urbis quae domui supererant: The partitive genitive urbis depends on the elided ea. With the relative clause, Tacitus makes a savagely ironic comment on the inordinate size of Nero’s new palace – as if it left marginal space for reconstructing the rest of the city that had burned down. Koestermann thinks the phrase quae domui supererant is ‘suspicious’, but cites a two-line poem (a ‘distich’) transmitted by Suetonius, Nero 39.2 (Roma domus fiet: Veios migrate, Quirites, | si non et Veios occupat ista domus – ‘Rome is becoming one house; off with you to Veii, Quirites! If that house does not soon seize upon Veii as well’) and Martial, Liber de Spectaculis 2.4 (cited above) as two other sources that crack the same joke.¹ In further support, one could point to the fact that Tacitus concluded his stock-taking of the destruction wrought by the fire in Chapter 40 by using the same verb as here: septem reliquis pauca tectorum vestigia supererant, lacera et semusta. The lexical coincidence seems to intimate that the large-scale devastation inflicted on the cityscape by the fire are similar in kind to those inflicted by Nero’s palace.

ut post Gallica incendia: Another reference to the torching of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC. In Livy’s account (as we saw above), when the Gauls sacked Rome, a proposal to move Rome to the site of Veii was flattened by the re-founding hero Camillus with the rhetorical question (5.54):

Si fraude, si casu Veiis incendium ortum sit, ventoque ut fieri potest, diffusa flamma magnam partem urbis absumat, Fidenas inde aut Gabios aliamve quam urbem quaesituri sumus quo transmigremus?

[If by crime or chance a fire should break out at Veii, and that the wind should spread the flames, as may easily happen, until they consume a great part of the city – are we to quit it, and seek out Fidenae, or Gabii, or any other town you like, and migrate there?]

nulla distinctione nec passim erecta: Livy tells us that, after the Gauls, the city was rebuilt in a rushed and haphazard way (5.55):

... promisce urbs aedificari coepta. tegula publice praebita est; saxi materiaeque caedendae unde quisque vellet ius factum, praedibus acceptis eo anno aedificia perfecturos. festinatio curam exemit uicos dirigendi, dum omisso sui alienique discrimine in vacuo aedificant...

[... people began in a random fashion to rebuild the city. Tiles were supplied at public expense, and everybody was granted the right to quarry stone and to hew timber where he liked, after giving security for the completion of the structures within that year. In their haste men were careless about making the streets straight and, paying no attention to their own and others’ rights, built on the vacant spaces...]

In Tacitus, the emphatic nulla and the vivid passim (‘all over the place’) evoke the weaving, irregular streets that resulted.

latis viarum spatiis: Remember the narrowness of the streets before, mentioned in Chapter 38 as a cause of the fire’s rapid progress and one of the reasons for the high death toll. Nero’s vision is for wide boulevards.

porticibus: Colonnades to walk and talk in. Here, the stone colonnades also have the extra advantage of protecting the jerry-built blocks of flats from fire, from passing traffic and from the sun.

quae frontem insularum protegerent: The subjunctive in the relative clause expresses purpose. Cf. Suetonius, Nero 16.1: Formam aedificiorum urbis novam excogitavit et ut ante insulas ac domos porticus essent, de quarum solariis incendia arcerentur; easque sumptu suo exstruxit (‘He devised a new form of buildings of the city and in front of the houses and apartments he erected porches, from the flat roofs of which fires could be fought; and these he put up at his own cost’).

43.2 eas porticus Nero sua pecunia extructurum purgatasque areas dominis traditurum pollicitus est: The subject is Nero, the verb is pollicitus est, which introduces an indirect statement. The subject accusative (se, i.e. Nero) is only implied. Tacitus does not say that Nero did do these things, only that he promised. We never find out if he delivered on this promise. But Suetonius (Nero 16.1: see above), too, reports that Nero built the colonnades at his own expense. In addition, he took on the expense of clearing away the rubble, so that those who lost their property in the fire had a clean construction site on which to rebuild their houses.

addidit praemia pro cuiusque ordine et rei familiaris copiis finivitque tempus intra quod effectis domibus aut insulis apiscerentur: Nero also provided financial support for the rebuilding effort, correlating the amount according to the rank (pro ... ordine) and wealth (pro ... rei familiaris copiis) of each individual (cuiusque); he also specified a deadline by which the reconstruction had to be completed if the owners wished to cash in on the reward-scheme. The house-owners are the subject of the deponent verb apiscerentur; its (implied) accusative object is ea (= praemia). effectis domibus aut insulis is an ablative absolute. Despite the fact that landlords received a sum of money on timely completion of houses or flats which complied with the regulations, the rebuilding nevertheless proceeded slowly, as Suetonius notes in his biography of Vespasian (8.5): Deformis urbs veteribus incendiis ac ruinis erat; vacuas areas occupare et aedificare, si possessores cessarent, cuiusque permisit (‘As the city was unsightly from former fires and fallen buildings, he allowed anyone to take possession of vacant sites and build upon them, in case the owners failed to do so’).

43.3 ruderi accipiendo Ostienses paludes destinabat utique...: This verb has two objects, connected by the -que after uti: the accusative Ostienses paludes; and the uti-clause. Nero and his advisers came up with a smart scheme, by which the boats that brought corn up the Tiber returned loaded with rubble, to be deposited at Ostia, where the Tiber reached the sea. On previous occasions, people apparently dumped the rubble straight into the Tiber, which caused blockages: see Suetonius, Augustus 30.1, cited above.

ruderi ... rudere: The position of this word (rubble) at the beginning and end of the sentence enacts the sense of the conveyer-belt system Nero is trying to achieve.

subvectassent: The syncopated form of subvectavissent.

aedificiaque ipsa certa sui parte sine trabibus saxo Gabino Albanove solidarentur: The Latin reflects the building blocks under discussion: aedificia ipsa – certa sui parte – sine trabibus – saxo Gabino Albanove + the verb that indicates the aims and objectives of the effort: solidarentur.

aedificia ipsa: The ipsa helps to stress Nero’s attention to detail in the reconstruction of the city.

certa sui parte: sui refers back to aedificia. The lower part of the buildings was to be made out of stone only.

saxo Gabino Albanove: An instrumental ablative. Its position next to sine trabibus helps to emphasise the replacement of wooden beams with fire-proof rock. Gabian rock was quarried in Gabii, ten miles east of Rome; Alban rock came from the shores of the Alban Lake, 15 miles south-east of Rome.

quod is lapis ignibus impervius est: These types of rock were of volcanic origin and hence known for their fire-resistant qualities. But, as Miller points out, ‘they are also rough and not very decorative: hence the regulation to ensure their use.’²

1 Koestermann (1968) 248.

2 Miller (1973) 95.

3 Eck (2009) 238–39.

4 Koestermann (1968) 251.

5 Miller (1973) 95.