with catapults.

Fire is a perfect poet. No designer ever imagined the surprises it
creates, and when, at the end of the week, three-fourths of the
city was in ruins, the beauty that reigned there must have been
sublime. That it inspired Nero is presumable. The palace on the
Palatine, which Tiberius embellished and Caligula enlarged, had
gone; in its place rose another, aflame with gold. Before it
Neropolis extended, a city of triumphal arches, enchanted temples,
royal dwellings, shimmering porticoes, glittering roofs, and wide,
hospitable streets. It was fair to the eye, purely Greek; and on
its heart, from the Circus Maximus to the Forum's edge, the new
and gigantic palace shone. Before it was a lake, a part of which
Vespasian drained and replaced with an amphitheatre that covered
eight acres. About that lake were separate edifices that formed a
city in themselves; between them and the palace, a statue of Nero
in gold and silver mounted precipitately a hundred and twenty
feet--a statue which it took twenty-four elephants to move. About
it were green savannahs, forest reaches, the call of bird and
deer, while in the distance, fronted by a stretch of columns a
mile in length, the palace stood--a palace so ineffably charming
that on the day of reckoning may it outbalance a few of his sins.
Even the cellars were frescoed. The baths were quite comfortable;
you had waters salt or sulphurous at will. The dining halls had
ivory ceilings from which flowers fell, and wainscots that changed
at each service. The walls were alive with the glisten of gems,
with marbles rarer than jewels. In one hall was a dome of
sapphire, a floor of malachite, crystal columns and red-gold
walls.