So when the crowd hurriedly left the circus to go to the meal as darkness fell, the Praetorians ran on ahead and set fire to the living torches along the route. They burned with screams of pain and a spreading suffocating stench, and the people did not really appreciate this incredible sight. Indeed, the more educated among them lost appetite because of the unpleasant smell of burning human flesh and began to go home. Others feared the fire might spread through the gardens when drops of burning pitch and wax scattered on the dry grass as the Christians writhed and struggled. Many people burned their feet as they tried to stamp out the smoking embers around the poles.

Thus when Nero, still dressed as a charioteer, came driving along the roads flanked by these human torches, he did not receive the acclaim he had expected. Instead, a sullen silence was maintained, and he saw several senators on their way back to the city.

He stepped down from his chariot to go to the people and press their hands, but there was no laughter at his jokes. When he tried to make Petronius stay, the latter said that he had endured a dull show for friend-ship’s sake, but there were limits to what his stomach would tolerate. He did not feel like eating even the very best steak in the world if it were spiced with the sickly fumes of human flesh.

Nero chewed his lips, his mouth swollen, and in his charioteer’s costume he looked more like a muscular, sweaty wrestler. He realized he had to find something else to amuse the people to make up for Tigellinus’ tasteless arrangements. To add to everything else, half-burned people began to fall from the poles as their ropes were scorched away and others in their pain tore loose their nailed hands and rushed flaming into the crowd.

Their pain-filled, shrieking, creeping, tumbling figures, hardly even human any longer, aroused nothing but terror and loathing. Angrily, Nero ordered them to be killed at once, together with those who were screaming loudly on their poles, disturbing his orchestra and its artistic playing.

He gave orders to have as much incense burned as could be found and for the park to be sprayed with perfume which had originally been intended for the guests. Everyone knows what this extravagance must have cost, not to mention all the ruined iron chains.

For my part, I was still busy with my duties at the circus, having briefly received the congratulations for a successful show from the more notable spectators. After that I hurried down to the arena to supervise the Caronians’ work with their clubs, but more than anything else to gather up what still remained of Jucundus and Barbus.

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I found them quite easily. To my surprise, I found a Christian youth in the middle of all the torn bodies, his head in his hands and completely unhurt. When he had wiped away the blood that had poured over him, he had neither bite, scratch nor grazes from kicks on him. He stared dully up at the evening stars and asked whether he were in paradise. Then he told me he had thrown himself down in the sand, refusing to aggravate the wild animals by offering resistance. It was understandable that he had been saved, for neither lions nor wild bulls normally touch a person who acts as if he were dead. Many men trying to capture them have saved their lives in the same way.

I regarded his escape as a kind of omen and put my own cloak over his shoulders to save him from the Caronians’ clubs. I received my reward for this, for he could give me an exact account of everything Jucundus and Barbus had done and what they had discussed among the other prisoners.

The space had been so tight-packed with Christians that they had not even been able to sit down, and quite by chance the youth had found himself jammed next to Jucundus. Then too, Barbus had grown slighdy deaf in his old age and had had to tell Jucundus to speak up as he whispered his story of the foolish conspiracy among the boys.

The Christian youth regarded his escape as a miracle and said that Christ must have needed him for other purposes, although he had hoped to find himself in paradise with the other Christians by the evening. So I gave him some clothes, of which there were plenty, and saw to it that he was released unharmed through a side entrance of the circus.

He hoped that Christ would bless me for my mercifulness and my good deed and assured me that he believed that even I should one day find the true way. He innocendy told me that he had been a disciple of Paul and had been baptized Clement. This extraordinary coincidence made it easier for me to give way to Claudia’s whim that my son should be called Clement.

The young Christian misunderstood my surprise and explained apolo-getically that he was by no means especially good-tempered, but indeed had to practice humility to do penance for his impetuousness. This was why he had thrown himself down and refused to meet evil with evil. So he blessed me once again for my goodness and went into Rome along the road lit by human torches. But he was so certain that Christ needed him for some task to come that he probably did not grieve for long over not being allowed to accompany the others to paradise.

I met him again about three years later when in the course of my duties I was forced to mediate in the internal disputes of the Christians, in which I considered I ought to support Cletus. It was a question of who should inherit the shepherd’s stave after Linus. I thought that Clement was still much too young and I think he realized this himself later during his exercises in humility.

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