Notes
This story started with the famous “legend” of emperor Nero who supposedly caused The Great Fire of Rome. I learned about that event when I was just a little boy, and I obviously had to include it in my Saga of Life when I made my first outlines.
When it came time to actually write this, however, I was now 15 years older and did much more research. And I discovered that “legend” is perhaps the right word. I was reminded of the fact that history is often written by the victors (they’re still alive) and the elite (they can actually read and write).
I noticed a cycle of historic events where some emperor or king was actually quite good, doing good things for the common folk. This angered the elite, the nobles, the rich—because helping poor people obviously meant not helping them—so they invented tales to harm them. Or simply assassinated them. But because they wrote the history, we believed those kings were bad and rightly assassinated. It took us a while to find evidence to the contrary.
As such, I changed this idea to be more about that. To show the events before and after Nero. To show leadership, betrayal, and more, instead of just that one disaster. I also did this to prevent becoming repetitive, with several stories (in this cycle) focusing on large fires getting out of hand ;)
(The idea to tell the story from the perspective of Tresmo was something I wanted to do at some point anyway. I try to have ~2 stories per cycle with a really weird structure. Thus, I decided to apply that idea to this story.)
Agrippina vs The Empire
The story of Nero really starts with the decade before him. Julius Caesar is betrayed, and chaos ensues, for nobody knows who leads the Roman Republic now. To keep it from falling apart, the new leader (Augustus) gives himself more and more power.
As far as we know, Augustus was a good leader with good intentions, and the increase of his own power was necessary to stabilize the Romans. But it also made him a lone emperor—it was now the Roman Empire.
And every emperor after him, saw what Augustus had done, and thought “great idea, I want to become even more powerful!” They build even larger palaces for themselves than their predecessor. They were even less subtle about gathering riches and only satisfying themselves.
And so it happened that, by the time Nero was born, the emperor of the Roman Empire was basically a dictator who could do whatever they pleased.
Liking the sound of this job, Nero’s mother Agrippina started murdering and betraying left and right, until Nero suddenly ended up on the throne. He probably hadn’t expected it either.
Nero was handsome, well-liked, and well-intentioned. There is clear evidence pointing to the many good laws he instated that benefited the poor, the common folk, those who actually needed it. There are accounts of several attempts to assassinate Nero, which were foiled before they got anywhere because the people were so loyal to him.
But the elite felt left behind. And they envied Nero for his position on the throne. The problematic part: most of what we know about this part of history was written down by those elite.
And Agrippina? Well, she basically tried to rule through Nero, keeping an iron grip on what he did and said. This hampered his abilities and made him increasingly eager to remove his mother altogether.
The Great Fire of Rome
In truth, Rome had been one big fire hazard for years. Several smaller fires had already broken out. Repeatedly, people warned Nero of a possible looming disaster. He ignored extremely sensible warnings, as humans all tend to do, somehow.
And so it was that Nero killed his own mother. And not long after, a great fire broke out when he wasn’t in the city himself.
This fed the rumor that he actually caused the fire. Several accounts talk of him singing as the fire raged, which everyone interpreted as some sort of evil cackling over what he’d done. In reality, it might just have been a way to keep up morale. (Like people singing when they’re scared.)
He returned quickly to help firefighting efforts. It was only some fifty years earlier that Rome finally acquired its first proper police and firefighting force: the Vigiles. (From which we get the word Vigilante, nowadays associated with superhero stories.)
Unfortunately, they just decided to create even more fires and loot all buildings in the chaos. (Not very superheroey. Though might be an interesting spin to shake up the genre …)
And so the fire raged for days and destroyed 10 out of 14 districts of Rome.
Nero quickly passed sensible laws to prevent this in the future. Seeking to deflect blame, he tried to convince everyone it was the Christians—a new religion, a minority in Rome. (Remember this is all ~60 AD. Jesus Christ had only just died for our supposed sins.)
The elite were done. Killing his mother, torturing Christians, building a massive palace for himself on the ashes, even killing his own mentor/tutor (Seneca) that supported him all that time.
They decide to declare Nero “public enemy”. Which means he may be killed by anyone, no questions asked. They spin it in such a way that it gets the support of the common folk, who thus far had loved Nero and had seen their lives greatly improve under his leadership.
Nero flees in fear and commits suicide.
Why this story?
Now, it is very interesting to me how almost everyone knows about Nero. He is synonymous with fire, madness, disaster, greedy leaders. But when you assemble as many facts as possible, all you see is a well-intentioned boy, put on the throne by a crazy mother, who did some good things and some bad things.
His biggest mistake? Angering the elite. Angering others vying for that throne. Not actually some terrible laws or disconnect from his people.
The Great Fire of Rome was a massive disaster. It was also, likely, nothing else but a disaster. Rome was built in a way that made such a massive fire almost a certainty. It had to happen at some point. There is no concrete evidence that Nero caused it or hampered firefighting efforts. There have been dozens of these destructive fires in history, and they all led to better protocols and actual firefighters afterwards. The risky and deadly version of “you live and you learn”.
But now, two thousand years later, anybody who recognizes the name Nero thinks of a great fire and a terrible emperor. Because history is written by the ones who had cause to hate him.
