While Rome burns...
The Flames of Rome is a historical novel written by Paul L. Maier.
It follow the lives of two Roman families, the Plautii and the Flavii, in the years AD 47-69 as they witness the twilight of Emperor Claudius' reign, the emergence of Christianity onto the Roman stage, and the tumultuous reign of Nero.
The novel serves as a loose follow-up to Maier's Pontius Pilate with elements from that book being referenced.
This book contains examples of:
- Alas, Poor Villain: Nero, at the end. Sabinus, who came determined to take his vengeance, is left pitying him.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Claudius falls victim to this twice, leading to his death when he spills to much to Agrippina.
- Archenemy: Praetorian Prefect Offanius Tigellinus is this for Sabinus, serving as his most persistent personal enemy. He constantly tries to get Sabinus convicted on some treason charge and attempts to rape Plautia, Sabinus' wife.
- Asshole Victim: Agrippina. After all of her crimes, she really had it comming.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Most Romans prefer to go out with a noble suicide rather than face execution. Nero tries this when he learns what the Senate plans for him but has to have his aides help him.
- Bittersweet Ending: Nero is dead and the Christian have a measure of peace, but Sabinus will die securing Rome for his brother Vespasian in less than two years.
- Canon Character All Along: Titus Flavius Sabinus is the Theophilus that Luke addresses his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles to.
- Continuity Nod: A couple to Maier's previous novel Pontius Pilate
- Vitellius' role in removing Pilate from office is brought up twice.
- Pontius Pilate is mentioned as living in retirement at Antium.
- Deadpan Snarker: Gaius Petronius, who is secretly Nero's shrewdest critic. At one point he snarks he'll give Nero first prize in a competition for making a jackass of himself.
- Defiant to the End:
- Peter on his cross calls out Nero for his crimes and tells him that he and the other Christians forgive him.
- Hermes spends his dying moments listing off Nero's crimes beginning with a description of the collapsible ceiling her ordered for his mother.
- Petronius spends his final moments mocking Nero at his farewell party and sends him a long list of the Emperor's secret depravities that causes Nero to throw a fit.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Comes up in regard to the Roman treatment of women with Plautia mentioning the limitations on their freedom. Slavery likewise is treated as commonplace.
- Drama Queen: Scaevinus during the prelude to his role in the plot to kill Nero, which leads to the exposure of the conspiracy thanks to his freedman becoming suspicious of his behavior.
- Due to the Dead: Sabinus makes a point to bury the Christian victims of Nero's persecutions, setting aside a separate tomb for Simon Peter.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- The tortures the Christians are put through start to win the sympathy of the Roman crowd, with many leaving outright in disgust.
- The death of four hundred slaves for one murdering Pedanius, has plenty of Senators including Quintus Lateranus protesting such brutality.
- Poppaea intervenes to prevent the Jewish community from being made the scapegoats for the fire.
- Epic Fail: Nero's attempts to verbally contend with Peter end up as this. Petronius is impressed with Peter but just embarrassed by Nero's poor efforts while Tigellinus and Poppaea try to get him to sit down.
- Evil Matriarch: Agrippina. She arranges the death of many of her opponents and tries to control his son's life to the point of trying to seduce him when he's drunk.
- Face Death with Dignity: A ton of characters exhibit this when faced with certain death: Gaius Silius, St. Peter, Paul of Tarsus, Seneca, Petronius, Thrasea Paetus. Even Nero at the very end.
- Fate Worse than Death: Nero considers "punishment in the ancient fashion" to be this where the victim is stripped, ladden with chains, paraded through the city, and then beaten to death with rods and thrown into the Tiber.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Agrippina at her worst. Messalina also has shades of this.
- Good Republic, Evil Empire: Played with. Quintus and the other republican senators believe the restoration of the Republic would end the excesses and corruption of the Empire, however Aulus deconstructs this with his point that the Republic was hardly any better by the end.
- The Good Chancellor: Narcissus for Claudius, Sabinus for Nero.
- The Great Fire: Namely the Great Fire of Rome (A.D. 64), which devastated huge swaths of the city.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Flavius Sabinus and his cousin by marriage Quintus Laternus are close friends and lifelong business partners. Due to their remarkable resemblance they refer to themselves as the Twin Brothers after the mythical Castor and Pollux. Quintus' death after the failure of the Piso plot, is the final straw that makes Sabinus vow to destroy Nero.
- Historical Badass Upgrade: The precise role of the historical Titus Flavius Sabinus in Nero's downfall is unknown. Maier makes him the prime mover behind the scenes using his connections to Julius Vindix to orchestrate rebellion in the provinces and acting in Rome to undermine Nero.
- Historical Domain Character: Pretty much the whole cast, with Maier noting he had to omit certain individuals to slim down the text.
