Fiddling While Rome Burns

See that charred ruin over there? No? No ruin, you say. Just char. Fair enough. It was a hell of a conflagration. But there used to be a world-class city on that site. "Rome," it was called. And I used to live there when I was little more than a lad. That's history you're looking at, that is. Even if there's nothing to see.

You might wonder how such a big city could go up in smoke so ... completely. People have asked me about that. Like, they say, "What was your fire department doing?" or "What about your fire prevention plan?" That kind of thing. And I tell them it was the Emperor's fault. He was fiddling while the city burned. That's more history for you.

Rome used to have a fire department, or so I'm told, but that was several Emperors ago. We stopped that crap. Too damn expensive. I've also been told that Rome used to have laws that were supposed to prevent fires. Like, you weren't allowed to build with sticks and straws, and you couldn't have a fireworks factory next to a paper products store. But we got rid of all that, too. It was insulting to our honest business folks. It was like saying you didn't trust them to take basic safety precautions.

Now, believe it or not, there was always a knot of complainers, carping about fire hazards, whining that Rome needed a fire department, and impugning the honor of our business people. And you couldn't get them to shut up, even though there were very few fires during the decades after the abolition of the fire department and the repeal of the fire safety laws. So naturally, when Claudius's Firecracker & Paper Lantern Emporium went up like a ... well, like a Roman candle, the complainers were prime suspects. Since they kept "warning" us about fires, they obviously wanted it to happen. Personally, I think that avenue of guilt was not adequately explored, but my fellow Romans were more inclined to pin the blame elsewhere.

A lot of people blamed poor Claudius. After all it was his store that blew up. I felt a little sorry for him, because it could've been almost anyone's firetrap that did the big flame-out, but if you think like that, you might start thinking the whole system was rotten and corrupt.

No, it had to be the Emperor's fault. After all, what do you have an Emperor for, if not to blame for everything that goes wrong? Of course, old Nero just upped and blamed Claudius, because he could see how the wind was blowing, so to speak, and that was straight for the palace. But even Nero was smart enough to know that he had to find one person to blame. That way, the problem was small. It was caused by one bad apple, and you could fix it by coring that apple.

So the fire-fighting goals were (1) blame someone, (2) make sure it was someone else, and (3) don't make a big deal out of it.

Unfortunately, while everyone was working on the three goals, the city burned to the ground.

Because it was a hell of a conflagration.

Did I mention that?