The Capitol Burns

Rome, December 19, AD 69: the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol burns while Emperor Vitellius watches the fire over his dinner.

Transcript

Rome’s holiest temple is on fire. And no enemy set it alight.

It is December nineteenth, AD sixty-nine. On the Capitol stands the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

It was built under the kings and dedicated right after their expulsion. It burned once before, in Sulla’s civil war.

King Porsenna did not touch it, nor did the Gauls who took the city. Now beneath its walls Romans fight Romans.

And the emperor, Suetonius writes, watches the fire over dinner from Tiberius’s house on the Palatine.

Eight months earlier this man learned that he had won a war in which he had not fought.