Freethought & Rationalism Archive

hjalti · 04-02-2011, 05:19 AM

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There is nothing about Christians dying for their faith there...

So you think that Tacitus is telling us that what the Christians confessed to was starting the fire, and not their faith?

hjalti · 04-02-2011, 05:22 AM

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This is in a section about what happens AFTER the fire.

So what is the problem exactly?

The problem isn't that this is placed after the fire.

spin · 04-02-2011, 05:43 AM

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

If you checked out Martin you'd know that Tacitus preferred not to go into the gruesome details.

And so? How have you established that this one sentence contains gruesome details to the order that Tacitus wouldn't use it? Don't you have to establish that first? Or are you just assuming it?

Look for any directly equivalent examples in Tacitus of such juicy descriptions of inflictions of pain.

Moving the burden of proof. We have that one sentence. You need to show that these "juicy descriptions of inflictions of pain" is not typical of Tacitus, and you haven't even tried to do that. You've only given your opinion. Here is the sentence again:

"Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired"

I'll ask again: If Tacitus was writing in his "normal" style, what would you have expected him to have written here?

I've already functionally answered this question. Given his demonstrated style I can't see him having written it at all. Not at all. He would merely have alluded to their executions.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

... martyrs are those who suffer for their faith. The definition is "One who chooses to suffer death rather than renounce religious principles". A Christian crossing the road and getting hit by a bus is not your standard martyrdom story. There is nothing about Christians dying for their faith there.

They were chosen for their faith. It is made clear that supposedly they were well-known to the crowds of the time for their "wickedness" and that a huge multitude (multitudo ingens) were arrested--all of which is probable to you. They were put to death because of their faith, "a pernicious superstition".

This is clearly not a typical martyrdom story, and it could easily have been one. That's why it doesn't read like an interpolation. But let's leave it to the uncommitted reader.

You seem to want a typical martyrdom story inserted in a pagan source.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Nero offered spectacles in the gardens where the people were sheltering. You have yet to come to a point. All you are doing is presenting passages as though they offered some conclusion in themselves. So, Nero provided his gardens to shelter the homeless, and then killed people in them. He dressed in public as a charioteer. So what?

Either he opened the gardens to the homeless for temporary accommodation or he offered the garden as a venue to light up the night sky with human torches for public spectacle. The first excludes the second.

(The latter is so absurd, given that this was supposedly caused by a rampant fire and that the gardens were occupied by the homeless. Casual fires were lit in the darkness to kill christians while people were living in temporary, meaning flammable, shelters.)

State clearly why this was an issue. Was the garden too small to accommodate both activities? Or did they not have the ability to handle burning people near temporary accommodation? WHY does the first exclude the second, and how do you know? What moves this from being just your opinion to something with evidence?

It's a matter of discourse necessity. He opened the gardens up for the homeless.... He gave the gardens over for a spectacle of burning bodies.... But the homeless people were still there/had been moved.

What we have is the implication that the writer of the christian material had forgotten that he'd already indicated that the gardens were occupied.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

My conclusion was already there. You in your hurry overlooked what was going on.

[T2]... Conclusion of the fire narrative, plus the christian deaths.[/T2]
Hopefully, the reader can see that the fire discourse is an integrated narrative which starts with the aspersion that Nero may have lit the fire, tracks the events, while criticizing Nero, and ends the same way it started, with the aspersion ie "that the conflagration was the result of an order."

How many people see the christian deaths as part of this discourse? What do you think of its placement at the end of the discourse? What effect does it have with regard to what Tacitus is doing with the narrative regarding Nero?

Read where Tacitus has placed that event.

I have many times.

What follows makes almost no sense...

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

He has clearly moved on to what happened after the fire.

That's not strange. He indicates the end of the fire in 15.41.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

And that includes fixing the blame on the Christians.

If you say so.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Were the temporary structures still in the garden when the Christians were being killed? We don't know, Tacitus doesn't say how long after the fire Nero started killing Christians.

What would be the point of trying to pin the blame on someone long after the event? How long would the emperor have waited while rumors circulated against him??

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

But Tacitus is writing about what the Romans did AFTER the fire, and that included punishing the Christians.

