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Authors: Stephen Dando-Collins
Tags: #History, #Ancient, #Rome
The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City (34 page)
BOOK: The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City
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Putting several young Equestrians in charge of these applauders, whom he dubbed “the Augustans,” and giving them forty thousand sesterces for each performance, Nero recruited five thousand youths in total. The Augustans were like a giant cheerleading squad for Nero. With the special outfits that were created for them, and their bushy hair, “it was easy to recognize them,” said Suetonius. They were divided into three groups. The Bees made a loud humming noise. The Roof-tiles clapped with hollowed hands. The Bricks clapped flat-handed. These Augustans would subsequently appear wherever Nero appeared.
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His confidence sky-high now, Nero prepared to enter the Greek games. All of them.
XXIII
THE APOSTLES AND THE JEWISH REVOLT
W
hile Nero was still entertaining King Tiridates at Rome in the early spring of AD 66, Joseph bar Matthias, the Jewish rabbi, having obtained the release of three fellow priests from Nero, arrived back in Jerusalem. It was just after the year’s Passover festival. Joseph found Jerusalem in turmoil.
hile Nero was still entertaining King Tiridates at Rome in the early spring of AD 66, Joseph bar Matthias, the Jewish rabbi, having obtained the release of three fellow priests from Nero, arrived back in Jerusalem. It was just after the year’s Passover festival. Joseph found Jerusalem in turmoil.
“There were a great many with high hopes of a revolt from the Romans,” he would recall. “They were already in possession of Antonia, which was the citadel.”
1
Weeks earlier, the Roman procurator of Judea, Gessius Florus, had come up to Jerusalem from the Roman capital of Judea, Caesarea, to be present for the Passover, when Jerusalem’s population was swelled well past a million people by Jewish pilgrims from throughout the ancient world—Josephus put the number of pilgrims one year at three million. Even though Florus had brought extra troops with him to augment the Roman garrison at Jerusalem during the Passover, Zealot rebels had stage-managed such unrest in the city that Florus, in fear for his own life, had negotiated what he thought would be an end to the troubles.
1
Weeks earlier, the Roman procurator of Judea, Gessius Florus, had come up to Jerusalem from the Roman capital of Judea, Caesarea, to be present for the Passover, when Jerusalem’s population was swelled well past a million people by Jewish pilgrims from throughout the ancient world—Josephus put the number of pilgrims one year at three million. Even though Florus had brought extra troops with him to augment the Roman garrison at Jerusalem during the Passover, Zealot rebels had stage-managed such unrest in the city that Florus, in fear for his own life, had negotiated what he thought would be an end to the troubles.
In return for leaving a single cohort of Roman troops at the city and agreeing that these troops would remain in their garrisons and not mix with the people, Florus received a guarantee from the Jewish priests of the Great Sanhedrin that there would be no more trouble. Florus and the majority of his infantry and all his cavalry had then marched back down to Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast, leaving 480 men, apparently from the 3rd Gallica Legion, at Jerusalem. Of those legionaries, 240 were stationed in the Palace of Herod and the rest in the Antonia Fortress—built by Herod the Great and named in honor of his good friend Mark Antony.
Within days, the rebels, against the advice of the Sanhedrin, had taken up arms and launched attacks on the Antonia Fortress and Herod’s palace. The Antonia was a vast citadel and much too large for just 240 troops to defend against thousands of attackers. Within days, the rebels had overrun the fortress and massacred all the legionaries inside. It was at this point that Joseph had arrived back home. “I therefore tried to put a stop to these troublemakers,” Joseph wrote.
2
Having been at Rome for the past several years and seen the vast resources that the Romans could draw on to rebuild their city from rubble in just a year following the Great Fire, he dreaded what they could do against a rebellious Jewish nation.
2
Having been at Rome for the past several years and seen the vast resources that the Romans could draw on to rebuild their city from rubble in just a year following the Great Fire, he dreaded what they could do against a rebellious Jewish nation.
