Quo Vadis

Nero's Rome in 64 AD, and the fire that destroys it. The Palatine palace, the Circus Maximus quarter where the flames begin, the Circus of Nero on the Vatican Field where the Christians are burned, the Mamertine prison, and the Appian Way, where the risen Christ meets Peter fleeing the city. Sienkiewicz built the ancient city from the monuments that still stand, and it brings Rome into the atlas.

Marcus Vinicius

The house of Aulus Plautius

Ch. II, The house of Aulus · 2% through the novel

The litter was waiting long since; hence they took their places, and Petronius gave command to bear them to the Vicus Patricius, to the house of Aulus.

The old general Aulus Plautius and his wife Pomponia keep the Lygian hostage Lygia in their quiet, half-Christian household. Vinicius lodges here as a guest and falls for her at the garden fountain, and it is from this house that Nero, at Petronius's prompting, has her taken to the Palatine.

inferred Sienkiewicz sets the house of Aulus Plautius on the Vicus Patricius, a real ancient street that ran through the Subura and survives as the modern Via Urbana. The exact house is invented; the pin marks a point on that street.

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