Yeah, we got that in 15.41.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

(I suppose that if I show that the Christian passage fits the context, you will claim that it is a perfect place for an interpolation!) Here is what Tacitus writes, both before and after his passages about the Christians. Here is what he writes BEFORE the Christian passage:

These colonnades Nero promised to erect at his own expense, and to hand over the open spaces, when cleared of the debris, to the ground landlords. He also offered rewards proportioned to each person's position and property, and prescribed a period within which they were to obtain them on the completion of so many houses or blocks of building. He fixed on the marshes of Ostia for the reception of the rubbish, and arranged that the ships which had brought up corn by the Tiber, should sail down the river with cargoes of this rubbish....

Obviously he is writing about what Nero did AFTER the fire, and that includes how Nero handled suspicions that he ordered the fire.

Umm, yeah. You're right!... or have we crept back before 15.41 and I missed it?

Is it that you don't get why Nero built colonnades, offered rewards, or chose the Ostian marshes for rubbish?

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

"Consequently" Nero starts killing Christians, and Tacitus describes what happened.

Sorry, but did one of us miss the fact that "all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order."

All human efforts? Well, not all human efforts... just most of them, because I have another one up my sleeve. And I didn't mean "all" at all.

This sentence is the concluding summary of Nero's failure regarding the fire. Nothing worked to get rid of the belief that the fire was started by an order. Whoosh, let's go off on a tangent that will make my readers forget the fact that I'm pinning the fire on Nero and tell everyone about killing some bunch of religionists.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Then he continues with other events occurring after the fire. I've given the first one or two sentences from the next three paragraphs:

Meanwhile Italy was thoroughly exhausted by contributions of money, the provinces were ruined. Even the gods fell victims to the plunder; for the temples in Rome were despoiled and the gold carried off...

During the same time some gladiators in the town of Praeneste, who attempted to break loose, were put down by a military guard stationed on the spot to watch them, and the people, ever desirous and yet fearful of change, began at once to talk of Spartacus, and of bygone calamities. Soon afterwards, tidings of a naval disaster was received...

At the close of the year people talked much about prodigies, presaging impending evils. Never were lightning flashes more frequent, and a comet too appeared, for which Nero always made propitiation with noble blood. Human and other births with two heads were exposed to public view...

As I said, you are just raising doubts, you don't actually have evidence for anything AFAICS. One could raise doubts about any one of those paragraphs I suppose. It still doesn't make it evidence.

What has any of this got to do directly with the fire and Tacitus's use of the fire narrative to pin the cause on Nero? Absolutely nothing.

GakuseiDon · 04-02-2011, 05:46 AM

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Originally Posted by hjalti

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There is nothing about Christians dying for their faith there...

So you think that Tacitus is telling us that what the Christians confessed to was starting the fire, and not their faith?

Anything is possible, including that this is an interpolation. But there is nothing that makes it read like an interpolation. There is no mention of Christians dying for their faith, which you would expect in a martyrdom account. Here is what Tacitus said:

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty [of setting the fire]; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.

If the author wanted to make this about Christians dying bravery, and still leave the sense of the account largely unchanged, it would have been easy. Could it be implying martyrdom? Sure. Assuming a crafty enough interpolator, then anything is possible.

GakuseiDon · 04-02-2011, 05:47 AM

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Originally Posted by hjalti

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This is in a section about what happens AFTER the fire.

So what is the problem exactly?

The problem isn't that this is placed after the fire.

Well, that's what the problem isn't. Can you tell me what the problem is?

hjalti · 04-02-2011, 06:02 AM

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by hjalti

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There is nothing about Christians dying for their faith there...

So you think that Tacitus is telling us that what the Christians confessed to was starting the fire, and not their faith?

Anything is possible, including that this is an interpolation. But there is nothing that makes it read like an interpolation. There is no mention of Christians dying for their faith, which you would expect in a martyrdom account. Here is what Tacitus said:

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty [of setting the fire]; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.

If the author wanted to make this about Christians dying bravery, and still leave the sense of the account largely unchanged, it would have been easy. Could it be implying martyrdom? Sure. Assuming a crafty enough interpolator, then anything is possible.

Well, do you agree that if they are confessing/pleading guilty of being Christians, and not starting the fire, then they are dying because of their faith?

