Today in history: the Great Fire at Rome--Nero blames the Christians:

[dimbear]

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/rome.htm

The first major persecution of the then tiny sect, with actual throwing to the lions.

[The Magistrate]

1. And Might Well Have Been Correct, Sir

Early preaching contained a great deal of 'God will smite Rome with fire!' verbiage, and the possibility of some seeking to force the deity's hand, by imitative magic, or by feeling themselves the instruments of his will and acting to bring a conflagration about to consume Rome, is one quite possible explanation for the event. That, owing to such elements in the preaching, many regarded this emerging sect as a 'doom folk', cursing all that was good and holy, would certainly have them well suited to receive the charge, in the event.

[struggle4progress]

5. Then, again, Rome was the center of an empire, and filled with persons who remembered

the various cities Rome had recently burned in the Armenian wars (for example). It was not that uncommon for rebellious mobs to bring flaming torches to what demonstrations they had, with the threat they'd set their rulers' homes ablaze. And some of the historical accounts suggest Nero had to deal with rumors of earlier sibylline prophecies connecting him to the fire

[The Magistrate]

7. True, Sir

There were many people who would have considered a conflagration consuming Rome high justice, devoutly to be wished for.

Later history references to the Sibyls are, in my view, best taken with a grain of salt: the texts were certainly corrupted, and histories written in the times of a new dynasty tend to spend considerable energy blackening the name of the previous ruling house, lest questions of legitimacy be asked.

[rug]

6. That's fine speculation. Do you have any evidence?

[The Magistrate]

8. It Helps To Read What You Reply To, Sir; Cuts Down the Chances Of Making Yourself Look Silly

My statement was not 'Christians started the fire!' but rather, 'It is possible Christians started the fire, the charge is not mindless calumny, or necessarily convenient scape-goating by the real culprit.'

It is a simple fact that no one can prove anything one way or the other about the origin of the conflagration; there is insufficient evidence to establish anything beyond that it did occur.

[rug]

11. Words you'd be wise to heed.

That's why the word is speculation. And now you've answered; it's speculation without evidence.

[The Magistrate]

12. You Keep Digging Yourself That Hole, Sir....

You sound like someone who is excited to discover the sun rises in the east....

[rug]

13. The hole is one entirely of your own speculation.

And not very creative speculation at that.

"The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing." - Publilius Syrus

[cleanhippie]

18. "You sound like someone who is excited to discover the sun rises in the east...."

Fucking classic! Well done, sir, well done.

[Warpy]

9. Forensic archaeology (via PBS)

suggests Nero was correct. There is evidence that the fires started in multiple places in Christian areas and once extinguished, were relit.

Meanwhile, instead of playing the fiddle (which wouldn't be invented for some years), Nero threw open palaces and temples as refuges from the fire and as far as I know, didn't ask anyone's religious credentials if they took refuge there.

Nero got a bad rap, in other words. His persecution of Christians after the fire is a matter of record and about as extreme as it got before Hitler's folks designed the gas chambers. However, evidence states that he had ample reason to be furious with them.

[The Magistrate]

10. I Think That Presentation Made a Good Case, Sir, But Fell Short Of Proving It

It was a useful corrective, however, to the easy acceptance of the claim the fire was an act of Nero which he blamed on innocent Christians, which usually rests on a faith conviction Christians just would never do what Nero accused them of, being peaceful, loving people, who only wanted to practice their religion without interference by the state.

[struggle4progress]

14. Perhaps you can explain how one identifies a part of CE64 Rome as a "Christian area"

A passage in Suetonius indicates Claudius in CE49 expelled Jewish followers of "Chrestus" from Rome, which seems attested separately by Acts 18:2

... the Jew Aquila, born in Pontus, came from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome ...

