While Rome burned von Virginia M Closs

This is a book designed for scholars of imperial Latin literature, as well as of Roman imperial culture and history. The author considers the intersection of fire, city, and emperor in ancient Rome, tracing the critical role that urban conflagration played as both reality and metaphor in the politics and literature alike of the early imperial period. Fire presented a consistent problem for Rome's emperors from Augustus to Hadrian, especially given the expectation that the leader be both a protector and provider for the urban population. Likewise, Latin authors addressed successive moments of political crisis through dialectical engagement with prior incendiary catastrophes in Rome's historical past and cultural repertoire. In response to shifting political and social realities, the literature of the early imperial period reimagines and reanimates not just historical fires, but also archetypal and mythic representations of conflagration. Even when the passages are familiar (Vegil's Aeneid 2, Tacitus's Annales 15), this book sheds new light through provocative juxtapositions of texts not often read together, or through a close reading of the intertwined themes of urban conflagration and political catastrophe.