would blaze for nine days and destroy ten of the fourteen districts of the
great city on the Tiber. It was rumored that Nero “fiddled while Rome
burned”, and that he had planned the fire in order to build a grander palace
and city for himself named Neronia. The burnt-out mob began to blame
their matricidal Emperor for the disaster, and Nero, desperate to direct their
fury elsewhere, concocted the story (perhaps at the suggestion of the Jews
in Rome) that it was the already unpopular Christians who had ignited the
fires as part of a plot to destroy the Empire:
“…and yet the evil rumors that the fire had been lighted at his
order, could not be hushed. Therefore, in order to put an end to this
talk, he designated culprits and had them punished with the utmost
refinements of cruelty. And the people he chose were those whom
the populace abominated on account of their vices and whom they
called ‘Christians’…Therefore those who confessed their religion
were arrested first of all; then, on their indication, great numbers
were convicted who were accused not so much of fire-raising as of
hatred of the human race.”¹
Nero would go the full stride and enact the only law that survived his
execrable reign – the banning of Christianity. It was now an offense
punishable with death to be a believer in Jesus Christ anywhere in the
Empire. Thus, began the first of ten great Roman persecutions of
Christianity that would span the next 248 years. The first victims were the
Christians of Rome, who were hunted down and rounded up for the games
of 64 AD in Nero’s Circus. The entertainment for the Roman populace
would be novel and exciting enough to be the distraction needed by Nero:
Christians as food for wild beasts in the arena; Christians soaked in pitch
and sulfur and lit as torches along the Appian Way and for the Emperor’s
parties; Christians forced to act as characters murdered in plays; Christian
women given as sexual prizes to the victors of gladiatorial contests and
then murdered. Though the mob reveled in these spectacles, the more noble
Romans admired the constancy of the martyrs and remained suspicious of
Nero’s motives for targeting them.
The persecution spread to other parts of the Empire, particularly the
Christian communities in Asia Minor founded by Sts. Peter and Paul. St.
Peter, in Rome continually since 62 AD and himself the prime target of the
1
Tacitus, Annals, 15, 44:2-5.
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