Joseph said that he told the rebels “that they were inferior to the Romans not only in military skill but also in good fortune,” and that they would only bring “the most terrible disasters down on their country, on their families, and on themselves. And I said this with vehement exhortation, because I could foresee that the outcome of such a war would be most unfortunate for us. But I could not persuade them. For the madness of desperate men was much too strong for me.”
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The young rabbi realized that “by often repeating these things I would incur their hatred and their suspicion, as if I were on our enemy’s side, and would run the risk of being seized by them and killed.”
4
So, he joined the priests who barricaded themselves inside the Temple against the rebels. The Zealots, meanwhile, targeted all their efforts on seizing the Palace of Herod. The remaining 240 legionaries were soon reinforced by troops sent by Herod Agrippa II, tetrarch of Trachonitis and Batanaea, a Roman ally. But, after heavy fighting, Agrippa’s troops defected to the side of the rebels.
4
So, he joined the priests who barricaded themselves inside the Temple against the rebels. The Zealots, meanwhile, targeted all their efforts on seizing the Palace of Herod. The remaining 240 legionaries were soon reinforced by troops sent by Herod Agrippa II, tetrarch of Trachonitis and Batanaea, a Roman ally. But, after heavy fighting, Agrippa’s troops defected to the side of the rebels.
The legionaries, who had retreated to the palace’s towers, were now convinced to surrender with the promise that once they gave up their weapons, they would be permitted to leave. As soon as the Roman troops had disarmed, they were butchered by the rebel Jews. Only the centurion in charge was spared, after he vowed to convert to Judaism. At this same time, another party of Zealots was tricking its way into the old Herodian fortress atop the cliffs at remote Masada, beside the Dead Sea. There, the Roman cohort of the garrison was also massacred.
Nothing that Joseph could say now could prevent history from taking its course. The Jewish Revolt had begun, a thousand Roman legionaries had been killed, and Rome would want its revenge. Joseph was now one of three Jewish priests sent to Galilee to coordinate Jewish resistance there, not only to defend against a Roman military reply, but also to guard the Jewish communities against reprisals from the non-Jewish peoples of Judea, who began massacring their Jewish neighbors on the news of the uprising in Jerusalem. Like it or not, thirty-year-old Joseph had just become a general of the rebel Jewish army. He and his colleagues would arm and train tens of thousands of Jewish partisans, knowing that sooner or later, the Roman war machine would have to grind into gear against them.
In May, with Joseph in Galilee building his forces and competing with Zealots for control in the area, while expecting a Roman counteroffensive to be launched from Syria any day, Nero was in Greece attending the Olympic Games and about to compete in them. According to Christian legend, around this same time, two Jews were arrested in Rome. This would have been on the orders of Helius, the freedman left in charge at Rome by Nero during his absence.
One of these Jews was a noncitizen named Simeon of Galilee, who would become known among Christians as the Apostle Peter. Formerly a successful fisherman from Capernaum in Galilee, Simeon, called Simon by the Romans, had become the chief lieutenant of the Jewish preacher whom his Greek-speaking followers called Jesus of Nazareth, or the Christos, or anointed one. The other Jew was Paul of Tarsus, who had made his promised return to Rome. No Roman or Greek historian made any mention of these two Christian apostles, let alone described their time at Rome. All that is known of Peter and Paul at Rome comes from Christian tradition, which is based on later Christian writing.
According to that tradition, Peter and Paul had been preaching in Rome and were arrested and thrown into the Tullianum, or the Tullian Keep, the city prison at Rome, which later became known as the Mamertine Prison. This cavernous underground jail had originally been created, centuries before, as a cistern for the storage of rainwater. Converted into a prison, it consisted of two levels. The upper level was used for the incarceration of general inmates. In the lower level were kept those prisoners who had been convicted of a capital crime and were awaiting execution. It was also in this lower level that high-ranking enemy leaders captured in wartime met their deaths—strangled with a halter after being led through the streets in the Triumph of a Roman general. In this way, Gallic war leader Vercingetorix had been executed here after surrendering to Julius Caesar in 52 BC. Five years from now, one of the senior leaders of the Jewish Revolt in Judea would similarly meet his executioner in this lower chamber of the Tullianum.
