PAST CRIMEShas discovered that just before the fire, Christians had been publishing leaflets
and messages predicting a devastating inferno that would destroy the city.
There was also an ancient Egyptian prophecy that foretold the fall of Rome on
the day the star Sirius rose in the sky–19 July inAD 64 – the day the fire
started. Did the Christians use this prophecy in an attempt to bring down their
persecutors? The case remains open.
Assassination and murder
Roman history is replete with tales of assassination and murder including, of
course, the killing of Julius Caesar, a story which has come down through
history and literature in all its gory detail. Some Roman murders, however,
occurred in much more secret ways. In Modena, Italy, archaeologists have
come across three partial skeletons while digging in advance of a new
development project. The site was a cremation cemetery which ran alongside
the ancient Via Emilia, and a Roman irrigation ditch. It was in the ditch that
they came across the skeletons, and they came to the conclusion that these
individuals had been thrown hurriedly into the ditch, and weighed down with
bricks so that their bodies would not float to the surface.
This happened around the end of the first centuryBCor the start of the first
centuryAD, a date suggested by amphorae fragments and other rubbish also
found in the ditch. All three victims were male. It is assumed that the missing
body parts had been washed away in periodic flooding events since the time in
which the bodies were dumped. The skull and arms of a youth around sixteen
to twenty years old lay between his pelvis and legs; small deep cut marks were
visible on his legs. A thirtyyearold man lay with his wrists behind his back,
probably where they had been tied, but the lower half of his body was missing
entirely. The third man was aged between eighteen and twentyfive. Only part
of an arm, his shoulder and head remained.
Roman law and practice about burials was quite specific; these bodies
would not have found their way into the ditch through any legal process. Were
they murdered runaway slaves? Not likely–slaves were valuable and would
have been returned to their owners. Victims of a feud? Unlucky travellers set
upon by brigands? We shall probably never know.^16
A number of murders carried out in Britain during the Roman occupation
have come to light in recent years. Along the A2 road near Faversham, in
Kent, archaeologists have found the body of a girl who seems to have been
stabbed in the back of the head by a Roman sword. The site dates from just a
handful of years after the Claudian invasion inAD43, and the shallow trench
which contained the body may have been dug to hold rubbish from a Roman