CHAPTER 89

Theophilus was roused from his sleep by a servant who had in turn been alerted by a runner coming from Rome. It was the middle of the night, and when Theophilus stepped outside, he could see the flames even from his portico two miles outside the city. Fires were common in Rome, but he had never seen one of this magnitude. The flames leapt into the sky as if reaching up to torment the city’s gods, sparks flying in every direction. He quickly woke Mansuetus and the household servants. They all grabbed buckets and shovels and together headed to Rome to see if they could be of any help.

On the road they passed thousands of panicked residents running for their lives. Most were frantic, occasionally glancing over their shoulders at the orange flames dancing in the night. Others hysterically searched for loved ones. Some passed with blank-faced stares, trudging forward as if half-dead. They had probably seen all of their possessions go up in flames.

Theophilus pieced together what had happened from the harried stories of those he met on the way. The fire had started near the Circus Maximus, where thousands of slaves had been preparing the stadium for the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris. Fed by cooking oils, lamp fuel, hay, straw, and wood, the flames had turned the Circus Maximus into a huge, crackling inferno.

From there, the fire had spread quickly, consuming hundreds of shops and apartment buildings. The narrow streets served as wind tunnels to fan the flames. Huge vats of oil and tar had exploded. Sparks floated on the wind and found new sources of fuel in other sections of the city.

As Theophilus, Mansuetus, and their servants approached the city, the smoke and smell of the fire hit them before the heat. At first it smelled of oil, tar, and paint. But as they grew closer, they could pick up the more putrid odor of the burning flesh of animals and humans. Thick smoke blinded and choked them, but they forged ahead, searching for bands of vigiles, the trained firefighters responsible for extinguishing the flames.

Theophilus had expected a more organized firefighting effort, but chaos ruled. Here, a woman ran through the streets carrying a baby, screaming as she looked for her other children. There, an entire family huddled together as buildings collapsed around them. People jumped from the top floors of apartment buildings, crushing bones as they landed in the streets. Theophilus and his servants were able to drag some to safety. Others were consumed by the raging fire.

The flames spread, destroying the great granaries on the lower slopes of the Aventine Hill and the abandoned marketplace on the Caelian Hill. Worried that he and the others would soon be surrounded by the flames, Theophilus ordered his group to retreat to the Forum. There, they joined vigiles, slaves, and Praetorian Guards who worked feverishly to empty the great temples of their sacred objects. Surely the fire couldn’t spread here to the great stone-and-marble center of civilization, to the ancient temples of the Roman gods.

But within hours, the ravaging beast proved them wrong. Theophilus stood next to Mansuetus and watched slack-jawed as Nero’s enormous Domus Transitoria, a new wing of his palace, became kindling for the hungry blaze. Expensive works of art, precious artifacts from the four corners of the empire, Nero’s wardrobe, lyres, and self-aggrandizing statues —everything was devoured in a matter of minutes.

Unstoppable, the flames spread down the Via Sacra, like a great leviathan lapping at the Forum. It rained a million sparks and embers as Theophilus and his team retreated.

The travertine stone became a bed of lava. The temple of Vesta, containing Rome’s mother hearth, was itself consumed by flames. The Vestals had already fled their nearby house, carrying as many precious artifacts with them as they could. With a triumphant roar, the fire engulfed the House of Vestal and seemed to feast there for a moment, hungry, looking for its next prey on the Forum.

As Theophilus watched from a safe distance, he heard the vigiles lament the loss of so much of Rome’s history. Only the most precious artifacts had been removed from the temple in time. So many other sacred objects and virtually every important document in the city of Rome had now been reduced to ashes. There was talk that a few of the most precious documents, like the last wills of Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar and Nero himself, had been rescued. But Theophilus knew that his own memoirs, which he had obsessed over for the past two months, had likely been consumed in an instant. The thought made him sick to his stomach, but he had no time to dwell on it.

He and the others worked feverishly with the vigiles ahead of the flames, pulling down row after row of buildings, flattening the structures in an effort to starve the fire. At times they worked so close to the fire that the heat singed their hair and eyebrows. To Theophilus, it seemed the flames might melt their faces. Great walls of fire towered over them, forcing them to retreat and set up new lines of defense as sparks were carried by the wind beyond their hasty demolitions.

Sometimes rivers of fire would flow past them to other sections of the city. Buildings behind them would begin to burn and other structures would glow with embers. Someone would shout an order and another hasty retreat would occur. Theophilus and his companions would weave their way out of the labyrinth of flames —exhausted, choking, bewildered, and half-blind from the smoke. Staggering, they would find another line of defense and help to demolish more buildings only to have the fire overtake them again.

Halfway through the night, Theophilus and his team decided they could be more useful helping residents flee ahead of the flames. The elderly, disabled, and sick littered the roads, crying for assistance, desperately trying to avoid being trampled by the mobs. Small children who had been separated from their parents roamed aimlessly, panicked and sobbing. Theophilus, Mansuetus, and their servants saved as many as they could, escorting them to a safe hill nearly a mile outside the city.

As dawn broke, the team regrouped on that same hill to rest. Great regions of the city had been reduced to ashes. In others, billows of smoke wafted to the sky. The fire continued to spread in all directions, devastating everything in its path. The wind seemed to have changed directions, and streams of flames branched out everywhere. Thousands of firefighters continued to demolish great portions of the city in a desperate attempt to head off the flames.

As they surveyed the damage, Theophilus and Mansuetus realized that the regions of the city that housed many followers of the Way were in real danger now. Though they were both exhausted, they rallied their servants and decided to fan out to those areas and let the believers know that they could take temporary residence at the estate of Theophilus, located a safe distance from the flames.

For five days and five nights, the fire feasted on Rome. During the days, Theophilus and Mansuetus helped fight the relentless flames and then retreated to their estate each night to feed and care for the refugees. Nero and his entourage returned from Antium and directed that the public buildings in the Campus Martius be thrown open for refugees who had been burned out of their homes. Because so much of Rome’s supply of grains and breads had been consumed by the fire, the emperor ordered that new shipments be brought in immediately from the great granaries in the coastal city of Ostia.

After five days, the vigiles finally contained the flames with a fire break that held at the foot of the Esquiline Hill. Large areas of the city still smoldered, and small fires broke out here and there, but the ferocity of the blaze had been brought under control. People returned from the fields surrounding Rome to gingerly search for loved ones. The smell of death hovered over the city, mingling with the swirling smoke. Some of the decaying bodies had been nearly consumed by the flames, while others were left to rot in the sun. Grieving mothers wailed as they searched for their children.

But just as everyone began focusing on the massive rebuilding and relief efforts ahead, the fire broke out again. It began in the shops of the Basilica Aemilia on property owned by Tigellinus, Caesar’s friend and confidant who had been Theophilus’s opponent at the trial of Paul.

As before, the fire spread at an uncontrolled speed toward the Capitoline Hill. This time Theophilus stayed at his estate outside the city, too exhausted to respond. He learned from those who ventured into the city that temples spared in the first blaze went up in smoke this time around. More sacred objects and gold melted away. Even the ancient temple of Jupiter, the patron god of Rome, was engulfed by fire, its roof collapsing in ruins.

By the time the flames died down after the second wave of fires, all of Rome was on edge. Of the fourteen regions of Rome, three had been totally destroyed and another seven were badly damaged. Only four of the fourteen regions had escaped unscathed.