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I once had a big Newfoundland dog, and he was one of the best friends a boy ever had. I don’t know who it was that named him; he was named before I got him; but whoever it was must either have been ignorant of history or a bad chooser of names. He was called Nero, and even a dog would have hated such a name, had he known whose it once was.
Every good story usually has a villain to make it interesting. The story of Rome has plenty of villains, but one of the worst was Nero. He was a Roman emperor who lived not long after Christ, and he is considered one of the cruelest and wickedest rulers that ever lived.
He killed his mother. He killed his wife. He killed his teacher, who was named Seneca. Seneca was a very good teacher, too.
We think that Nero ordered both Peter and Paul put to death, for they were executed at the time of Nero’s rule.
Nero seemed to take great pleasure in making others suffer. He loved to see men torn to pieces by wild beasts; it amused him greatly. I have seen boys who liked to throw stones at dogs just to hear them yelp, or tear the wings off butterflies. Such boys must have some Nero in them; don’t you think?
If a man was a Christian, that gave Nero an excuse to torture him horribly. Nero had some of the Christians wrapped in tar and pitch, then placed around the garden of his palace and set fire to, as if they were torches. It is even said that Nero set Rome on fire just for the fun of seeing the city burn. Then he sat in a tower and, while he watched the blaze spreading played on a stringed instrument. The saying is that “ Nero fiddled while Rome burned .” The fire burned day and night for a whole week and destroyed more than half the city. Nero then laid the blame on the Christians, who, he said, started the fire. Did you ever blame someone else for something you had done?
Some think Nero really was crazy, and we hope he was, for it is hard to think any human being who was not crazy could act as he did.
Nero built himself an immense palace and overlaid it extravagantly with gold and mother-of-pearl. It was known as Nero’s House of Gold. At its front door he put up a colossal statue of himself in bronze fifty feet high. Both the House of Gold and the statue were later destroyed, but the Colosseum, which was built a few years afterward, was named Colosseum from this coloss-al statue of Nero that was once there.
Nero was very conceited. He thought he could write poetry and sing beautifully. Although he did both very badly, he liked to show off, and no one dared to laugh at him. Had anyone been so bold as to make fun of him or even to smile, he would have had that person put to death instantly.
Even Roman people who were not Christians feared and hated Nero. The military rebelled against him. Before they had a chance to do anything, Nero heard what they were planning, and in order to save himself the disgrace of being put to death by his own people he decided to kill himself. He was such a coward, however, that he couldn’t quite bring himself to plunge the sword into his breast. Finally, his slave, impatient to finish the job, shoved the blade in. Thus was Rome rid of one of its worst rulers.
So much for the first part of this blood and thunder story. Here is the second part:
The Jews in Jerusalem didn’t like to have Rome rule over them. They never had. Like the Christians, the Jews could not worship the emperor as a god. But they were afraid to do much about it. In the Year 70 A.D. they rebelled; that is, they said they would no longer obey Rome or pay money to the government. The emperor sent his son, who was named Titus, with an army to put an end to the rebellion, to punish them as if they were disobedient children.
The Jews crowded into their city of Jerusalem to make a last stand against the Romans. But Titus destroyed that city completely and the Jews in it, a million of them, it is supposed. Then he robbed the great temple of all its valuable ornaments and brought them back to Rome. The great temple was then destroyed.
To celebrate this victory over Jerusalem an arch was built in the Forum at Rome, and through this arch Titus and his army marched in triumph. On this arch was carved a procession, showing Titus leaving the city of Jerusalem with the temple ornaments. Chief among these ornaments was a golden seven-branched candlestick he had taken from the temple. Today we see many copies in brass of this famous seven-branched candlestick. It is called a menorah , which is the Hebrew word for candlestick.
The city was rebuilt later, but most of the Jews who survived have ever since been living in many other countries of the world. When people leave their homeland and spread, it is called a diaspora .
The third part of this story is the thunder .
In Italy there is a volcano named Vesuvius. You remember that volcano came from the name Vulcan, the blacksmith god, and people imagined that his forge in the heart of a volcano made the smoke and flame and ashes. From time to time this volcano, Vesuvius, thunders and quakes and spouts forth fire and throws up stones and gas and boils over with red-hot melted rock called lava. It is the hot inside of the earth exploding. Yet people build houses and towns nearby and live even on the sides of the volcano. Every once in a while their homes are destroyed when the volcano quakes or pours forth fire. Yet the same people go right back and build again in the same place!
Vesuvius erupting, Pompeii in foreground
There was at the time of Titus a little town named Pompeii near the base of Vesuvius. Wealthy Romans used to go there to spend the summer. Suddenly, one day in the year 79 A.D., just after Titus had become emperor, Vesuvius began to spout forth fire. The people living in Pompeii rushed for their lives, but they didn’t have time to get away. They were smothered with the gases from the volcano before they had time to move and, falling down dead, were buried deep in a boiling rain of fire and ashes, just where they happened to be when the eruption, as it is called, took place.
The people and their houses lay buried beneath the ashes for nearly two thousand years, and in the course of time everyone had forgotten there ever had been such a place. People came back as they had before and built houses over the spot where everyone had forgotten there once was a city. Then one day a man was digging a well over the spot where Pompeii had once been. He dug up a man’s hand—no, not a real hand, but the hand of a statue. He told others, and they set to work and dug and dug to see what else they could find until the whole town was dug out. And now one can go to Pompeii and see it very much as it was in 79 A.D. before it was destroyed.
There are houses of the Romans who went there to spend their vacations. There are shops and temples and palaces and public baths and the theater and the market place or forum. The streets were paved with blocks of lava, once melted stone. They still show ruts which were worn into them by the wheels of the chariots that the Romans used to drive. Stepping stones were placed at some crossings, so that in case of heavy rains, when the streets were full of water, one could cross on them from curb to curb. These stepping stones are still there. The floors of the houses were made of bits of colored stone to form pictures. These are called mosaics . They are still there. In the vestibule of one house, there is in the floor a mosaic picture of a dog. Under it are the Latin words, Cave canem. What does that mean? Can you guess? It means, Look out for the dog !
The bones of the people who were caught and buried alive in the ashes were also found. There were also found bronze ornaments worn by the women, vases that decorated the home, pots and pans and dishes, and lamps which they used to light the houses. Beds and chairs were found just as they had been buried. Still more remarkable, cakes were found on the table, a loaf of bread half eaten, meat ready to be cooked, a kettle on the fire with the ashes still underneath it—beans and peas and one egg unbroken—probably the oldest egg in the world!