- Petronius: [in his dying letter to Nero] To Nero, Emperor of Rome, Master of the World, Divine Pontiff. I know that my death will be a disappointment to you, since you wished to render me this service yourself. To be born in your reign is a miscalculation; but to die in it is a joy. I can forgive you for murdering your wife and your mother, for burning our beloved Rome, for befouling our fair country with the stench of your crimes. But one thing I cannot forgive - the boredom of having to listen to your verses, your second-rate songs, your mediocre performances. Adhere to your special gifts, Nero - murder and arson, betrayal and terror. Mutilate your subjects if you must; but with my last breath I beg you - do not mutilate the arts. Fare well, but compose no more music. Brutalize the people, but do not bore them, as you have bored to death your friend, the late Gaius Petronius.
- Marcus Vinicius: [on being told the Christians are being blamed for the burning of Rome] The people won't believe such a lie!
- Petronius: But they are believing it. People will believe any lie, if it is fantastic enough.
- Nero: [as none of his closest men will die for him in light of the mob's anger over Rome's burning] I'm surrounded by eunuchs!
- [first lines]
- Narrator: This is the Appian Way, the most famous road that leads to Rome, as all roads lead to Rome. On this road march her conquering legions. Imperial Rome is the center of the empire, the undisputed master of the world. But with this power inevitably comes corruption. No man is sure of his life, the individual is at the mercy of the state, murder replaces justice. Rulers of conquered nations surrender their helpless subjects to bondage. High and low alike become Roman slaves, Roman hostages. There is no escape from the whip and the sword. That any force on earth can shake the foundations of this pyramid of power and corruption, of human misery and slavery, seems inconceivable. But thirty years before this day, a miracle occurred. On a Roman cross in Judea, a Man died to make men free, to spread the Gospel of love and redemption. Soon that humble cross is destined to replace the proud eagles atop the victorious Roman standards. This is the story of that immortal conflict. In this, the summer of the year 64 A.D., in the reign of the antichrist known to history as the emperor Nero, the victorious Fourteenth Legion is on its way back to Rome under the command of one Marcus Vinicius.
- Marcus Vinicius: [as the Christians file into the arena, singing] These people know how to die, Nero. In death you will squeal like a hog!
- Marcus Vinicius: [speaking of Nero] The new wife, Poppea, sounds interesting - a harlot for an empress?
- Petronius: [sardonically humorous] My dear Commander, what a proletarian observation. You must realize that a woman has no past when she mates with a God.
- Marcus Vinicius: [shrugging his shoulders] Well, he's our emperor.
- Marcus Vinicius: [when asked how his army defeated the Gauls and the Britons] We fought with our bowels! Try it sometime!
- Petronius: [Nero begins to sing again, and his voice is horrible] Body of Bacchus, I've been listening to *that* since morning!
- Marcus Vinicius: [amused] He seems in rare voice!
- Marcus Vinicius: [to Lygia about Paul] That beggar-faced philosopher shouldn't be stuffing your head with such nonsense.
- Poppaea: [as Marcus enters] As usual your entrance is proud and aloof.
- Marcus Vinicius: I came proudly as fast as my hands and knees will carry me.
- Poppaea: And as always, sardonic and unassailable.
- Marcus Vinicius: So happily, so unassailable? I've never been so readily expertly vanquished in my life.
- Poppaea: I believe everything except the word vanquished.
- Poppaea: [suggestively while taking wine] I should like to vanquish you Marcus.
- Marcus Vinicius: Like the spider who eats her mate when he is no longer a necessity?
- Poppaea: [suggestively] Mmm-Hmmm - Something like that.
- Lygia: [to Vinicius, after he has been revived following a scuffle involving Ursus and the gladiator Croton] Ursus wishes to speak to you.
- Marcus Vinicius: [to Ursus] Yes?
- Ursus: [to Vinicius, addressing him in the third person] I want to ask the commander's forgiveness. I killed his friend.
- Marcus Vinicius: You killed Croton? Ha ha! Good man! I told you you'd be a champion! Kill the old Greek too?
- Ursus: The other man disappeared.
- Marcus Vinicius: I'll wager he did, and fast!
- Nero: Petronius, look what I've created! Tigellinus, my robe of grief. Terpnos, lyre. History will judge my song, Petronius. Will it be great enough to match the occasion? I'm seized with the fear that it will not be great enough.
- Petronius: You will be worthy of the spectacle, as the spectacle is worthy of you.
