The motives which led to this diabolical deed were probably complex. It is said that Nero, satiated with every conceivable indulgence, longed for some new excitement. The spectacle of the dwellings of four millions of people in flames; the frenzy, the dismay, the runnings to and fro, of the perishing millions,――men, women, and children; the rush and roar of the conflagration, flashing in billowy flames by night to the clouds,――all combined to present a spectacle such as mortal eye had never gazed upon before. The estimated population of the Roman empire at this time was about a hundred and fifty millions. By the assessment of enormous taxes upon these millions, funds could easily be raised to rebuild Rome in hitherto unimagined splendor. It is said that this ambition was one of the motives which inspired Nero to his infamous deed. Nero commenced with great energy, levying taxes, and rebuilding the city; but the cry of the starving, houseless millions could not be stifled. The tyrant was alarmed. To shield himself from obloquy, he accused the Christians of the crime, and visited them with the most terrible retribution. “Not all the relief,” writes Tacitus, “that could come from man, not all the bounties that the prince could bestow, nor all the atonements which could be presented to the gods, availed to relieve Nero from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration. Hence, to suppress the rumor, he falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, the persons called Christians.” To enter into the detail of the outrages to which the Christians were exposed would but harrow the feelings of the reader. Demoniac ingenuity was employed in inflicting the most revolting and terrible suffering; while at the same time the victims were so disguised, sewed up in skins of wild beasts, or wrapped in tarred sheets, as to deprive them of all sympathy, and expose them to the derision of the brutal mob. Tender Christian maidens passed through ordeals of exposure, suffering, and death, too dreadful for us, in these modern days, even to contemplate. That divine support which Christ promised to his followers in these predicted hours of persecution sustained them. The imagination cannot conceive of greater cruelty than Nero inflicted upon these disciples of Jesus: and yet in death they came off more than conquerors; and it proved then emphatically true, that “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church.”