They accordingly built a funeral pile in the garden of the villa,--using such materials for the purpose as came most readily to hand--and then took up the body of Agrippina on the bed upon which it lay, and placed all together upon the pile. The fires were lighted. The soldiers watched by the side of it until the pile was nearly consumed, and then went away, leaving the heart-broken domestics of Agrippina around the smoldering embers. CHAPTER IX. EXTREME DEPRAVITY. A.D. 62-64 The atrocity of Nero's crime in murdering Agrippina.--Nero's messages to the senate.--Action of the senate.--Nero divorces Octavia and marries Poppæa.--Octavia banished from Rome.--Anicetus.--Octavia's unhappy destiny.--Charges against her.--She is put to death.--Extreme depravity.--Nero recovers from his remorse.--His various crimes.--Public affairs neglected.--His performances on the stage.--Musical training.--Nero's success.--His trained applauders.--Rules and regulations at the theater.--Races and games.--Nero generally the victor.--His private conduct and character.--His midnight brawls.--Rioting and excess.--His great feasts.--The artificial lake.--Immense sums of money expended by Nero.--His favorites.--His excursions to Ostia.--The burning of Rome.--Nero accused of being the incendiary.--His probable motives.--He comes to see the fire.--He celebrates the occasion by a song. There was nothing in the attendant circumstances that were connected with the act of Nero in murdering his mother, which could palliate or extenuate the deed in the slightest degree. It was not an act of self-defense. Agrippina was not doing him, or intending to do him any injury. It was not an act of hasty violence, prompted by sudden passion. It was not required by any political necessity as a means for accomplishing some great and desirable public end. It was a cool, deliberate, and well-considered crime, performed solely for the purpose of removing from the path of the perpetrator of it an obstacle to the commission of another crime. Nero murdered his mother in cool blood, simply because she was in the way of his plans for divorcing his innocent wife, and marrying adulterously another woman.