Nero was at Antium at the time, and he did not return to the city until the fire was approaching that building of his by which he had connected the Palatium with the gardens of Maecenas. But stopping the fire from consuming the Palatium, Nero’s house, and everything in the vicinity proved impossible. However, to relieve the homeless and fugitive population Nero opened up the Campus Martius, the monuments of Agrippa, and even his own gardens, and he erected makeshift buildings to house the destitute crowds. Vital supplies were shipped up from Ostia and neighbouring municipalities, and the price of grain was dropped to three sesterces. These were measures with popular appeal, but they proved a dismal failure. For the rumour had spread that, at the very time that the city was ablaze, Nero had appeared on his private stage and sung about the destruction of Troy, drawing a comparison between the sorrows of the present and the disasters of old.

Finally, after five days, the blaze was brought to a halt at the foot of the Esquiline. Buildings had been demolished over a vast area so that the fire’s unremitting violence would be faced only with open ground and bare sky. But before the panic had abated, or the plebs’ hopes had revived, the fire resumed its furious onslaught, though in more open areas of the city. As a result, there were fewer human casualties, but the destruction of temples and porticoes designed as public amenities was more widespread. And that particular conflagration caused a greater scandal because it had broken out on Tigellinus’ Aemilian estates; and it looked as if Nero was seeking the glory of founding a new city, one that was to be named after him. In fact, of the fourteen districts into which Rome is divided, four were still intact, three had been levelled to the ground, and in the other seven a few ruined and charred vestiges of buildings were all that remained.