“Nero watched the conflagration from the Tower of Maecenas, enraptured by what he called "the beauty of the flames"; then put on his tragedian's costume and sang The Sack of Ilium from beginning to end.”
Source: The Twelve Caesars, Nero, Ch. 38
Original
Hoc incendium e turre Maecenatiana prospectans laetusque "flammae," ut aiebat, "pulchritudine" Halosin Ilii in illo suo scaenico habitu decantavit.
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Sueton 28
Roman historian 70–126Related quotes

Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Journey's End: The Burning Bush (1911)
Context: God was not to him the impassive Creator, a Nero from his tower of brass watching the burning of the City to which he himself has set fire. God was fighting. God was suffering. Fighting and suffering with all who fight and for all who suffer. For God was Life, the drop of light fallen into the darkness, spreading out, reaching out, drinking up the night. But the night is limitless, and the Divine struggle will never cease: and none can know how it will end. It was a heroic symphony wherein the very discords clashed together and mingled and grew into a serene whole! Just as the beech-forest in silence furiously wages war, so Life carries war into the eternal peace.
The wars and the peace rang echoing through Christophe. He was like a shell wherein the ocean roars. Epic shouts passed, and trumpet calls, and tempestuous sounds borne upon sovereign rhythms. For in that sonorous soul everything took shape in sound. It sang of light. It sang of darkness, sang of life and death. It sang for those who were victorious in battle. It sang for himself who was conquered and laid low. It sang. All was song. It was nothing but song.

Faustus, Act V, scene i, lines 91–93
Doctor Faustus (c. 1603)
Source: The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus

Cheney Adviser Resigns After Indictment on ABCnews.com (October 28, 2005) http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1260229

“Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.”
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.

The Superstition of Divorce (1920)
Context: I do not ask them to assume the worth of my creed or any creed; and I could wish they did not so often ask me to assume the worth of their worthless, poisonous plutocratic modern society. But if it could be shown, as I think it can, that a long historical view and a patient political experience can at last accumulate solid scientific evidence of the vital need of such a vow, then I can conceive no more tremendous tribute than this, to any faith, which made a flaming affirmation from the darkest beginnings, of what the latest enlightenment can only slowly discover in the end.

“The towers shine in a larger blue, and the portals bloom with a mystic light. Silence was ordered and mute in terror fell the world. From on high he begins. His holy words have weight heavy and immutable and the Fates follow his voice.”
Radiant majore sereno
culmina et arcano florentes lumine postes.
postquam jussa quies siluitque exterritus orbis,
incipit ex alto: grave et inmutabile sanctis
pondus adest verbis, et vocem fata sequuntur.
Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 209