“They want you to settle their disputes,” I said in jest.
But the Jews were indignant.
“This is no joking matter,” they said. “The Christ of the Christians is not the Jewish Messiah. A curse on those who acknowledge him as Christ. We will have nothing to do with them, whether they are circumcised or not. It was these Christians who prophesied the day of judgment and sang thanksgivings during the fire. Their crimes are not ours.”
“The Christians are not criminals,” I said hurriedly. “They are humble and perhaps slightly foolish people. Presumably more stupid than you are. Don’t the Jews believe in the ultimate judgment and the kingdom of a thousand years?”
The Jews looked sadly at me and, after consulting together, they spoke again.
‘We do not talk with dogs on such matters,” they said. “All we wish to do is to give an assurance that the guilt of the Christians has nothing to do with the Jews. We are prepared to believe any evil of them.”
I thought the conversation was taking an unpleasant turn.
“I can see in your troubled eyes, Poppaea, the signs of a headache coming,” I said hurriedly. “Let us briefly summarize the matter. The Jews deny all connections with the Christians. They look upon themselves as devout. They believe ill of the Christians, good of themselves. That is all.”
When I saw the bitter countenance of the Jews, I went on: “Perhaps there are among the Christians some former criminals and rogues who have reformed and have had their sins forgiven. Their king is said to have come especially to seek out the sinful and not the proud. But in general the Christians are meek and peaceable, they feed the poor, help widows and comfort prisoners. I. know nothing evil of them.”
Poppaea was curious.
‘What is this guilt they mention?” she asked. “There’s something suspicious in all this which I don’t understand.”
“You must have heard the absurd rumors that have been spreading among the people about the cause of our national disaster,” I said sarcastically. “I think the Jews are now trying to explain in a roundabout way and somewhat belatedly that it was not they who set fire to Rome, They consider that such a statement would be as irrational as to accuse the Emperor of the same thing,”
But my sarcasm was wasted. Poppaea was much too afraid of the magic of the Jews. Her face brightened at once.
“Now I see!” she cried. “Go in peace, you holy men. I shall not allow anyone to suspect you of anything evil. You did right to inform me that you do not acknowledge the Christians as Jews.”
The Jews blessed her in the name of their god Hallelujah and they left.
“You realize that they hate the Christians out of envy,” I said when they had gone. “The Christians have won over many of their adherents and both Jerusalem and the synagogues have thus lost many gifts.”
“If the Jews have reason to hate the Christians,” said Poppaea, “then the Christians must be both dangerous and harmful. You yourself said that they are criminals and rogues.”
And she would not listen to any more explanations, for there would be no room for them in her lovely head. I think she went straight to Nero and told him that it was the dangerous Christian sect who had set fire to Rome and that the sect consisted of nothing but criminals.
Nero was pleased to hear this and at once ordered Tigellinus to see what could be found to substantiate this accusation. But the Jews were not to be involved in the investigation, for their faith had only apparent similarities to the dangerous teachings of the Christians.
An investigation of this kind should have been undertaken by the City Prefect, but Nero put more trust in Tigellinus. In addition, the Christian faith stemmed from the East and its adherents were mostly immigrants from the East. Tigellinus was not interested in religious matters. He simply obeyed orders and turned to the lowest orders in Rome in his researches.
This was not a difficult task. In a single afternoon his minions rounded up about thirty suspected men who willingly admitted that they were Christians and were very surprised when they found themselves immediately arrested and taken to the dungeons of the Praetorium. They were sternly asked whether they had set fire to Rome the previous summer, and this they denied emphatically. Then they were asked whether they knew any other Christians. In all innocence, they gave as many names as they could remember. All the soldiers had to do was to go and fetch the men and women from their homes, and they came without protest.
By nightfall, about a thousand Christians had been rounded up, mostly people from the lowest classes. The soldiers said that all they had had to do was to go into any crowd and call out a question as to whether there were any Christians there, and then these madmen just gave themselves up to be arrested.
Tigellinus was worried by the large numbers of people he had to interrogate. As there was not room for them all, he thought it best to thin them out a little. At first he released all Jews who could show that they were circumcised. He spoke firmly to two members of the Noble Order of Knights who had come with the crowd, and then released them for what he thought was a sensible reason, that one could hardly accuse a Roman knight of setting fire to the city.
Several more well-to-do citizens, upset by the kind of people they had landed among, said they were sure it was all some mistake and offered the Prefect gifts to clear up the misunderstanding. These Tigellinus willingly released, for he thought the branded criminals and deserter slaves were the most guilty. He wished to undertake a thorough weeding out of the whole of the underworld of Rome which now after the fire was making the city unsafe at night. Such was his conception of the Christians.
At first the prisoners were calm, appealing in the name of Christ as they talked among themselves and not understanding what they were accused of. But when they saw people being sorted out and released at random and when they heard from others that everyone was being asked whether they had taken part in setting fire to Rome or knew anything about it, they began to be frightened and even distrust each other.
The separating of the circumcised from the rest roused the suspicion that the followers of Jacob, the supporters of Jerusalem, had had something to do with the matter. These people had always kept themselves apart from the Christians, following their own Jewish customs and looking on themselves as more devout than others. Violent disputes also broke out between the supporters of Cephas and those of Paul. The result was that the remaining prisoners were encouraged to denounce Christians of other kinds as much as possible. Even those who kept calm were drawn into this envy and vengefulness, and they too denounced others. There were also some who reasoned sensibly and considered it would be best to denounce as many people as possible, and highly placed people as well.
The more we are, they thought, the more impossible it will be to hold a trial. Paul was released. Tigellinus will soon come to his senses when he sees how many and how influential we are.
During the night, whole families and relatives had been arrested in this way all over Rome, so swiftly that the Praetorians could only just keep up.
Tigellinus received a gloomy awakening in the morning after his night of wine and boys. His eyes were met by the sight of the Praetorians’ huge parade ground filled with well-dressed people humbly sitting in families on the ground. Long lists of people who had been denounced were shown to him and he was asked whether house searches and arrests were also to be made of people with the rank of senator and Consul.
At first he did not believe all these reports, but said that the Christian criminals had out of sheer ill-will accused honorable citizens. So he walked threateningly around the parade ground with his whip in his hand, asking here and there: “Are you really Christians?” All of them admitted gladly and trustfully that they believed in Christ.
They were such respectable and innocent people that he did not have the nerve to give them as much as a flick of his whip, but decided that some kind of fearful mistake had been made. He and his colleagues calculated with the help of their lists that there were about twenty thousand people from all walks of life still waiting to be arrested. To punish that number seemed insane.
Rumors about the mass arrests of Christians had of course spread all over Rome. Tigellinus was soon besieged by hordes of envious and malicious people who all wished to tell him that with their own eyes they had seen the Christians gathering on the hillsides during the fire, singing songs of praise and predicting the fire which was about to fall on the city from the sky.
In the Praetorium, complete chaos reigned. The people who had been billeted in emergency housing on Mars field took the opportunity to break into homes they knew were Christian, mistreat others and plunder their shops,
