Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz — Read

And everything had failed. Vinicius lowered himself to the degree that he sought support from freedmen and slaves, both those of Caesar and Poppaea; he overpaid their empty promises, he won their good will with rich gifts. He found the first husband of Poppaea, Rufus Crispinus, and obtained from him a letter. He gave a villa in Antium to Rufius, her son by the first marriage; but thereby he merely angered Caesar, who hated his stepson. By a special courier he sent a letter to Poppaea's second husband, Otho, in Spain. He sacrificed his property and himself, until he saw at last that he was simply the plaything of people; that if he had pretended that the imprisonment of Lygia concerned him little, he would have freed her sooner.

Petronius saw this, too. Meanwhile day followed day. The amphitheater was finished. The "tesserae" were distributed -- that is, tickets of entrance, to the ludus matutinus.20 But this time the morning games, because of the unheard-of number of victims, were to continue for days, weeks, and months. It was not known where to put the Christians. The prisons were crammed, and fever was raging in them. The puticuli -- common pits in which slaves were kept -- began to be overfilled. There was fear that diseases might spread over the whole city hence, haste.