That’s why I decided on my trick with the narration. All scenes told from Tresmo’s viewpoint are true. All other scenes were written on papyrus made from Tresmo’s bark, which is how he knows it, but … all of that might just have been rumors spread by some petty elite.
It’s a good tale. And one that shows the need to be critical. Of history, yes, but also of any news you might hear today. Always ask questions, always seek the evidence, always seek for multiple sources. Or you might end up believing what’s not true and causing a lot of pain, death or misguided legends now or even thousands of years later.
(It’s also one of the reasons I dropped the need to be extremely accurate in my Saga of Life stories. Because, even with the Saga being as young as it is, there have already been stories that I based on research … which later proved to be false. Or more nuanced. As we get more sources, as we learn more about history and science, I am sure some things in the Saga will simply be proven wrong in a hundred years time. That’s progress. I don’t mind. But it’s why I play fast and loose with the current facts on which I base these tales.)
What is light?
On the surface, light energy is the simplest of them all. We can see light. Everyone knows that the sun gives energy to the earth.
When you start asking questions though, such as “but what is light energy and why is it produced?”, you discover more depth to light than any story could cover.
Such was my problem when creating this story. Do I stick to the simplest explanation, which means light energy is barely used in the story (because there isn’t much to say)? Or do I try to go deeper?
Well, I tried to go deeper. I tried to build on what was already explained in story 3 (The Flickerless Flame): all objects are made out of small particles (atoms), and how fast these vibrate (shake and shuffle) determines the object’s temperature.
Why is that relevant? Because in most (practical) situations, light and heat are related! And I find that the easiest way to understand it.
A new bit of information, from this story, is that atoms contain even smaller particles. These have two opposite charges. Some are positive and some are negative. So that, when combined, the particle is “neutral” or “whole” again.
But it’s still important that these are two different parts. This allows atoms to, for example, be super positive on the left but super negative on the right. The charge isn’t exactly the same everywhere in the atom, so to speak.
Now, let’s combine heat and light.
- When an object receives energy, its atoms start vibrating faster: it gets hotter.
- This vibration is predictable. It has a certain frequency: how often the atom goes back and forth per second. (Like wave crests hitting a beach one after the other, with the exact same time between each wave.)
- So, with a certain frequency, the space around the atom flips between positive, negative, positive, negative, and so forth. (Like plucking a string on a guitar: it oscillates between two different positions until it dies out and becomes still again.)
- This is called an (electromagnetic) wave. And that’s what we can see as light. (Or in the case of plucking that guitar string, it produces a sound wave, which we can hear as sound.)
In other words, all objects (with heat) are always emitting light. It’s simply an automatic byproduct of atoms vibrating on a frequency. And the specific frequency determines the light’s color.
Most of that light, however, we can’t see. Our eyes are tuned to the frequencies around sunlight, after years of evolution. Any “electromagnetic wave” with a frequency lower (infrared) or higher (ultraviolet) than what we can see, is, well, invisible to us.
Going deeper
If it helps, you can also understand this in a deeper way. When an object receives energy, those negative parts of the atom are “excited”. As if they drank some energy drink, or ate too much sugar, the negative parts want to run away.
The atom doesn’t like that; it needs to keep all its children together! So it yanks them back into shape. That energy is then converted into creating a new particle: a photon. This yanking happens on a frequency, so the photons radiate from the object as a wave.
(Now, remember that the entire idea of the “photon” was only imagined some hundred years ago by Albert Einstein. And they came up with it because their light calculations just didn’t work if such a particle did not exist. But before that time, nobody could have imagined that a weightless particle existed that carried light energy.)
In scientific terms, light is described by intensity (how bright it is; this is the energy contained in the light wave) and wavelength (which is just 1 divided by that frequency; as stated, this is color). In fact, objects emit loads of different wavelengths at the same time, but your eyes only see the color that’s most prominent.
Light Energy
Okay, so that explains how light waves appear. How to relate it back to energy?
The same way as always. Energy must be conserved: it can’t be added or lost.
First of all, remember the explanation above. When you put energy into an object, it heats up and emits light, always. It’s just that we often can’t see the light it emits.
In other words, that energy is converted into heat energy and light energy. Yes, light itself carries energy. Rays of light are electromagnetic waves, and they have energy.
(Lightbulbs, for example, work by simply heating up the metal wire inside to an insane temperature. This, as you know now, automatically creates very bright light. It also means that old lightbulbs were very inefficient, as a lot of that electricity was wasted on generating heat first. Which is not the thing for which you bought the lightbulb.)
But, as you know, light can be stopped. If light hits an object, it doesn’t go further. The space behind that object is now cast in shadow!
So, where does the energy of the light go, when it hits something? It does the reverse! It is absorbed by the object. The light displaces the atoms it hits, creating a bit of heat again.
(This is why people don’t recommend wearing a black tight shirt in the summer. Because that color absorbs more of the heat from sunlight than, say, white. Any energy that isn’t absorbed is simply reflected back as weaker light.)
This is why the sun works. Or, rather, why our entire ecosystem and planet are able to exist thanks to sunlight. Because sunlight is energy. And when it hits the Earth, it heats up the soil, giving us livable temperatures. And when it hits a tree, it gives it the energy to grow (leaves, branches, fruits, nuts).
And now you also know why the sun is very hot. Because of its high temperature, it automatically emits light, and that’s what arrives on Earth as sunlight about 8 minutes later.