The majority of historians accuse Nero of having himself been the cause of it; but at any rate he looked on with cynical indifference, as if amused at so grand a spectacle, and taking pleasure in comparing it to the burning of Troy.
He did more: he profited by it so far as to have built for himself, free of expense, that magnificent palace called "The Palace of Gold," of which he said, when he saw it completed, "At last I am going to be housed as a man should be." Five years before the burning of Rome, Lyons had been a prey to a similar scourge, and Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius, "Lugdunum, which was one of the show-places of Gaul, is sought for in vain to-day; a single night sufficed for the disappearance of a vast city; it perished in less time than I take to tell the tale." Nero gave upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars towards the reconstruction of Lyons, a gift that gained him the city's gratitude, which was manifested, it is said, when his fall became imminent.

It was, however, J.Vindex, a Gaul of Vienne, governor of the Lyonnese province, who was the instigator of the insurrection which was fatal to Nero, and which put Galba in his place.
When Nero was dead there was no other Caesar, no naturally indicated successor to the empire.

The influence of the name of Caesar had spent itself in the crimes, madnesses, and incapacity of his descendants.

Then began a general search for emperors; and the ambition to be created spread abroad amongst the men of note in the Roman world.

During the eighteen months that followed the death of Nero, three pretenders--Galba, Otho, and Vitellius--ran this formidable risk.