And I find it much more probable that they are pleading guilty of being Christians, because Tacitus says that they are just scapegoats

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by hjalti

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This is in a section about what happens AFTER the fire.

So what is the problem exactly?

The problem isn't that this is placed after the fire.

Well, that's what the problem isn't. Can you tell me what the problem is?

Behold:

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GakuseiDon, I still don't see a answer from you regarding spin's last point. If I understand him correcrtly then Tacitus is basically saying: "Nothing Nero did got rid of the rumor. So, to get rid of the rumor, he had a lot of Christians killed."

spin · 04-02-2011, 06:17 AM

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Originally Posted by Frank

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Originally Posted by spin

Either he opened the gardens to the homeless for temporary accommodation or he offered the garden as a venue to light up the night sky with human torches for public spectacle. The first excludes the second.

(The latter is so absurd, given that this was supposedly caused by a rampant fire and that the gardens were occupied by the homeless. Casual fires were lit in the darkness to kill christians while people were living in temporary, meaning flammable, shelters.)

Of course even a crude reading will make it obvious to anyone that there was a significant span of time between Nero opening up grounds for those who lost their homes (or apartments) in the fire, and the persecution of Christians.

1) Fire happens

You're right.

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Originally Posted by Frank

2) Nero opens up the “Campus Martius” to the populace (along with his own gardens).

It's the latter that's important to us.

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Originally Posted by Frank

3) Five days go by, the fire reignites.

4) Mansions, tenements, temples, etc. were lost.

5) After the fire Nero erects a new mansion (calculate how much time was required to build a mansion in the ancient world).

5) Rome is largely rebuilt (but much more spaciously), calculate how much time this must have taken.

6) There were restrictions on the height of new buildings.

7) Nero is rewarding people for rapid completion of construction projects.

8) He arranges grain shipments, and repeating, the city is rebuilt (apparently to the displeasure of some, who thought the old arrangement was more conducive to public health). Nero promulgates rigorous zoning ordinances designed to effectively deal with fires (if they should occur again in the future). How much time did all of this require?

That is a major problem. Tacitus isn't linear with his time here. You want to add up the time to say when the conclusion was made. Wrong....

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Originally Posted by Frank

9) But all these efforts (and “all the lavished gifts of the emperor”) could not get rid of the rumor that Nero was responsible for the fire.

Removed weaseling insinuation.

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Originally Posted by Frank

10) "All the lavished gifts" refers to all of the aforementioned (all of which were relatively huge public projects).

11) So Nero finds a scapegoat (probably the weakest, most vunerable, and least popular group), and executes them in his gardens for public show.

Same problem as Gak: the concluding summary says that everything Nero tried failed to shake the belief... hey, wait, not everything.

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Originally Posted by Frank

Of course whether or not he was actually guilty of the fire is uncertain (although historians apparently believe there’s good reason to believe he wasn’t). Nevertheless, he had to deal with public perception.

(The reader has to deal with Tacitus's persistent insinuation that he was guilty.)

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Originally Posted by Frank

There is NOTHING mutually exclusive about any of this.

I guess you're trying to say that 42 and 43 were placed early in the discourse for rhetorical purposes, but the phrase where Tacitus begins to describe the persecutions clearly abrogates this idea. "All the lavished gifts of the emperor" is referring to the previously mentioned events ... WTF?

I can understand your confusion. You haven't understood what Tacitus was doing with the passage. You don't get how Tacitus was putting the full blame on Nero by pure imputation and no evidence: at the beginning he starts with imputation, "whether accidental or treacherously contrived by the emperor, is uncertain". Tacitus hasn't accused Nero of starting the fire, though he does go on to accuse him of being tardy in arrival and being ineffective at all stops. And of course nothing he could do could alleviate the belief that he had started the fire.

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Originally Posted by Frank

What's your other one? That Tacitus never included the gory details? What bullshit. For anyone who's curious, here's a link to the Annals:

http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.html

Pretty easy, start by reading the first one (put the word "blood" in your browsers search box, and see what you get).

OK, let's see what you have found. How many instances are reported of people being burnt alive? of people being torn by dogs? You know the answer: just one.

GakuseiDon · 04-02-2011, 06:29 AM

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

I'll ask again: If Tacitus was writing in his "normal" style, what would you have expected him to have written here?

