After the great fire Nero addressed himself with zeal to the rebuilding of Rome. He had a pride in making his capital splendid and especially in erecting for himself his famous palace called “the Golden House.” This seems to have been a connection and combination, by means of arches and porticos, of the palaces on the Palatine with others on the Esquiline. In these buildings, which required several acres, he followed the Greek models of architecture and ornament. A conspicuous feature among them was his own colossal statue set up near what is now called, from it, the Colosseum. To defray the expense of these and other buildings he exacted or confiscated the wealth of other men and even stole with impious cupidity some of the rich gifts which had been placed in the temples. The growing discontent and opposition to him, therefore, became more manifest among the nobility. Conspiracies were formed against him. Some of these he was able to put down; but others sprang up in their places. Sometimes, alarmed by them, he drowned his fears in a flood of popular flattery gained by his undignified performances in the circus and the theater both at home and abroad. When his wife Poppæa died, some asserted that it was a consequence of his own brutal treatment. One great man after another, some of them honored by historians as almost personifications of virtue, lost their lives by poison or by the sword, by assassination or by compelled suicide, as victims to his jealousy or his covetousness. Even Seneca, the philosophic instructor of Nero’s youth, had fallen under his imperial pupil’s displeasure. Nero had no use for Seneca’s moral precepts and felt that he was no longer helpful to him in the affairs of State. They were also sharers in too many guilty secrets for Nero to care for his presence. An attempt was made to involve him in a charge of treason brought, with truth, against Calpurnius and others. This charge was not proved against Seneca, but it was made the most of at court. Not long after this the Prefect Burrus died, and his successor, Tigellinus, was no friend of Seneca. He inflamed the emperor’s covetousness for Seneca’s enormous wealth, which then, he said, was throwing into the shade the splendor of the imperial household. He also represented Seneca as a rival to him in poetry and eloquence. All these arguments prevailed with a heart already full of hatred.