Quo Vadis is a historical novel about ancient Rome dealing with both the established Roman society of Nero’s reign and the newly emerging Christian religion. It is undeniable that a pro-Christian theme lies at the heart of Sienkiewicz’s treatment of his material. The pagan Roman world is described as predictably and thoroughly decadent. But the eventual transformation of that world into something different is personified in the character of Marcus Vinicius, a high-ranking officer in the imperial army. He begins as a typically ruthless patrician, abusing the enslaved people in his household and having them beaten when they fail in their task of abducting the young woman, Lygia, to whom he has taken a fancy. Lygia, however, is a Christian, and through his eventual love for her, Vinicius changes his own way of life. This, arguably, is a principal theme of the novel: that human beings can change and that evil can be transformed into good. The apostle Peter is a central character, and the book’s title (“Where are you going?”) represents both the specific question posed to the apostle which induces him to return to Rome (where he is crucified) and the general issue of where all people are going in this world—toward good or toward evil.

This love story of Marcus Vinicius and Lygia is set against a backdrop of intrigue at Nero’s court and the actual historical characters of the emperor himself; his consort, Poppaea; his chief minister, Tigellinus; and his adviser, Petronius, the author of the Satyricon, who was known as the arbiter elegantiarum (the “judge of elegance” or taste) of society. Petronius is as central a character in the novel as are Vinicius and Lygia. He is a typically hedonistic, amoral patrician, but he is highly intellectual and open to ideas, and he has a sense of fair play which the childish, despotically cruel emperor and his ruthless advisers such as Tigellinus lack. The main historical event of Quo Vadis is the great fire that destroyed most of Rome in 64 CE. In Sienkiewicz’s telling, the setting of the fire is ordered by Nero himself, as has been rumored throughout history. (Most historians today doubt that Nero was responsible for the fire.) Petronius is the man able to pacify the homeless masses after the fire by promising them not only “bread and circuses” but that the city will be rebuilt. But Petronius knows that a great evil was perpetrated by Nero and Tigellinus, and he stands up to them at a crucial point and thus seals his own fate. As one incurring the wrath of Nero, Petronius chooses to die by suicide, and in the usual manner of upper-class Romans, he first gives a party at his residence. He openly speaks against Nero, ridiculing him and saying that in death he no longer will have to deal with Nero’s stupidity and tiresomeness. With the aid of their physician, Petronius and his mistress slit their wrists and bleed to death.

Sienkiewicz’s novel is in some ways typical of the nineteenth century, and it is a rethink of antiquity in light of the concerns of Sienkiewicz’s own period. Though there is a religious theme, there is an undercurrent of subversiveness and sexual tension which often is a subtext in Victorian writings that are moralistic and conventional on the surface. As has been noted, the largely cynical and amoral (though in the end heroic, many would argue) Petronius is in many ways the most interesting and compelling character in the story. The sexual feeling between Petronius and his mistress and between Marcus Vinicius and Lygia is an example of this smoldering subject which writers of the nineteenth century seem to fixate on in spite of the outwardly rigid moral code of their time. Violence and cruelty are also a focus of Quo Vadis, especially in the culminating scene in the arena, in which the sadism of the regime is enacted against the scapegoat Christians. The novel is altogether more powerful because of these almost obscene elements, which exemplify a duality in the Victorian mind between the sacred and profane.