rdom of them, for I
was ready in the time of departing of them. After their death I saw
them together, hand in hand, entering the gates of the city, and clad
with clothes of light, and arrayed with crowns of clearness and light.
Haec Dionysius.

Nero was not unpunished for their death and other great sins and
tyrannies that he committed, for he slew himself with his own hand,
which tyrannies were overlong to tell, but shortly I shall rehearse here
some. He slew his master Seneca because he was afraid of him when he
went to school. Also Nero slew his mother. Then for his pleasure he set
Rome afire, which burned seven days and seven nights, and was in a high
tower and enjoyed him to see so great a flame of fire, and sang merrily.
He slew the senators of Rome to see what sorrow and lamentation their
wives would make. He fished with nets of gold thread, and the garment
that he had worn one day he would never wear it ne see it after. Then
the Romans seeing his woodness [madness], assailed him and pursued him
unto without the city, and when he saw he might not escape them, he took
a stake and sharped it with his teeth, and therewith stuck himself
through the body and so slew himself. In another place it is read that
he was devoured of wolves. Then the Romans returned and found the frog,
and threw it out of the city and there burned it.

In the time of St. Cornelius the pope, Greeks stole away the bodies of
the apostles Peter and Paul, but the devils that were in the idols were
constrained by the divine virtue of God, and cried and said: Ye men of
Rome, succor hastily your gods which be stolen from you; for which thing
the good Christian people understood that they were the bodies of Peter
and Paul. And the Paynims had supposed that it had been their gods. Then
assembled great number of Christian men and of Paynims also, and pursued
so long the Greeks that they doubted to have been slain, and threw the
bodies in a pit at the catacombs, but afterward they were drawn out by
Christian men. St. Gregory saith that the great force of thunder and
lightning that came from heaven made them so afraid that they departed
each from other, and so left the bodies of the apostles at the catacombs
in a pit, but they doubted which bones were Peter's and which Paul's,
wherefore the good Christian men put them to prayers and fastings, and
it was answered them from heaven that the great bones longed to the
preacher, and the less to the fisher, an