arters, kindling the fire and cumbering the work of help; these
incendiaries must have been sent by some one in power--by whom?

A strange rumour circulated: Nero himself had ordered the city to be
burned, in order to enjoy a unique sight, to get an idea of the fire
of Troy, to have the glory of rebuilding Rome on a more magnificent
scale. The accusation seems to me absurd. Nero was a criminal, but he
was not a fool to the point of provoking the wrath of the whole people
for so light a motive, especially after Agrippina's death. Tacitus
himself, in spite of his hatred of all Caesar's family and his
readiness to make them responsible for the most serious crimes, does
not venture to express belief in this story--sufficient proof that
he considers it absurd and unlikely. Nevertheless, the hatred that
surrounded Nero and Poppaea made every one, not only among the ignorant
populace, but also among the higher classes, accept it readily. It was
soon the general opinion that Nero had accomplished what Brennus and
Catiline's conspirators could not do. Was a more horrible monster ever
seen? Parricide, actor, incendiary!

The traditionalist party, the opposition, the unsatisfied, exploited
without scruple this popular attitude, and Nero, responsible for a
sufficient number of actual crimes, found himself accused also of
an imaginary one. He was so frightened that he decided to give the
clamouring people a victim, some one on whom Rome could avenge its
sorrow. An inquiry into the causes of the conflagration was ordered.
The inquest came to a strange conclusion. The fire had been started
by a small religious sect, recently imported from the Orient, a
sect whose name most people then learned for the first time: the
Christians.

How did the Roman authorities come to such a conclusion? That is one
of the greatest mysteries of universal history, and no one will ever
be able to clear it. If the explanation of the disaster as accepted by
the people was absurd, the official explanation was still more so. The
Christian community of Rome, the pretended volcano of civil hatred,
which had poured forth the destructive fire over the great metropolis,
was a small and peaceful congregation of pious idealists.

A great and simple man, Paul of Tarsus, had taken up again among them
the great work in which Augustus and Tiberius had failed: he aimed at
the remaking of popular conscience, but used means until then unknown
in the Graeco-Latin civilis