"Certainly, it's hard to know whether to trust
the allegations in the writings of Tacitus. Yet,
what about the explanation offered by Nero,
that the Christians were to blame? At least one
scholar believes Nero was on the mark. Professor
Gerhard Baudy of the University of Konstanz in
Germany has spent fifteen years studying ancient
apocalyptic prophecies. His studies have shown
that in the poor districts of Rome, Christians
were circulating vengeful texts predicting that
a raging inferno would to reduce the city to
ashes. 'In all of these oracles, the destruction
of Rome by fire is prophesied,' Baudy explains.
'That is the constant theme: Rome must burn.
This was the long-desired objective of all the
people who felt subjugated by Rome.'
Moreover, the Book of Revelations, written a
mere 30 years later, seems to equate evil with
Rome. The Whore of Babylon, the source of this
evil according to Revelations, is described as
having seven heads. 'The seven heads are seven
mountains,' Revelations says. Rome, of course,
is famously known as the city of seven hills.
What's more, an ancient Egyptian prophesy that
would have been well-known in the Christian
quarters of Rome foretold the fall of the great
evil city on the day that the dog star, Sirius,
rises. In 64 AD, Sirius rose on July 19, the
very day the great fire of Rome began. Baudy
believes that, bearing this prophetic date in
mind, some of the Christians, maltreated and
embittered, may have started the fire -- or
perhaps lit additional fires, adding fuel to
the larger conflagration -- in hopes of
realizing their prophesies."

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_rome/index.html




***

BAUDY, Gerhard J., Dr. phil., Prof.
Fachgruppe Literaturwissenschaft/Gräzistik
Universität Konstanz

This page has been automatically translated from Spanish.
http://www.el-mundo.es/2001/12/16/cr...85147_imp.html

