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 there unfortunates tore up flat
stones and half buried themselves in defence against the heat. Hardly a
family inhabiting the centre of the city survived in full; hence along
the walls, at the gates, on all roads were heard howls of despairing
women, calling on the dear names of those who had perished in the throng
or the fire.

And so, while some were imploring the gods, others blasphemed them
because of this awful catastrophe. Old men were seen coming from the
temple of Jupiter Liberator, stretching forth their hands, and crying,
"If thou be a liberator, save thy altars and the city!" But despair
turned mainly against the old Roman gods, who, in the minds of the
populace, were bound to watch over the city more carefully than others.
They had proved themselves powerless; hence were insulted. On the other
hand it happened on the Via Asinaria that when a company of Egyptian
priests appeared conducting a statue of Isis, which they had saved from
the temple near the Porta Caelimontana, a crowd of people rushed among
the priests, attached themselves to the chariot, which they drew to the
Appian Gate, and seizing the statue placed it in the temple of Mars,
overwhelming the priests of that deity who dared to resist them. In
other places people invoked Serapis, Baal, or Jehovah, whose adherents,
swarming out of the alleys in the neighborhood of the Subura and the
Trans-Tiber, filled with shouts and uproar the fields near the walls. In
their cries were heard tones as if of triumph; when, therefore, some of
the citizens joined the chorus and glorified "the Lord of the World,"
others, indignant at this glad shouting, strove to repress it by
violence. Here and there hymns were heard, sung by men in the bloom of
life, by old men, by women and children,--hymns wonderful and solemn,
whose meaning the