Quote:Was Tacitus's account of the fire true? I honestly can't see anyone fabricating a long and detailed account of a fire just so they could make a passing reference to Christians.
Agreed. Can you see a later xtian writer inserting a couple of lines though?
Rome was always at risk of fire. Poorly built wooden structures and no real fire-fighting capability. There was a fire in 64. There was a fire in 69 when troops loyal to Vitellius fought against troops loyal to Vespasian. There was a very serious fire in 80. Oddly, in the aftermath of 64 Nero actually decreed that buildings could not share common walls in an effort to stop the spread of fires. There is a report by Plutarch that the first century BC plutocrat, Marcus Licinius Crassus attained a great deal of his wealth by forming his own fire brigade which showed up at a burning building but would only put out the fire if the property was sold to Crassus first. So fires in Rome were hardly unknown.
Read the Annals. The description of the fire actually begins well before the single reference in #44. The actual description of the blaze and aftermath starts in #38. Tacitus manages to talk about the fire for a good long time without ever mentioning xtians....if he mentioned them at all.
Here is Annals beginning with paragraph #30
http://sacred-texts.com/cla/tac/a15030.htm
Hit Next at the bottom to get to the next segment.
