And it serves to illustrate the passive endurance and timidity of the
popular temper, and to what extent it might be provoked with impunity,
that in this state of general irritation and effervescence, Nero
absolutely forbade them to meddle with the ruins of their own dwellings--
taking that charge upon himself, with a view to the vast wealth which he
anticipated from sifting the rubbish. And, as if that mode of plunder were
not sufficient, he exacted compulsory contributions to the rebuilding of
the city so indiscriminately, as to press heavily upon all men's finances;
and thus, in the public account which universally imputed the fire to him,
he was viewed as a twofold robber, who sought to heal one calamity by the
infliction of another and a greater.
The monotony of wickedness and outrage becomes at length fatiguing to the
coarsest and most callous senses; and the historian, even, who caters
professedly for the taste which feeds upon the monstrous and the
hyperbolical, is glad at length to escape from the long evolution of his
insane atrocities, to the striking and truly scenical catastrophe of
retribution which overtook them, and avenged the wrongs of an insulted
world.
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