He earmarked the Ostian marshes as the dumping ground for the debris, and ordered ships that had ferried grain up the Tiber to return downstream loaded with debris. The actual edifices were, for a specific portion of their structure, to be free of wooden beams and reinforced with rock from Gabii or Alba, since such stone is fireproof. In addition, because individuals had had the effrontery to siphon off water, watchmen would be employed to ensure a fuller public supply, and at more points. Everyone was also to have appliances accessible for fighting fires, and houses were not to have party walls but each be enclosed by its own. These measures were welcomed for their practicality, and they also enhanced the aesthetics of the new city. There were, however, those who believed that the old configuration was more conducive to health, inasmuch as the narrowness of the streets and the height of the buildings meant they were less easily penetrated by the torrid sunlight. Now, they claimed, the broad open spaces, with no shade to protect them, were baking in a more oppressive heat.

Such were the precautions taken as a result of human reasoning. The next step was to find ways of appeasing the gods, and the Sibylline Books were consulted. Under their guidance, supplicatory prayers were offered to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpina, and there were propitiatory ceremonies performed for Juno by married women, first on the Capitol, and then on the closest part of the shoreline. (From there, water was drawn, and the temple and statue of the goddess were sprinkled with it.) Women who had husbands also held ritual feasts and all-night festivals.

But neither human resourcefulness nor the emperor’s largesse nor appeasement of the gods could stop belief in the nasty rumour that an order had been given for the fire. To dispel the gossip Nero therefore found culprits on whom he inflicted the most exotic punishments. These were people hated for their shameful offences whom the common people called Christians. The man who gave them their name, Christus, had been executed during the rule of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilatus. The pernicious superstition had been temporarily suppressed, but it was starting to break out again, not just in Judaea, the starting point of that curse, but in Rome, as well, where all that is abominable and shameful in the world flows together and gains popularity.