The public agonies from this terrible blow, were not yet deadened, when
another supervened; and the city felt the affliction and violence of fire,
which with uncommon rage utterly consumed Mount Caelius. "It was a deadly
and mournful year," they said, "and under boding omens the Prince had
formed the design of his absence." It is the way this of the multitude;
who to malignant counsels are wont to ascribe events altogether
fortuitous. But the Emperor dissipated their murmurs, by bestowing on each
sufferer money to the value of his sufferings: hence he had the thanks of
men of rank, in the Senate; and was by the populace rewarded with
applauses, "for that without the views of ambition, without the
application of friends, he had of his own accord even sought out the
unknown, and by his bounty relieved them." It was likewise moved and
decreed in Senate, "that Mount Caelius should be for the future styled
_Mount Augustus_, since there the statue of Tiberius, standing in the
house of Junius the Senator, escaped unhurt in the flames, though
devouring all round them:" it was remembered, that the same rare exemption
had formerly happened to Claudia Pulchra; that her statue being twice
spared by the fury of fire, had thence been placed and consecrated by our
ancestors in the Temple of the Mother of the Gods.
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