I've already functionally answered this question. Given his demonstrated style I can't see him having written it at all. Not at all. He would merely have alluded to their executions.

If you say so. So the burden is on me now?

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Originally Posted by spin

You seem to want a typical martyrdom story inserted in a pagan source.

I do, if you are assuming a Christian interpolator. If he is a crafty one, then that's fine.

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Originally Posted by spin

It's a matter of discourse necessity. He opened the gardens up for the homeless.... He gave the gardens over for a spectacle of burning bodies.... But the homeless people were still there/had been moved.

What we have is the implication that the writer of the christian material had forgotten that he'd already indicated that the gardens were occupied.

Or perhaps the interpolator thought there was still room in the gardens? Or that Nero might have wanted to punish the evil-doers in front of those suffering from the fire? Or that it happened at a point after people had moved from the gardens?

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Originally Posted by spin

What would be the point of trying to pin the blame on someone long after the event? How long would the emperor have waited while rumors circulated against him??

What are the correct answers, spin?

As I said, raising doubts does not constitute evidence. Anyway, is Nero going to say "The fire happened years ago, no point being upset that people are complaining I ordered it"?

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Originally Posted by spin

Is it that you don't get why Nero built colonnades, offered rewards, or chose the Ostian marshes for rubbish?

It's a clean-up after the fire. Tacitus mentions this before the passage about the Christians.

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Originally Posted by spin

Sorry, but did one of us miss the fact that "all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order."

All human efforts? Well, not all human efforts... just most of them, because I have another one up my sleeve. And I didn't mean "all" at all.

Did killing Christians banish the sinister belief that Nero set the fire? Is that what you are claiming? Because I don't see it.

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Originally Posted by spin

This sentence is the concluding summary of Nero's failure regarding the fire. Nothing worked to get rid of the belief that the fire was started by an order. Whoosh, let's go off on a tangent that will make my readers forget the fact that I'm pinning the fire on Nero and tell everyone about killing some bunch of religionists.

I don't think you are reading the text. Tacitus hasn't gone on a tangent. He writes that not only did people think Nero did it, but to deflect attention Nero pinned the blame on a group that everyone hated. But in an ironic twist, people felt compassion for them. As Tacitus writes: "even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty". This isn't a tangent, it is high-lighting Nero's cruelty.

GakuseiDon · 04-02-2011, 06:37 AM

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Originally Posted by hjalti

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

If the author wanted to make this about Christians dying bravery, and still leave the sense of the account largely unchanged, it would have been easy. Could it be implying martyrdom? Sure. Assuming a crafty enough interpolator, then anything is possible.

Well, do you agree that if they are confessing/pleading guilty of being Christians, and not starting the fire, then they are dying because of their faith?

Yes. If Tacitus wrote that they are confessing/pleading guilty of being Christians, then they are dying because of their faith.

This is the sentence in question:

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.

Christians were killed for "hatred against mankind". Does that equal "pleading guilty of being Christians"? If you want to argue that the interpolator is making a crafty reference to martyrdom, then I will have to agree it is possible. But it doesn't read like this is the intention. Why not something like the following:

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, but for refusing to renounce their beliefs.

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Originally Posted by hjalti

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Well, that's what the problem isn't. Can you tell me what the problem is?

Behold:

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GakuseiDon, I still don't see a answer from you regarding spin's last point. If I understand him correcrtly then Tacitus is basically saying: "Nothing Nero did got rid of the rumor. So, to get rid of the rumor, he had a lot of Christians killed."

I see. Nothing I did got you to explain the problem. So, to get you to explain the problem, I will I have to ask you again.

hjalti · 04-02-2011, 07:05 AM

Right, the variation you supply would be a more obvious interpolation (if this is in fact an interpolation).

But regarding the confession, I just don't understand why Tacitus, who is saying that Nero was just killing some people that were hated for some reason, and not the persons who were actually responsible for the fire. So havong them confess to starting the fire doesn't make any sense to me.

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I see. Nothing I did got you to explain the problem. So, to get you to explain the problem, I will I have to ask you again.

The problem is this:

1. It is said that Nero tried everything, and nothing helped.
2. Then Nero tries one extra thing (killing Christians)

It seems to me (and spin) that killing Christians would fall in the category "everything" ("all human efforts").

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