On the 19th of July, in the year 64, a violent fire burst out at Rome. It originated in that portion of the great Circus near to the Palatine and C[oe]lian Hills. In this quarter there were many little shops, filled with inflammable matter, in which the flames spread with prodigious rapidity. Thence it made the turn of the Palatine, ravaged the Velabra, the Forum, the Carinæ, ascended the hills, greatly injured the Palatine, descended again to the valleys, devouring compact quarters, and piercing tortuous streets, continuing six days and seven nights. An enormous pile of houses which were torn down near the foot of the Esquiline, arrested its progress for a time; then it again broke out, and endured three days more. A considerable number of people perished. Of the fourteen portions which composed the city, three were entirely destroyed; of seven, only blackened walls remained. Rome was an extremely compact city, and the population very dense. This disaster was frightful, and the like of it had never before been seen. When the fire broke out, Nero was at Antium. He returned to the city about the time when it approached his "transitory" house. It was not possible to arrest the flames. The imperial houses of the Palatine, the "transitory" house itself with its dependencies, and the whole surrounding quarter, were destroyed. Nero did not seem much to regret the loss of his house. The sublime horror of the spectacle transported him. Later it was said that he had watched the fire from a tower, where, in a theatrical costume, with a lyre in his hand, he chanted the ruin of Ilion to the rhythm of an ancient elegy. This was a legend, the fruit of a period of successive exaggerations; but one point upon which the universal opinion was decisive from the first was, that Nero had commanded this fire, or at least had revived it when it seemed about to die out. These suspicions were confirmed by the fact, that, after the fire, Nero, under pretext of removing the ruins at his own cost, in order to leave the place free to the proprietors, undertook to clear away the _débris_; and the people were not allowed to approach. This seemed worse when it was seen that he drew from the ruins what belonged to the country, when the new palace, that "golden house" which had been the plaything of his delirious imagination, was seen rising upon the site of the ancient provisory residence, enlarged by the spaces which the fire had cleared. It was believed that he had desired to prepare the place for his new palace, to justify the reconstruction which he had long contemplated, to procure money by appropriating the wreck of the fire, in short, to satisfy his mad vanity, which led him to desire to rebuild the whole of Rome, so that it might date from him, and be called Neropolis.