denote:--17--] This did not all take place on one day, but lasted for
several days and nights together. Many houses were destroyed through lack
of some one to defend them and many were set on fire in still more places
by persons who presumably came to the rescue. For the soldiers (including
the night watch), having an eye upon plunder, instead of extinguishing any
blaze kindled greater conflagrations. While similar scenes were being
enacted at various points a sudden wind caught the fire and swept it over
whatever remained. Consequently no one concerned himself any longer about
goods or houses, but all the survivors, standing in a place of safety,
gazed upon what seemed to be many islands and cities burning. There was no
longer any grief over individual losses, for it was swallowed up in the
public lamentation, as men reminded one another how once before most of
their city had been similarly laid waste by the Gauls. [Sidenote:--18--]
While the whole population was in this state of mind and many crazed by
the disaster were leaping into the blaze itself, Nero mounted to the roof
of the palace, where nearly the whole conflagration could be taken in by a
sweeping glance, and having assumed the lyrist's garb he sang the Taking
(as he said) of Ilium, which, to the ordinary vision, however, appeared to
be the Taking of Rome.

The calamity which the city at this time experienced has no parallel
before or since, except in the Gallic invasion. The whole Palatine hill,
the theatre of Taurus, and nearly two-thirds of the remainder of the city
were burned and countless human beings perished. The populace invoked
curses upon Nero without intermission, not uttering his name but simply
cursing those who had set the city on fire: and this was especially the
case because they were disturbed by the memory of the oracle chanted in
Tiberius's day. These were the words:--

"Thrice three hundred cycles of tireless years being ended, Civil strife
shall the Romans destroy." [Footnote: Compare Book Fifty-seven, chapter
18.]

And when Nero by way of encouraging them reported that these verses were
nowhere to be found, they changed and went to repeating another oracle,
which they averred to be a genuine Sibylline production, namely:--

"Last of the sons of Aeneas a matricide shall govern."

And so it proved, whether this was actually revealed beforehand by some
divination or whether the populace now for the first time gave it the form