. People with these convictions did not care to save anything,
but, besieging the temples, implored mercy of the gods. It was repeated
most generally, however, that Caesar had given command to burn Rome, so
as to free himself from odors which rose from the Subura, and build a
new city under the name of Neronia. Rage seized the populace at thought
of this; and if, as Vinicius believed, a leader had taken advantage of
that outburst of hatred, Nero's hour would have struck whole years
before it did.

It was said also that Caesar had gone mad, that he would command
praetorians and gladiators to fall upon the people and make a general
slaughter. Others swore by the gods that wild beasts had been let out of
all the _vivaria_ at Bronze-beard's command. Men had seen on the streets
lions with burning manes, and mad elephants and bisons, trampling down
people in crowds. There was even some truth in this; for in certain
places elephants, at sight of the approaching fire, had burst the
vivaria, and, gaining their freedom, rushed away from the fire in wild
fright, destroying everything before them like a tempest. Public report
estimated at tens of thousands the number of persons who had perished in
the conflagration. In truth a great number had perished. There were
people who, losing all their property, or those dearest their hearts,
threw themselves willingly into the flames from despair. Others were
suffocated by smoke. In the middle of the city, between the Capitol on
one side, and the Quirinal, the Viminal, and the Esquiline on the other,
as also between the Palatine and the Caelian hill, where the streets were
most densely occupied, the fire began in so many places at once that
whole crowds of people, while fleeing in one direction, struck
unexpectedly on a new wall of fire in front of them, and died a dreadful
death in a deluge of flame.

In terror, in distraction and bewilderment, people knew not where to
flee. The streets were obstructed with goods and in many narrow places
were simply closed. Those who took refuge in those markets and squares
of the city where the Flavian Amphitheatre stood afterward, near the
temple of the Earth, near the Portico of Silvia, and higher up, at the
temples of Juno and Lucinia, between the Clivus Virbius and the old
Esquiline gate, perished from heat, surrounded by a sea of fire. In
places not reached by the flames were found afterward hundreds of
bodies burned to a crisp, though here and the