🔥Nero
Latin nameNero
The tyrant of matricide, the fire legend, and a suicidal final curtain
Born to the Purple · Kings & Emperors
The Great Fire of RomeMatricideThe Julio-Claudian dynasty
Who they are
Nero was the last emperor of Augustus’s bloodline, coming to the throne at sixteen through the maneuvering of his mother Agrippina. For the first five years, with the philosopher Seneca as counselor, he had the air of a good ruler; after taking power into his own hands he slipped out of control: he poisoned his brother, had his mother killed, drove Seneca to suicide, and grew obsessed with singing on stage and driving racing chariots — in the eyes of the Roman aristocracy, for an emperor to perform in person was to lower himself to a slave. In 64 the Great Fire burned the city for six days, and it was rumored he had set it to clear ground for his "Golden House"; he pinned the blame on the rising Christians and persecuted them fiercely (Peter and Paul are traditionally held to have died then). With the treasury drained, the provinces in revolt, and the Praetorians turned against him, the Senate declared him a public enemy, and he took his own life in flight, sighing at the end, "What an artist dies in me." With his death the Julio-Claudian dynasty died out, and the civil war of the Year of the Four Emperors followed.
Primary sourcesTacitus, Annals, Books 13–16Suetonius, Life of NeroCassius Dio, Roman History
Key stories
The Great Fire and the scapegoat
In July 64 the fire started near the Circus and burned for six days and nights, destroying ten of the city’s fourteen districts. Rumor flew: the emperor watched the blaze from a height and sang of the fall of Troy — the histories have always doubted the "singing" (Tacitus records it as hearsay). To quiet the talk of "the emperor set the fire," Nero laid the charge on the Christians and had them burned, torn by beasts, and crucified. Tacitus, though he despised the Christians, admitted this persecution was "not for the public good, but to satisfy one man’s cruelty."
What an artist
When the governors of Gaul and Spain rose in arms and the bribed Praetorians turned against him, the Senate declared Nero a public enemy and sentenced him to death "in the ancestral manner" (stripped, flogged in a fork until dead). He fled to a villa outside the city and could not bring himself to die, muttering again and again "Qualis artifex pereo" — what a great artist dies in me. Only when the hoofbeats of the pursuers came near did he, with his secretary’s help, drive the dagger into his throat. An emperor who craved all his life to be applauded as an artist had, for his last audience, the cavalry come to take his life.
Version differences
That he "fiddled while Rome burned" is explicitly recorded by Tacitus as hearsay, and the instrument of the day was a lyre, not a violin ("fiddle while Rome burns" is a later corruption); whether Nero set the fire and the scale of his persecution of Christians are both matters historians tend to doubt.
Echoes today
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
"Nero fiddled while Rome burned"An English proverb for doing nothing in a crisis — even though the violin wasn’t invented until fifteen hundred years later.