The crimes for which Peter and Paul were arrested, convicted, and condemned have never been determined. Paul, in his second letter from Rome to Timotheus, whom he had placed in charge of the Christian church at Ephesus, would complain bitterly from prison that when he stood in court to answer the latest charges against him, “no man stood with me, but all men forsook me. I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.” Paul made no mention of Peter. “Only Luke is with me.”
5
Paul said that one of his companions, Demas, who had been with him when first he came to Rome six years earlier, had deserted him once Paul was arrested this second time; Demas had fled to Thessalonica in Macedonia. Two other companions had also left Rome; Crescens had gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia.
5
Paul said that one of his companions, Demas, who had been with him when first he came to Rome six years earlier, had deserted him once Paul was arrested this second time; Demas had fled to Thessalonica in Macedonia. Two other companions had also left Rome; Crescens had gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia.
It is likely that Paul had been arrested on the accusation of a local artisan of Greek extraction. “Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil,” Paul wrote. “The Lord reward him according to his works.” Summoning Timothy to Rome to help him, Paul warned him to be wary of Alexander, “for he has greatly withstood our words.” It seems that until he declared his Roman citizenship, Paul had been found guilty and was about to be sent to the arena to suffer the fate of convicted noncitizens, a meeting with wild beasts, for he told Timothy, “I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.”
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Not released into the community under house arrest as he had been the last time he was in Rome, Paul was lodged in the prison in chains. Yet, he was still able to receive visitors, dictate letters to helpers, and receive gifts—he asked Timothy to bring him a cloak that he had left in Troas. Winter was approaching and the temperatures were already beginning to drop when he wrote this letter, most likely in the autumn. “Do thy diligence and come before winter,” he instructed Timothy.
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Having escaped death in the arena in one of the several annual games in the Circus Maximus that June and July, Paul was being held in the Tullian prison while he awaited the hearing of his appeal to the emperor. The three Jewish rabbis whose freedom Joseph bar Matthias had eventually secured had spent six years in detention awaiting a hearing by the time of their release, and Paul himself had spent two years under house arrest the last time he had been at Rome. With Nero dallying in Greece and not planning to return to Rome for several years, there was every reason to expect that Paul’s wait could be a long one.
Peter, on the other hand, was not a Roman citizen. If we accept that Peter did indeed come to Rome and was arrested and executed there—which is a basic premise of the Roman Catholic Church—then as a noncitizen convicted of a capital crime, he had no right of appeal and would either be sent to the arena or be put on a cross and crucified shortly after his conviction. According to one Christian tradition, both apostles were executed within a year of each other. Another has nine months passing between their incarceration and execution. In the case of Peter, a noncitizen, such a long delay between arrest and execution is implausible. This suggests that Paul was arrested first, perhaps before Peter came to Rome, and that Peter was probably not arrested until some months later, during the winter of AD 66-67.
Through the summer and autumn of AD 66, Paul was a lone Christian prisoner in the Tullianum at Rome, awaiting his fate.
In Greece, Nero was competing in the Olympic Games. The news of the revolt by the Jews in Judea had reached him, but it did not concern him in the least. Just as Suetonius Paulinus, one of the consuls this year, had in AD 60-61 put down the Boudiccan revolt in Britain using his own resources as governor of the province, so the emperor expected the governor of Syria, who had four legions at his disposal, to deal with the Judean problem. Judea was a subprovince of the Roman province of Syria, and the authority of the propraetor, or imperial governor, of Syria extended over Judea and its procurator. By AD 66, that governor was Cestius Gallus. Once Procurator Florus in Caesarea had reported the Jerusalem uprising to Gallus in Antioch, the capital of Syria, the Jewish Revolt became Gallus’ problem. His expected response would be to march an army into Judea to put down the revolt.
BOOK: The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City
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