HISTORY/TERRORIST CHRISTIANS
I SAY THAT NERON I DO NOT BURN ROME
We have grown with the image of a pyromaniacal Nerón singing while Rome
burned. The historian Gerhard Baudy, of the German university of
Constanz, settles down that the authors were the Christians of burns it and
of the antineroniana legend
GERHARD BAUDY
In the cultural memory of the western world Nerón it represents the
incarnation of badly. The Roman Caesar fundamentally must his paper to the
fact of being the first persecutor of Christians. According to Tacitus,
he used to whom followers of Jesus like Turk heads declared themselves
to exculpate themselves of the caused fire. The own Tacitus leaves the
question on the culpability of the emperor without solving.
Nevertheless, other less trustworthy authors affirm saberlo.Para Suetonio and
Casio Dio does not fit doubt that it was Nerón that ordered to set fire to
the city because it needed a free surface to carry out his ambitious
work projects.Since then the image of a driven crazy monarch has been
recorded in the European literary tradition who got to intone his own poem
on the collapse of Troy before the city in llamas.La novel of
Sienkiewicz Quo Vadis and the film that on her was based (with Peter Ustinov in
the paper of Nerón) strengthened the bad image of the sovereign.
But as today it is known, the cultural memory is not indeed a
trustworthy deposit for the historical memory. On her they act all type of
distorting tendencies and is one of the duties of the historian to unmask
its mitificadora force. In this sense, the investigation of last the 100
years has rehabilitated to this Roman sovereign in many senses.
In order to begin, the image of its person contributed by the critical
study has dissociated of the one of carnival and gross the personage
that still usually represents school books: it is simply improbable that
the Caesar who was not in Rome when the fire was triggered and that it
went to the city as soon as the news knew to organize the works of dull
ordered the fire of the tile roofs of its own subjects. In fact, its
greater desire was to be loved by the town. And the great veneration that
the humbler social classes demonstrated to him and than Nerón enjoyed
until beyond the death, makes the affirmation very doubtful of the Roman
historians which the commons person suspected her culpability like
incendiary immediately.
CONSPIRING AGAINST CAESAR
This rumor rather was spread by the members of the call pisónica
conspiracy, pawned on creating badly acclimates around the Caesar. One was
the hostile senatorial aristocracy the emperor and of them the
difamadores historians of Nerón extracted their information.
But, if the incendiary one were not Nerón, then who burned Rome? Until
now the investigation he does not answer this question and he adjudges
the catastrophe to an accidental cause. Personally I do not consider a
chance that the eternal city was in 19 flames exactly of Julio, day in
which invading Gauls or had destroyed the city in the same way in 387
year 390 or a.C. The the 64 Romans of d.C., the date that occupies to
us, related both events immediately. A consultation documented made
officially to the sibylline oráculos demonstrates the religious
preoccupation that it triggered the new misfortune like repetition of the previous
one.
For greater abundance, those in favor of the hypothesis of the
accidental fire despised the value that the date of the 19 of July he had in
the old world and that had that, in a similar day, the fixed star in the
celestial East was Vista in Egypt clearer: Syrian. Its appearance
marked the day of the ideal New Year and, guiding itself by her, Julio
Caesar introduced, in the 46 a.C., the Julian calendar. As of that moment
the 19 of July were considered the day of the "birthday of the cosmos",
moment at which time and time again periodic catastrophes dated that
would supposedly renew the world-wide world, deluges and fires.
On the base of these observations, 10 years ago I defended the thesis
that the fire of Rome of year 64 tried to cause an eschatological
change. Who caused it wanted to trigger the rebellion the repressed
provinces, mainly those of the Roman Empire of the East. One was a terrorist
attack for which a day with apocalyptic meaning was chosen.
The fact that in those times it took the blame and solely it condemned
the Christians, although until then the Romans absolutely did not
differentiate them from the Jews, estimates that already a division existed:
they confessed its faith in Jesus Christ to whom the Romans had
crucificado as the "king of the Jews" and others waited for his soon return,
according to the Hebrew tradition. In both cases, nevertheless, to the
Roman Caesar the paper of final player in opposition to Christ was
reserved to him. On this "Antichrist", as it were called to him later, a
celestial fire judgment would unload so that on the rubbish of the Roman
Empire a totalitarian theocratic state could straighten up.
The loyal Jews to Rome always had been distanced of this type of
messianic agitation, giving to the missionaries of the kingdom of Earth God
(the Christians) to the Roman authorities. Thus he explains himself
that, after the fire of Rome of year 64, they were intact and,
nevertheless, culpabilizara to the radical followers of Jesus. In fact, to these
Christians first, of Jewish origin, they were associated immediately in
the diáspora pagan of the political opposition to the Roman Empire,
because an adhesion to the hair net and therefore inaccessible coup
participant Christ supposed an attractive possibility to defy of effective
form the imperial pretensions to be able. This explains the incredible
success of the Christianity.
We must know clearly that under the Empire any legal form of opposition
did not exist. The parties, so and as we know them, did not exist. The
transformations of being able were only obtained by means of the route
of the conspiracy or the open rebellion. Until the arrival of the
constantiniano change, the Christian movement era first of all a receiver
for the political insatisfechos, that under the religious augury, were
organized like state within the state, being for that reason constantly
under the threat of being sanctioned. And it is that the Roman organs of
justice were not let deceive by the apologetic affirmation of which the
kingdom of God was not of this world: although this kingdom outside
celestial origin, according to the apocalyptic vision of the Christians,
had to descend from the sky to the Earth. And, in addition, the
coexistence between the kingdom of God and the Roman state was only predicted
until the call "day of the Gentleman".
REVOLUTIONARY BELIEVERS
The fact that the Romans valued to the Christians and their followers
of way very different from the present one, depoliticized, and the one
who perceived them like incendiary guerrillas and, tends to consider
today like malentendido. Nevertheless, the Christians of the first century
formed a revolutionary party arisen from the Judaism, which they
followed bound, that hoped the celestial signal to give the blow.
Those that they lived in the Roman diáspora supported with their
distant mother countries, put under by Rome, that forced to pay tributes to
them, and had interest in animating them to rebel itself by means of a
signal: the indicated secret day, "the day of the Gentleman", the state
of God would become a reality by means of a revolutionary act and at
the same time the Roman Empire would sink.
If Roman justice looked for Christians of very concrete form after the
fire of Rome of the 19 of July it is because it had a precise reason
for suspicion. And this one, probably, contributed an apocalyptic
prophecy to it that had been put in circulation, that predicted the fall of
the metropolis Roman through the Christ who revealed itself in the fire
of Syrian. The prophecy fulfilled the fire of Rome leaving a significant
track in the old tradition. A doctrine heretical and judged by Hipólito
compares the Christ who returns to the star of the Greater Dog (Syria).
The fire was not without consequences. The reconstruction of Rome cost
as much money that the financial operation of the province intensified,
which triggered many levantamientos.Dos years later Judea as well rose
against the Roman dominion and, after the repression of the revolt in
year 70, the Jews which they also lived in Egypt took the arms.