Many victims were covered with pitch and burned at night, to serve as torches in the imperial gardens. Tradition preserves the names of the Apostles Peter and Paul as victims of this Neronian persecution.
As to Rome, the conflagration was a blessing in disguise. The city rose from its ashes as quickly as Athens from her ruins at the close of the Persian wars. The new buildings were made fireproof; and the narrow, crooked streets reappeared as broad and beautiful avenues. A considerable portion of the burnt region was appropriated by Nero for the buildings and grounds of an immense palace, called the "Golden House." It covered so much space that the people "maliciously hinted" that Nero had fired the old city, in order to make room for it.
The emperor secured money for his enormous expenditures by new extortions, murders, and confiscations. No one of wealth knew but that his turn might come next. A conspiracy was formed among the nobles to relieve the state of the monster. The plot was discovered, and again " the city was filled with funerals."
Lucan the poet, and Seneca, the old preceptor of Nero, both fell victims to the tyrant's rage.
Nero now made a tour through the East, and there plunged deeper and deeper into every shame, sensuality, and crime. The tyranny and the disgrace were no longer endurable. Almost at the same moment the legions in several of the provinces revolted. The Senate decreed that Nero was a public enemy, and condemned him to a disgraceful death by scourging, to avoid which he instructed a slave how to give him a fatal thrust. His last words were, "What a loss my death will be to art!"
Nero was the sixth and last of the Julian line. The family of the Great Cæsar was now extinct; but the name remained, and was adopted by all the succeeding emperors.
Galba, Otho, and Vitellius (A.D. 68–69).—These tnree names are usually grouped together, as their reigns were all short and uneventful. The succession, upon the death of Nero and the extinction in him of the Julian line, was in dispute, and the legions
