The poorer people, of course, were brought into a condition of great hardship and suffering. The conflagration occurred when the tyrannies and cruelties of Nero had largely increased the number of his personal enemies, when mutterings of contempt and hatred against him had become frequent, and when his iniquitous excesses had led many to believe that he could be guilty of anything. The fact that some incendiaries were seen at work, who said they were acting under orders, and the rumor that while the city was burning Nero had watched the flames from the tower of his villa, and had there chanted the “Sack of Troy” with the accompaniment of his own lyre, favored the suspicion that he had himself caused the awful calamity. Some claimed that he did it in order that he might rebuild the capital more magnificently and call the new Rome by his own name. But these suspicions cannot be proved. It is enough to affirm that under the additional miseries caused by the fire the people had become bold to express their exasperation with the existing reign. Not even the imposing religious ceremonies, conducted to appease the gods, could quiet the popular outcries. Nero seems to have felt that it was necessary to divert suspicions from himself by presenting other victims. Tacitus tells us that to save himself, this emperor sacrificed “those whom, hated on account of their vices, the vulgar called Christians.” This name, he says, was derived from one Christus, who was executed in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate. And he adds that “the accursed superstition, for a moment repressed, spread again, not over Judea only, the source of this evil, but in Rome also, where all things vile and shameful find room and reception.” This Neronian persecution, so horrible in its bitterness and bloodshed, we shall have occasion to consider later in connection with the sufferings of the early Christian martyrs.