- Nero: You encourage me, Petronius. But I'm aware that I must compete with those who sang of the burning of Troy. My song must be greater, just as Rome is greater than Troy.
- [singing]
- Nero: Silence, ye spheres, Be still, ye hurtling stars, Open wide-vaulted skies above me, Now, at last, lo, I see Olympus, And a light from its summit, Doth illumine me, I am one with the Gods, immortal, I am Nero, The artist who creates with fire, That the dreams of my life, May come true, To the flames now I give the past, To the flames and soil, Take thou this Rome, Oh, receive her now, ye flames, Consume her as would a furnace, Burn on, O ancient Rome, Burn on, burn on!
- Marcus Vinicius: [seeing the mighty Ursus for the first time] Why, with one arm strapped you could kill fifty Nubians in an hour.
- Petronius: Rome has given the world justice and order. Sign that, and Roman justice will receive a blow... from which it may never recover. Condemn these Christians and you make martyrs of them... and insure their immortality. Condemn them, and in the eyes of history... you'll condemn yourself.
- Nero: When I have finished with these Christians, Petronius... history will not be sure that they ever existed.
- Petronius: Yesterday, I could have gone to the mob and told them that Nero burned Rome. I could've offered them a new emperor in General Galba... and so set my seal upon the times. But I did not. Do you know why, Eunice? Because I love Nero, perhaps? He fills me with loathing. No, because out of force of long habit... I've become content only to be an amused cynic... a selfish onlooker, leaving others to shape the world.
- Nero: [dying] Oh, how dull, how tasteless life will be for them without me. How can they face such a world? How can they endure it?
- Nero: My conflagration does not burn enough. And do you know why? I've never seen a burning city. You said one must - suffer an experience to re-create it. A sculptor has his model. I had no model.
- Petronius: To burn a city in order to create an epic. That's carrying the principle of art for art's sake too far.
- Nero: Soon the spring will be over. The summer heat will begin. What stenches will arise from Rome?
- Nero: When I play and sing, I have visions of things I never dreamed existed. The world is mine. And mine to end.
- Petronius: Let future ages, looking back at this time, regard Nero with wonder and amazement. Let history say: Nero, the ruler of the world. Nero, a God, burned Rome because he was as powerful as Jupiter. He loved poetry so much that he sacrificed Rome for a song. History need not say that the burning of Rome was good but it must say that it was colossal, uncommon.
- Paul: I'm a Jew. A citizen of Rome, though I was born in Tarsus.
- Marcus Vinicius: Oh, yes, Tarsus. North of Palestine.
- Paul: That's correct.
- Marcus Vinicius: You come from a troublesome part of the world. Much unrest down there in the past.
- Flavius: Hail, Marcus Vinicius, in the name of the divine Nero, prince emperor and supreme pontiff. Captain Flavius, Praetorian Guard, salutes you.
- Petronius: Marcus, I've recently purchased several new delectable slaves. There's one from Spain. Skin like cream. Hair with the sheen of a young raven. She's yours.
- Marcus Vinicius: I know nothing of politics. Just as long as there's money to pay the army... Rome will stand forever, that I'm sure of.
- Marcus Vinicius: I don't know a great deal about philosophy. And lovely women shouldn't have the time to think that deeply.
- Marcus Vinicius: And as for the women of Gaul... well, their hair is like the frazzled ends of rope. Not a soft, red-gold crown with stars in it. And their palm was the hide of a wild boar. Not like this soft...
- Lygia: At least that proves they are diligent.
- Marcus Vinicius: Yes, at building mud huts. But not in bringing a man's thoughts to life.
- Nero: They demand too much. I tell you, this mob, this mob tortures me. I hate it second only to Rome itself.
- Petronius: [talking to Marcus Vinicius about the Spanish slave] You don't want her? And I refused an offer from Seneca of six Arabian stallions.
- Lygia: Ten big, strong Praetorian Guards to support my eagerness to come.
- Marcus Vinicius: Well said, Lygia. But you know a caravan of rare merchandise is always well-guarded.
- Lygia: But, Marcus, don't you see? Unless you try to understand, what we feel for each other will destroy itself. Destroy us.
- Nero: Is it not disgusting when common bovine solicitude... replaces the fire in a woman's body? Ah, but what pulsating purity there is in fire. My new Rome shall spring from the loins of fire... a twisting, writhing, breathing flame.