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Updated: June 3, 2025
No one doubted then that Cæsar had given command to burn the city, so as to afford himself a spectacle and sing a song at it. Nero, when he heard that cry from hundreds of thousands, turned to the Augustians with the sad, resigned smile of a man who is suffering from injustice. "See," said he, "how the Quirites value poetry and me." "Scoundrels!" answered Vatinius.
His voice in the open air, with the roar of the conflagration, and the distant murmur of crowding thousands, seemed marvellously weak, uncertain, and low, and the sound of the accompaniment like the buzzing of insects. But senators, dignitaries, and Augustians, assembled on the aqueduct, bowed their heads and listened in silent rapture. He sang long, and his motive was ever sadder.
They abused Cæsar, the Augustians, the pretorians; excitement rose every moment, so that Tigellinus, looking at night on the thousands of fires around the city, said to himself that those were fires in hostile camps. Besides flour, as much baked bread as possible was brought at his command, not only from Ostia, but from all towns and neighboring villages.
"O lord," said he, "I shall see nothing, for I cannot see in the night-time." "The night will be as bright as day," replied Cæsar, with a threatening laugh. Turning then to the Augustians, Nero talked about races which he intended to have when the games were over. Petronius approached Chilo, and asked, pushing him on the shoulder, "Have I not said that thou wouldst not hold out?"
He said that even Augustians were dissatisfied; that Fenius Rufus, second prefect of the pretorians, endured with the greatest effort the vile orders of Tigellinus; and that all Seneca's relatives were driven to extremes by Cæsar's conduct as well toward his old master as toward Lucan.
Besides, such exquisite dishes were served that the imagination of Apicius would have failed at sight of them, and wines of so many kinds that Otho, who used to serve eighty, would have hidden under water with shame, could he have witnessed the luxury of that feast. Besides women, the Augustians sat down at the table, among whom Vinicius excelled all with his beauty.
Evening exhibitions, rare up to that period and given only exceptionally, became common in Nero's time, both in the Circus and amphitheatre. The Augustians liked them, frequently because they were followed by feasts and drinking-bouts which lasted till daylight.
Nero waved his hand with an expression of weariness, and said, "We shall see thy work on the pond of Agrippa. Afterward I go to Antium. Ye are all little, hence do not understand that I need immense things." Then he closed his eyes, giving to understand in that way that he needed rest. In fact, the Augustians were beginning to depart.
More than once this had been mentioned even among the Augustians, but never before had Petronius had a clearer view of this truth that the laurelled chariot on which Rome stood in the form of a triumphator, and which dragged behind a chained herd of nations, was going to the precipice. The life of that world-ruling city seemed to him a kind of mad dance, an orgy, which must end.
The people of Petronius, left in Rome, were imprisoned; his house was surrounded by pretorian guards. When he learned this, he showed neither alarm nor concern, and with a smile said to Augustians whom he received in his own splendid villa in Cumæ,
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