No plucking or picking but fiddling's okay

I was trying to do something very simple and this can turn into a great muddle very easily these days because there is no definitive , solid factual reference. It’s all fluid. As the Wikipedia article states:” However, there is no hard evidence of who or what actually caused it, and it is worth pointing out that that fires were very common in Rome at the time.”
All I was going to do was make a flip statement like, “If Rome burned while Nero was fiddling, we’d better not be fiddling at this point in time.” Then I thought , he couldn’t have been fiddling, there were no violins then, so then I decided to check the facts. What facts? Everything is circumspect these days and although I learn a very great deal this way, I can’t just have a throw away thought. When I consulted my Colliers print references I found out that the lyre, which Wikipedia says he was playing, was played with a bulky plectrum. So he was picking or plucking. So I guess I’d better say…no picking or plucking today. Fiddling is now okay. Tomorrow I’ll try not thinking!

Great fire of Rome

“However, historians from Tacitus on have doubted these allegations that Nero "fiddled while Rome burned," believing them rumours given life by Nero's unpopularity. (Suetonius and Dio Cassius repeat the story without qualification; Tacitus describes it as a "rumour" which arose during the fire.) Nero, possibly to avoid blame for the incident, accused the Christian sect— already "hated for their abominations" (per flagitia invisos) according to Tacitus—for starting the fire and embarked on the earliest persecutions of Christians in Rome. Edward Champlin, in his Nero, favored the idea that Nero was actually the cause behind the burning of Rome; Gerhard Baudy, in his Die Brände Roms : Ein apokalyptisches Motiv in der antiken Historiographie, suggested that the Christians set the fire in order to fulfill eschatological prophecies about the burning of Rome. However, there is no hard evidence of who or what actually caused it, and it is worth pointing out that that fires were very common in Rome at the time.
Rome was rebuilt after the fire and Nero played a large role in the reconstruction; it was then that the building of his famous Domus Aurea palace began.

Accounts of the fire are found in the Annals of Tacitus (15.38ff), in Suetonius' Life of Nero (ch. 38), and in the Roman History of Dio Cassius (ch. 62).”

Wikipedia


Historical freaks and psychos This site has not been updated since 1998, but I enjoyed this version much better!

Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned

The Ruler of The Roman Empire, Nero, started his reign with good intentions. He wanted to be a great ruler, and wanted peace in the Empire. Everytime that he signed a declaration condemning a criminal to death, he cursed the day that he learned to write, because he did not want to sign it. But those good intentions did not last. If they did, Nero wouldn't be on ths page. Instead, his good intentions were replaced with his arrogance, a burning need to chase his own goals, and make himself famous and happy.
When Nero tired of his own mother, Agrippiana The Younger, he decided to have her killed. He sent her out to sea alone in a ship that was rotted and falling apart. The ship broke in half and sank right in the harbor, but the strong Agrippiana held on, and was rescued by a fisherman. Angered that his first plan failed, he hired two naval officers to find her, and slit her throught in her sleep.
Nero's murder of his mother was only the first such incident. He also seemed to tire of his wives. He first married an rigid, uptight woman named Octavia. That didn't last. He got tired of her, and had her killed. Being bored with being single, he had another woman's husband killed, just to mary her. He got bored with her too, and had her killed, too. Finally, his third and final wife, Popeala, was as hyper as him, and at a party, he kicked her to death in a drunken riot.
Besides thinking he was a great husband, Nero also thought he was the best poet in excistence. At one time, he supposedly burned down half of Rome, killing thousands, just for inspiration for a poem about the burning of Troy. He blamed it on Christians, and they were put through the worst religous persecution ever that any religion has ever faced. Hundreds to thousands of Christians were flung into the dungeon, where they were tortured, then thrown into the arena to be slaughtered by the lions, or killed in duals. Romans came from all over the Empire, just to see these bloody and gruesome event.
Nero always prided himself on the support of his army. But, in 64 AD, his army turned against him. They stormed his castle of gold, and the few guards he had left on his side were mercilessly slaughtered. The army searched his castle for a while, before one of his guards found him, lying in his chambers, knife in hand, and a gash in his throught(throat). Nero had killed himself.