Free The Great Fire of Rome: The Fall of the Emperor Nero and His City by Stephen Dando-Collins Page B

textbook on oratory, and his thirty-seven-volume Natural History , which many considered his masterwork. His German Wars , a twenty-volume history of all Rome’s wars with the tribes of Germany, would later be used as a reference by Tacitus for his greatest contribution to the written history of Rome, the Annals .
     
    When he was in his late teens, Pliny was a “thin stripe” tribune, or officer cadet, serving in the Roman army on the Rhine. It was there that he befriended Vespasian, who was then the legate, or commander, of the 2nd Augusta Legion when it was still stationed at Argentoratum, modern Strasbourg, prior to participating in the invasion of Britain. A few years later, Pliny served as a prefect of auxiliary infantry and then commanded an auxiliary cavalry wing, also on the Rhine.
     
    Now, when Pliny the scholar went visiting at Rome, he was carried from his house on the Esquiline Hill in a sedan chair, with a freedman secretary walking beside him taking notes in shorthand on wax tablets as his master dictated. At this time, Pliny was working on the eight-volume Problems in Grammar . Pliny’s nephew, Pliny the Younger, who would himself become a noted writer, later commented that during this period in Nero’s reign, “when the slavery of the times made it dangerous to write anything at all independent or inspired,” his uncle deliberately chose to avoid political subjects and put his energies into this work on grammar, which could offend no one, least of all the emperor. 5 There was another reason that the elder Pliny was carried in a sedan chair. He was a stout man and suffered from a constitutional weakness of the throat, which was often inflamed, and as a consequence, he breathed with a pronounced wheeze. This meant that walking any distance was not an option.
     
    Yet Pliny would not acknowledge a physical infirmity or use it as an excuse to be carried. To him, every moment that could be used for work should be used for work. “I remember how he scolded me for walking,” Pliny the Younger related. “According to him, I need not have wasted those hours, for he thought that any time was wasted which was not devoted to work.” 6 And so it was that the elder Pliny was carried along the dark city streets before dawn to see his friend Vespasian, preceded by a servant or a client bearing a flaming torch, at every step composing his grammatical thoughts.
     
    Vespasian, meanwhile, now that he was back at Rome, appeared to rest on his laurels as a successful general and winner of the decorations of a Triumph. But, all the while, he was hoping for another lucrative appointment from Nero so that he could further improve his financial fortunes. To win another imperial post, Vespasian was prepared to join Nero’s entourage when he traveled. The man under the emperor’s nose was more likely to win the emperor’s favor than another who failed to make the effort to flatter his lord and master. In short, Vespasian had no scruples about sycophancy if that fanned the flickering flame of prosperity.
     

VI
     
    THE WATER COMMISSIONER
     
    W ell before the end of March, with the ceremonials devoted to Mars continuing, Nero, impatient to escape the capital and begin his planned performance tour, departed Rome. He did not go alone or unnoticed. Carried in a litter, guarded by heavily accented German bodyguards from the German Cohorts and men from the Praetorian Cohorts, accompanied by a train of litters bearing scores of leading Roman citizens, and followed by carts and wagons laden with baggage and thousands of slaves and freedmen on foot, the massive Neronian cavalcade passed through the Porta Capena and proceeded down the Appian Way to the south.
     
    Praetorian prefect Tigellinus remained at the capital. Other serving officials, too, would not be leaving Rome. The two consuls would remain, as would the twenty praetors, who were the senior magistrates of Rome and were required to preside at court hearings on all