Joseph J. Walsh - The Great Fire of Rome: Life and Death in the Ancient City

THIS BOOK TELLS THE STORY of the greatest of the Great Fires, the Great Fire of Rome. Ancient Romes size, significance, and power were enormous in comparison to that of other cities of its era, and this fire obliterated the better part of the city. It would be well over a millennium before another urban fire of this scale occurred, and no city of Romes evident and considerable superiority to its contemporaries ever suffered such a devastating conflagration. Nor does the story of any other great historical fire offer such star power in human termsNero, Saints Peter and Paul, Aeneas, Raphael, Michelangeloor in architecturalSt. Peters Basilica, the Vatican, the Colosseum, the Circus Maximus.

Readers of this text will get a glimpse of what a horrifying experience the disaster was for those who endured it and for those who perished in it. But the book also examines the daily lives of those victims and survivors in that simultaneously magnificent and dangerous city, lives marked by perils as well as pleasures. It explores how the city and its residents prepared for, sustained, made sense of, and, ironically, invited the disaster. The Great Fires extraordinary aftermath and legacyas important as the event itselfwill also receive their due.

In the ancient Mediterranean and Europe, Rome was not a cityit was the city. The heart of a vast and complex empire, Rome itself was unprecedentedly vast and complex. Never had so many fantastically wealthy and abysmally poor people gathered together in one place, and the citys fabric and configuration reflected the presence of both. Rome contained splendid temples for worship, impressive basilicas for public business, gardens and fountains for relief, and, among its many splendid venues for entertainment, one of the largest sports facilities in human history, the Circus Maximus. Some residents lived in impressive urban mansions, others in tenement slums that would rival the grimmest in the most overcrowded cities today for danger, discomfort, and misery. Shops were everywhere and sold everything then available. Rome was a vibrant, motley, exhilarating, exhausting place, which wore its importance on its sleeve. A city where anything could happenand did.

Unfortunately, much of what happened was bad.

Peril was everywhere in Rome. Its inhabitants contended daily with the threat of collapsing buildings, flood, crime, food poisoning, disease, and, of course, firethe price of living in the city.

Disasters reveal character, in both senses of the word.

People experiencing disasters have hard choices to make and often little time to make them. Courage contends with fear, selflessness with self-interest, decency with shamelessness. Our very sense of who we are and what we stand for is at stake. As each individuals character is put to the test, some pass, some fail, and for many the assessment is vexinglyor comfortinglyambiguous. You can spend a lifetime agonizing over whether you did what you should have done. You can also reinterpret, rewrite even, the narrative of your response, if it is too troubling.