Did Nero really burn rome?

Question

During July 18, 64 AD, Rome started to burn. Most of rome burnt down.
Rumors say that it was the Emperor Nero himself who lit the fire but was it?

Answer 1

No, definitely not. He even had a very good alibi: he wasn't in Rome when the fire began. He was in his summer resort. As soon as he was informed about the fire, he rushed home and did everything he could to stop the fire. He actually was quite popular a.o. because of his efforts in that.



Fires were completely normal in Rome, also major fires. Cooking was done over open fires. Houses were most often of very poor quality, and stood very close together. A fire in one house on fire would very often jump over to the next, and the next and the whole block.



Rome did have a kind of fire brigade: the vigiles. Manned by slaves who got after 5 years of service their freedom. Those that survived, that is. It was a quite dangerous job. They were equipped with buckets, ropes, ladders and axes. The best way to stop a fire was to tear down surrounding buildings, so the fire couldn't spread.



Nero didn't start the fire and he didn't fiddle. If he had played something, it would have been the lyre. What he did was blame the cause of the fire to a convenient scapegoat, which were the early Christians and Jews. There wasn't much difference between the two in those days.



That is one reason why Nero (very deservedly, mind you) got such a bad press. Later Christians wrote about it, and didn't like Nero one little bit.



In his own times he got a very bad reputation not because of the fire, but what he did afterwards. He bought the most exclusive districts and build a gigantic palace (The Golden House) in it.

Answer 2

Nero Burning Rome

Answer 3

Yahz is correct, Tacitus is quite firm on the subject that Nero was no where near Rome when the fire started.



It should be noted that fires in Rome were not unusual, it was that this one was much more widespread than most affecting thousands, and that Nero was appalled, he promptly looked around for a scapegoat and landed on the Christians. It would not have been in the interest of the Christians to have started any fires, apart from which it would have been out of character with both St. Peter and St. Paul to do so, and both are thought to have been put to death in the ensuing revenge attacks organised by Nero.



In the aftermath of the great fire of London, many of the Londoners blamed a Popish plot, however as the King would have none of it and was popular and the source of the fire was known, few French and Catholics died.



Nero was not popular when the fire broke out so his enemies were ready to fuel any rumours that he may have been responsible, also his eagerness to build and extend on a truly massive scale his Palace gave the rumour legs.



Tacitus is fairly reliable as he had access to Palace records and spoke to people alive at the time, also he expresses the opinion that Nero was a disgrace to the Purple why?



Was it the Murders Nero commited, the wedding on stage where he played the bride and was Bugg3red in front of an audience, the reign of terror where men of wealth were forced to take their own lives and give their money to him?



No what really upset Tacitus was that Nero became an Actor, it was a different World with different standards, but if Nero had been guilty Tacitus would have been only too ready to point the finger.

Answer 4

No Nero did not burn down Rome. This was just a rumor that was spread after the fire by folks that did not like Nero. Nero was giving a performance down in Naples at the time of the fire and perhaps this is how the rumor started that Nero fiddled as Rome burned.

Answer 5

Yes & No. ... Nero did give the order to burn Rome. Not all of it, just the poorer slum areas & the city itself. His own palace was to remain umtouched. .... While Nero has unfairly been credited with the burning of Rome, it is not quite true that he did. .. Nero did in fact speak of a glorious dream city that he could make Rome into, if only the Rome he ruled could somehow be destroyed. He was only speaking his ideas aloud, but in the presence of some of his senators & guards. ... Someone took his words too seriously & set Rome on fire. (some say this was Tacitus, but the only proof of that is more hearsay.) .... Once alight, Nero needed an excuse for the burning, & tried to blame the newly formed sect called Christians for the fire. Sadly, (for Nero) that didn't work. .... Oh, there is an old (incorrect) belief that "Nero fiddled while Rome burned." .... NOT Possible. The Fiddle had NOT been invented then! .. Nero Did play upon his lyre, & sqwak while Rome burned, although Nero would have called it 'singing'. ........ ::::: EDIT ::::: Actually,, Nero could not have been 'singing' at the time to the tune played on his lyre!! ... At that time,, "Singing" & "Songs",,, did NOT have music to them like today! .. A Song was simply "Spoken", in the same way a poet of today would recite poetry.

Answer 6

False

It was said by Cassius Dio that Nero, the emperor at the time, sang the "Sack of Ilium" in stage costume as the city burned. However, Tacitus' account has Nero in Antium at the time of the fire Tacitus said that Nero's playing his lyre and singing while the city burned was only a rumor.

According to Tacitus, upon hearing news of the fire, Nero rushed back to Rome to organize a relief effort, which he paid for from his own funds. After the fire, Nero opened his palaces to provide shelter for the homeless, and arranged for food supplies to be delivered in order to prevent starvation among the survivors. In the wake of the fire, he made a new urban development plan. Houses after the fire were spaced out, built in brick, and faced by porticos on wide roads. Nero also built a new palace complex known as the Domus Aurea in an area cleared by the fire. The size of this complex is debated (from 100 to 300 acres or 40.5 to 121.4 hectares). To find the necessary funds for the reconstruction, tributes were imposed on the provinces of the empire.

Answer 7

I know that it is supposed to be history and a foregone conclusion that Nero burned down Rome in 64 CE, but for some reason, I am not so sure about this. It has been posited by a few that perhaps he had a hand in burning down an area so he could find an excuse to build his dream palace but that [some] radical Christians took the opportunity to set their own OR reset fires that were already extinguished. Considering those times, this hypothesis just might have some legs to it.

Answer 8

We have heaps of wildly differing accounts. Some say that he did burn it because he wanted a palace and was playing his lyre as Rome went up in flames. Others said that he helped those trying to put the fires out. Nobody will really know.

Answer 9

He may not have deliberately got that fire started but it certainly gave him a convenient excuse to persecute an obvious minority - the Christians. At this distance in time it is impossible to say for sure how that fire started, probably by accident, since many slum buildings were overcrowded and there was not much supervision of cooking fires - even the events of 9/11, just 10 years ago, are subject to endless speculation and conspiracy theories

Answer 10

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Answer 11

Yes. Rome was an open cesspool then. Nero thought that cxompletely destroying it would revitalize it.

Answer 12

Yes, but he did not fiddle.

The fiddle was not yet invented.