- Heel–Face Turn: Pallas once he gets involved with Agrippina, winds up as a party to the poisoning of Claudius after loyally serving him.
- Honor Before Reason:
- Quintus is astonished when he realizes that Aulus is serious about going through with the family tribunal and will condemn and exile his wife if he finds her guilty. Mitigated by his private admission to Pomponia that he'd accompany her if it came to that.
- Earlier Sabinus tried to confess his presence at Silius' bacchanal, but Aulus had some of his troops knock him out later noting that he knew Sabinus would play the "noble fool".
- Jerkass:
- Nero's Father Domitus Ahenobarbus is a prime example, according to Agrippina, with some of his stated actions including running over a child, gouging out someones eye in the Forum, and sleeping with his own sister.
- The Last DJ: Thrasea Paetus, one of the few incorruptible Senators left holding on to the principles of honest government and speaking out against tyranny. He's referred to by Quintus as "one of the last of the old Romans". As he cheerfully notes when Nero orders his death, he's surprised he's lasted this long after being Nero's earliest enemy.
- Morality Chain: Seneca and Burrus to Nero. Once they go, Nero goes downhill.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Nero after he kills his beloved wife Poppaea and their unborn child in a fit of temper.
- Mythology Gag:
- Peter asks to be crucified upside down since he believes he's not worthy to be crucified the same way Jesus was
- Peter give a version of the Quo vadis legend as to why he returned to Rome, with the language of the exchange changed to Aramaic.
- Necessarily Evil: Gaius Silius sees Augustus as this, a strong man who brought an end to the ruinous civil wars. This becomes sinister in hindsight when Silius proves to have his own Imperial ambitions.
- Nice to the Waiter: One palace gardener hesitates to betray Nero, as he was always kind to him. An irate Sabinus counters by pointing he was a monster to hundreds of others.
- Nostalgia Filter: Frequently applied to the Roman Republic by Quintus.
- Not Helping Your Case: Nero's construction of the Golden House which majorly slows down the rebuilding of Rome doesn't help his reputation as it causes rumors to spread he started the fire to build it.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Claudius is very shrewd, if prone to vice. As he notes he successfully conquered Britannia.
- O.C. Stand-in: As the name and background of Sabinus' wife is not recorded, Maier went with the theory that she was an unrecorded daughter of Aulus Plautius.
- Odd Friendship: Aulus Plautius and Claudius Caesar. One a hardened military man, the other a bookish libertine.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted as many Romans shared the same names such as Titus Flavius Sabinus and his eldest son, Titus Flavius Sabinus. Praetorian Prefect Nymphidius Sabinus shares a name with Flavius Sabinus, something that he notes when the two meet.
- Rasputinian Death: It takes three attempts for the conspirators to successfully kill Claudius with poison.
- Red Herring: After Plautia hits him with a strigil for spying on her and her friends at the bath, a young Nero smugly notes he'll return the favor for marking him. This only comes up again as a joke Nero makes in his congratulatory letter at her wedding.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- Claudius is generally this. Notably he's amused by Sabinus' honesty and does his best to let Quintus off the hook for his involvement with Messalina since his involvement was relatively brief.
- Nero is this from time to time, but ends up as The Caligula
- The Scapegoat: The Christians are used as this for Nero to escape the censure of the public for the Great Fire.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Tigelinus flees Rome when Nero starts sliding off the deep end. He winds up committing suicide.
- Shown Their Work: Maier is a history professor and cites the specific sources he drew on at the end of the books.
- Straw Hypocrite: Gaius Silius makes a great deal of wanting to restore the Republic, but is really out to make himself Emperor using this pretext to gain support. Narcissus speculates he might have been honest once but his ambitions or Messalina corrupted him.
- Sucksessor: Silius cites this of Augustus's successors mocking them as ''a hypocrite, a madman, and a fool"!
- Token Good Teammate: Sabinus winds up as this to Nero's regime, becoming the one moral official in an increasing corrupt regime.
- Undying Loyalty:
- Narcissus keeps faith with Claudius even after his death, burning all of Claudius' secret correspondence which leads to his imprisonment and death.
- Acte never stops loving Nero and is the only mourner at his funeral.
- Villainous Breakdown: Nero gradually falls apart in the face of rebellion.
- While Rome Burns: The Trope Namer. A grieving Nero sings an epic on the fall of Troy while they city burns in front of him.
- Womanchild: Messalina is immature and hedonistic and never thinks things through. As Valens notes she craves excitement like a drunkard wine. She winds up running to her mother once everything falls apart around her.
- Young Future Famous People: The future Emperor Vespasian, is Sabinus' brother and plays a supporting role. His sons and successors Titus and Domitian also show up.
