The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1892-11-25
WHY NERO BURNT ROME.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE TWO.

N6TU was CuuuIuS do WOil dc uCbhou-
ical. He owned number of old sheds
or barns and an old manor house which
stood within the condemned precincts,
and it was these he ordered his slaves
to set on fire, using mass Of okum and
pitch. By this stroke of cunning he
averted suspicion Of having done it
himself, as everybody would say that
he would not destroy his own property
His dishonest object was to prove that
it was done by the burners, the same as
the Pnkertons resort to such rascally
tricks to fasten suspicion upon our
strikers for depredatiens OF which they
are totally innocent. But when his
poor slaves had set the pitch aud resin
on fire and got the devouring elements
under way, the lords, in league with
Nero, took measures to kill them so
that their testimony might be destroyed
As seon as the fire was fairly raging,
Nero and few of his favorits lords and
dissolute ladies got up on the M@cen-
attain tower and began carousing in joy
full transports. 1t was here that he is
supposed to have done his fddling,
but this is a mistake, for the instrument
he PLAYED was not the viol at all, bnt
the cithara.
Now, that we have got the great fire
stated and its hero at his fiddle, let me
ask the reader to stop moment and look
at the kind of humanity and property
that is being wiped from the earth, for
they had no steam fire engines in those
days. / follow Tac;tus, Dion, and
Suetonius. Nero's old house, where
the fire broke out, were among the
wooden booths at the east end of the
Circus Maximus, and the flames first
spread over the Palatine and thence to
the Veiia, up to the Esquiline Hills of
Rome. They then caught and laid
waste the Aventine Hill. This last
place needs some description.
1t was the hallowed spot on which
stood the wonderful temple of Diane,
protec,rice of the poor, especially Of
the female poor. This temple was
reverend in antiquity, having been
built by ANGUS Martius and added to
by the great and beloved Servius Tul'
Illus, ancient kings Of Rome, who. after
Numa, did most of any mortals for the
poor. Diana was simply the mythical
feminene of Diopysus, the great Greek
god of the plebs. Her so called slave
day was sancti6ed. No master dared
follow his runaway slave to this tenn
Plies awful portals. Her annual
festival was in August. The patricians
hated her and her temple, and had
ignored it for many centuries. His
torians mentioned only the aristocratic
institutions, which accounts for oul
knowing SO little about the temple Of
Diana on the Aventine. At the Pir2us
or port of Athens, she had another
called the temple of Artemis, where the
plebeian or poor people worshiped
Diana was a grove dweller and gave
her attention and care mostly to pie
beian women. This fact that hel
business was to protect the poor Of
course explains why the emperor and
his grandees were determined to burn
up and anninilate her august sanctuary
Dionysus, the emblematic masculine Of
Diana, was the protector Of grape
culture, and SO the god of wine, as
we'll as the patron Of all the mechanics
and in mythology is the same as the
Bacchus of later times, whom the
Romans have grossly slandered. Let
US see what decent people thought OF
him and his celebrated singers and
their methods of recreation and merri.
ment. In Plato's laws occurs this
passage which l have rendered: "And
thus our discourse is intended from the
beginning to pronounce in clear terms
an opinion favoring the Choir OF
Bacchus. The members are most
certainly exouerated if they happened
to become noisy, on the ground that
wine opens the intellect and softens
and warns the soul" Moreover, there
are numerous inscriptions which have
been picked up within the last century,
showing that those old organizations
included in Nero's conhagration were
in the habit of discussing economic
questions and the reforms of abuses (;
and this alone would be a punishable
crime under a tyrant. l give these
points to furnish the reader some faint
idea of the wretched condition of those
poor people.