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According to Tacitus and later Christian tradition, Emperor Nero blamed the devastation on the Christian community in the city, initiating the empire's first persecution against the Christians. [3] Other contemporary historians blamed Nero's incompetence but it is commonly agreed by historians now that Rome was so tightly packed a fire was ...
It depicts a group of Early Christian martyrs who are about to be burned alive as the alleged perpetrators of the Great Fire of Rome, during the reign of emperor Nero in 64 AD. People from many different social spheres, including the emperor himself, are present to watch the burning, which takes place in front of the Domus Aurea.
The exact cause of the fire remains uncertain, but much of the population of Rome suspected that Emperor Nero had started the fire himself. [14] To divert attention from himself, Nero accused the Christians of starting the fire and persecuted them, making this the first documented confrontation between Christians and the authorities in Rome. [14]
A. N. Sherwin-White records that serious discussion of the reasons for Roman persecution of Christians began in 1890 when it produced "20 years of controversy" and three main opinions: first, there was the theory held by most French and Belgian scholars that "there was a general enactment, precisely formulated and valid for the whole empire, which forbade the practice of the Christian religion.
Largely made up of wooden tenements, fire was a frequent occurrence in the city. Rumor blamed the tragedy on the unpopular emperor Nero, who wanted to enlarge his palace. He accused the Christians. According to the historian Tacitus, many Christians were put to death "not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind." [3]
The Roman elite despised Emperor Nero’s “artistic endeavors,” a historian said. Nero’s theater — where audience may have sat on ‘pain of death’ — discovered in Rome Skip to main ...
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (/ ˈ n ɪər oʊ / NEER-oh; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68) was a Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his death in AD 68.
Ruins of a private theater belonging to the 1st century Roman Emperor Nero have been unearthed in the Italian capital just meters from the Vatican, in what experts are calling an “exceptional ...