‘You would hardly like to see Rome in flames, Cæsar?’
‘Indeed I should. It would be worth living for. Happy Priam, who saw the Burning of Troy, about which I can only write.’
‘But Rome is something different from Troy,’ said Tigellinus.
‘Rome!’ answered the Emperor. ‘I am sick of it. Look at these close, narrow, crowded streets. I should like to see a city of broad streets, and palaces, and gardens, like Thebes, or Memphis, or Babylon. Ninus and Sardanapalus had cities worth living in.’
Their conversation was held in a spacious room of the Domus Transitoria, with which Nero had filled up the whole space from the Palatine to the Esquiline.
‘Does not this Palace suffice you?’ asked the Præfect.
‘Not at all,’ replied Nero. ‘Many of the neighbouring[T13] houses and temples are in my way, and I should like to clear them off, and give myself air to breathe.’
‘Of course I am,’ he answered, petulantly.
Tigellinus shrugged his shoulders, and quoted a line from the Bellerophon of Euripides:—