Welcome to John’s Historically Inaccurate Ramblings. Today, we’re talking about the Roman emperor everyone loves to hate, Nero. The big myth about him is his role in the great fire that burned the city; where in his delusions of grandeur, he thought to play the fiddle to calm the panicking populace of Rome. There is very little historical precedence for this.

For one, Tacitus wrote that Nero wasn’t even in the city when he heard about the fire. And when he did, he rushed back to the city. Yes, he did build a new palace on the ruins the flames tore down, but he opened his already existing palaces (plural!) to the people who were rendered homeless by the fire. He even arranged for food to be delivered to the survivors so they didn’t starve to death.

Fires in Rome were extremely common and this fire was unique in its devastation. Nero may have played as the fire burned many miles away, but he was tireless in rebuilding the city. He created some of the earliest zoning laws where houses were made to be separate from each other. This curtailed future fires from spreading as quickly as the great fire.

Did Nero do abhorrent things? Of course. He poisoned his own stepbrother at a dinner party and claimed the young Britannicus was suffering from an epileptic fit when onlookers tried to help. He ordered his own mother killed when she tried to use Nero for her own political advantages. Nero did persecute Christians more so than previous emperors. If we want to condemn Nero, fine; however we should do so based on things he actually did.