legionaries, who were accustomed to throwing their six- or seven-foot-long javelins in the first stage of battle and then drawing their swords and moving in for close combat. For the bristling phalanx to work, the long spear must never leave the soldier’s hands. Given the boar as its unit symbol, the 1st Italica Legion would be officially commissioned over the winter of AD 66-67, taking the zodiacal sign of Capricorn as its birth emblem.
With preparations for Nero’s grand military operations in the works, spies were sent ahead into the regions that were to be penetrated by the two expeditions. According to Dio, Nero was hoping that the barbarians “would submit to him of their own accord” without the need of battles, because he was Nero, emperor of Rome.
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Now, Nero felt able to indulge his artistic side; he would stay in Greece for the year it took to prepare the army for the Ethiopian and Caspian Gates operations, and he would compete in the poetry and singing competitions and chariot races of the Panhellenic Games as he had long dreamed of doing. It was still spring when he set off for Greece with a vast entourage.
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Now, Nero felt able to indulge his artistic side; he would stay in Greece for the year it took to prepare the army for the Ethiopian and Caspian Gates operations, and he would compete in the poetry and singing competitions and chariot races of the Panhellenic Games as he had long dreamed of doing. It was still spring when he set off for Greece with a vast entourage.
Four main games were held in Greece, and many smaller ones in imitation of them. The Olympic Games, held every four years at Olympia, are the most famous today, but the Pythian Games at Delphi were equally famous in ancient times, if not more so. The Nemean and Isthmian Games, held every two years, were almost as prestigious as the others. Under the normal Greek games calendar, both the Nemean and the Isthmian competitions were held on the first and third years following the Olympic Games, with the Pythian Games held in between, two years before and after the Olympics.
Suetonius would write that to suit his traveling schedule, Nero had the games’ timetable altered. It appears that with the Olympic Games due to be staged that year of AD 66, and with the Isthmian Games running in the summer of AD 67 and the Nemean Games over the winter of AD 67-68, Nero probably rescheduled the Pythian Games ordinarily set down for AD 68, bringing them forward to the spring of AD 67. All these events except the Olympic Games always included artistic as well as physical and equestrian contests; Nero commanded that a singing competition now also be added to the Olympic events.
As the emperor set off for Greece, he was accompanied by many of his officials and leading senators. Tigellinus went with him. Nymphidius was left in charge of those Praetorian Cohorts that remained at the capital. Vespasian was also a member of the imperial party. He took along his son Titus, who had recently returned to Rome after several years’ military service in Britain. One of many other senators in the party was a Gaul by the name of Gaius Julius Vindex.
To the horror of the Roman establishment, the emperor left the freedman Helius in charge to rule at Rome in Nero’s stead while he was away. Helius, whom Nero had inherited from the staff of his predecessor Claudius and whom he trusted above all others, was made senior to the consuls. Nero endowed Helius with the same powers that he himself wielded, “so that he could confiscate, banish, or put to death ordinary citizens, Equestrians, and senators alike, even before notifying Nero.”
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To noble-born Romans, this was appalling. But, to Nero, rather than risk putting supreme power into the hands of senators who might come to like it and refuse to relinquish it, this was a purely pragmatic step. Snobby Dio would complain about Nero and Helius, “I am unable to say which of them was the worse. In most respects they behaved entirely alike. The one point of difference was that the descendant of Augustus was emulating lyre players and tragedians, whereas the freedman of Claudius was emulating Caesars.”
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“He sailed off hastily,” said Suetonius of Nero’s departure for Achaia, “and as soon as he arrived at Cassiope gave his first song recital in front of the altar of Jupiter Cassius, after which he did the round of the contests.” The port of Cassiope was the principal town on the Albanian side of the island of Corfu, and the Temple of Jupiter there was many centuries old. “So captivated was he by the rhythmic applause of a crowd of Alexandrians from a fleet that had just put in, he sent to Alexandria for more.”
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BOOK: The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City
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