Christus, the founder of that name, was put to death as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, in the reign of Tiberius; but the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, but through the city of Rome also, whither all things horrible and disgraceful flow from all quarters as to a common receptacle and where they are encouraged. Accordingly first those were seized who confessed they were Christians; next on their information a vast multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city as of hating the human race. And in their deaths they were also made the subjects of sport, for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and when day declined, burned to serve for nocturnal lights. Nero offered his own gardens for that spectacle, and exhibited a Circensian game, indiscriminately mingling with the common people in the habit of a charioteer, or else standing in his chariot. Whence a feeling of compassion arose toward the sufferers, though guilty and deserving to be made examples of by capital punishment, because they seemed not to be cut off for the public good, but victims to the ferocity of one man.
In the mean time, in order to supply money all Italy was pillaged, the provinces ruined, both the people in alliance with us and the states which are called free. Even the gods were not exempt from plunder on this occasion, their temples in the city being despoiled, and all the gold conveyed away which the Roman people, in every age, either in gratitude for triumphs or in fulfilment of vows, had consecrated, in times of prosperity, or in seasons of dismay. Through Greece and Asia, indeed, the gifts and oblations and even the statues of the deities were carried off.
[27] According to Suetonius, Nero turned the public calamity to his own private advantage. He promised to remove the bodies that lay amid the ruins, and to clear the ground at his own expense. By that artifice he secured all the remaining property of the unhappy sufferers for his own use. To add to his ill-gotten store, he levied contributions in the provinces, and by those means collected an immense sum.