Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Nero's Torches by Henryk Siemiradzki. According to Tacitus, Nero targeted Christians as those responsible for the fire. According to Tacitus, Nero was away from Rome, in Antium, when the fire broke out. Nero returned to the city and took measures to bring in food supplies and to open gardens and public buildings to accommodate refugees. [17]
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]
Nero's Torches, Henryk Siemiradzki. Tacitus describes Nero extensively torturing and executing Christians after the fire of AD 64. [75] Suetonius also mentions Nero punishing Christians, though he does so because they are "given to a new and mischievous superstition" and does not connect it with the fire. [159]
Nero's Torches, by Henryk Siemiradzki (1876) Part of the page from the 11th century codex containing Annales, xv. 44.3–8, the passage with the reference to Christians (Florence, Laurentian Library, Plut. 68.2, f. 38r)
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.
[17] [19] Death was not swift; Kyle writes it was the torment of the 'slow-burn that was the norm. [17] One of the great satirists of Roman Empire was Decimus Junius Juvenalis, who tells Tigellinus Sophoneus, a supporter of Nero's who encouraged Nero's worst passions, that he would, himself, soon "shine in that torch like tunic". [2]: 17
The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1883) Nero's Torches, by Henryk Siemiradzki (1876). According to Tacitus, Nero used Christians as human torches The Victory of Faith, by Saint George Hare, depicts two Christians in the eve of their damnatio ad bestias