[121] The house, gardens, baths and the Pantheon of Agrippa are here referred to. Nero's gardens were near the Vatican.
[122] The palace of Numa, on the Palatine hill, had been the mansion of Augustus.
[123] Carlyle, in his essay on Voltaire, refers to this passage as having been "inserted as a small, transitory, altogether trifling circumstance, in the history of such a potentate as Nero"; but it has become "to us the most earnest, sad and sternly significant passage that we know to exist in writing."
[124] Claudius already had expelled the Jews from Rome and included in their number the followers of Christ. But his edict was not specifically directed against the Christians. Nero was the first emperor who persecuted them as professors of a new faith.
[125] From Book III of the "History." The Oxford translation revised. Pliny, Josephus and Dio all agree that the Capitol was set on fire by the followers of Vitellius.
[126] Porsena did not actually get into Rome, being induced to raise the siege when only at its gates.
[127] The capture of Rome by the Gauls under Brennus took place in 390 B.C. The destruction of the Capitol in the first Civil War occurred in 83 b.c., during the consulship of Lucius Scipio and Caius Norbaius. The fire was not started as an act of open violence, however, but by clandestine incendiaries.
[128] From Book III of the "History." The Oxford translation revised. Near Cremona had been fought the first battle of Bedriacum by the armies of Vitellius and Otho, rivals for the imperial throne, Otho being defeated. A few months later on the same field the army of Vitellius was overthrown by Vespasian, who succeeded him as emperor. Vitellius retired to Cremona, which was then placed under siege by Vespasian, and altho strongly fortified, captured.
[129] Antonius Primus, the chief commander of Vespasian's forces.
[130] The modern Brescia.