Claudius lived until CE54, when Nero ascended to the throne. This suggests that no one was openly Jewish/Christian in Rome during the final years of Claudius CE49-54, though perhaps after Claudius' death people might have become somewhat bolder. Paul reported visited the Jewish/Christian community there c. CE57 but provoked something of a disturbance; very old tradition asserts that both Peter and Paul were executed by the Romans early in the second half of the first century. Whatever the value of such claims as biography, they seem credible as summaries of the political climate

But apparently no Christian inscriptions are known in Rome before the latter half of the second century:

Earliest Christian engraving shows pagan elements
Researcher believes it to be funeral epigram incorporating Christian and pagan elements
By Owen Jarus
updated 10/3/2011 1:07:14 PM ET

... Officially called NCE 156, the inscription is written in Greek and is dated to the latter half of the second century, a time when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power ... The only other written Christian remains that survive from that time period are fragments of papyri that quote part of the gospels and are written in ink. Stone inscriptions are more durable than papyri and are easier to display. "If it is in fact a second-century inscription, as I think it probably is, it is about the earliest Christian material object that we possess" ... Margherita Guarducci, a well-known Italian epigrapher who passed away in 1999, proposed a second-century date for the inscription more than four decades ago. She argued that the way it was written, with a classical style of Greek letters, was only used in Rome during the first and second centuries ...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44759608/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/earliest-christian-engraving-shows-pagan-elements/

It's difficult to date most inscriptions. The "Alexamenos worships his god" graffiti, for example, is dated somewhere between the first and third centuries CE. Any inscriptions/artifacts clearly of Christian origin, or clearly referencing Christian beliefs, that predated the CE64 fire, would certainly be significant

[Warpy]

15. Christians were generally in the worst of the slums.

That's where the fires started and where those that were extinguished were relit.

However, if you have a quibble about methodology, I'd suggest you contact PBS. I didn't do the digging and I certainly didn't write the conclusion.

[struggle4progress]

16. PBS apparently aired various programs that touch on the fire, not all taking

the same POV: for example,

Archaeologist Andrea Carandini provides the most convincing evidence to corroborate the implication of Tacitus -- that Nero circumvented the senate by burning Rome so he could build his palace. Carandini, who has been digging in Rome for twenty years, has examined the ancient layers of ash left behind by the fire. "Everything was destroyed," he says. "There was not one single house standing." Specifically, Carandini explains that fire destroyed the portion of the Forum where the senators lived and worked. "All these houses were destroyed, so the aristocracy didn't have a proper place to live," he says. The open mall in the middle of the Forum remained, but it became a sort of shopping mall, a commercial center "built on the top of aristocratic Rome ... so it's the end, in a way, of the power of the aristocracy in Rome" ...

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/case_rome/clues.html

My question to you is really just: How do we know?

How, for example, could we know that prior to the CE64 fire Christians were generally in the worst of the slums, especially if we have no definite Christian artifacts from the fire?

And how could one be reasonably sure that fires that were extinguished were relit by human agency, as you claim, if the fires occurred two millennia ago, mostly destroying a major city that was almost completely rebuilt immediately afterwards?

And what will be the primary source material for claims that Christians, immediately before the fire, in the worst slums of Rome, were circulating materials prophesying the destruction of Rome, if those slums burned first? Standard writing materials (such as wax tablets, leather rolls, papyrus sheets) were expensive and very fragile -- not the sort of material one expects to survive a fire

[rexcat]

2. And...

the persecution continues to this day.

[intaglio]

3. Ah, yes, the Tacitus claim

Which only said that some cultists living in Rome were punished for the fire. Also note that there are indications that the Tacitus passage may have been creatively edited at some time after it was written.

There is NO evidence of a campaign of persecution and no evidence for such a campaign - except Church tradition.

[struggle4progress]

4. I have no idea what happened in AD 64, but Nero had an evil reputation

among the Roman historians: Tacitus (c109 AD) regards him as a man of "abominations and wickedness"; Suetonius gives a long catalog of "his shameful and criminal deeds"

http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.9.xiii.html
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/thayer/e/roman/texts/suetonius/12caesars/nero*.html

[struggle4progress]

17. ... a letter arrived .. Nero snatched it .. and read that, having been declared a public enemy

by the Senate, he would be punished in the ancient fashion. Asking what that was he learned that the victim was stripped naked, had his head thrust in a wooden fork, and was then beaten to death with rods ... Then, with the help .. his private secretary, he plunged a dagger into his throat, and was already half-dead when a centurion entered ...
Suetonius' Twelve Caesars, Book VI: Nero
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Suetonius6.htm#_Toc276122249

[Marrah_G]

19. And then the victims became the victimizers

They just preferred burning torture and burning at the stake to the lions.

Power corrupts.