forbearance is not to continue for ever; and obviously have themselves
only to blame for any harshness or violence which they may have rendered
necessary.

It is singular, and shocking at the same time, to mention, that, for this
atrocity, Nero did absolutely receive solemn congratulations from all
orders of men. With such evidences of base servility in the public mind,
and of the utter corruption which they had sustained in their elementary
feelings, it is the less astonishing that he should have made other
experiments upon the public patience, which seem expressly designed to try
how much it would support. Whether he were really the author of the
desolating fire which consumed Rome for six [Footnote: But a memorial
stone, in its inscription, makes the time longer: "Quando urbs per novem
dies arsit Neronianis temporibus."] days and seven nights, and drove the
mass of the people into the tombs and sepulchres for shelter, is yet a
matter of some doubt. But one great presumption against it, founded on its
desperate imprudence, as attacking the people in their primary comforts,
is considerably weakened by the enormous servility of the Romans in the
case just stated: they who could volunteer congratulations to a son for
butchering his mother, (no matter on what pretended suspicions,) might
reasonably be supposed incapable of any resistance which required courage
even in a case of self-defence, or of just revenge. The direct reasons,
however, for implicating him in this affair, seem at present insufficient.
He was displeased, it seems, with the irregularity and unsightliness of
the antique buildings, and also with the streets, as too narrow and
winding, (_angustiis flexurisque vicorum_.) But in this he did but
express what was no doubt the common judgment of all his contemporaries,
who had seen the beautiful cities of Greece and Asia Minor. The Rome of
that time was in many parts built of wood; and there is much probability
that it must have been a _picturesque_ city, and in parts almost