But what else could one expect of ancient historiography? Cassius Dio gives the most detailed version of the story. Nero 55). He does not connect the persecution with the conflagration, but with police regulations. Nero the Emperor of Rome (pictured) is infamous for his tyrannical rule and a devastating fire which is said to have ravaged much of the city. much of the population blamed Nero for failing to control the fire. Suetonius tells that many Romans believed that the Great Fire of Rome was instigated by Nero to clear the way for his planned palatial complex, the Domus Aurea. In 64 A.D. a devastating fire swept through Rome destroying everything in its path. AD 64 always has been, and will continue to be, all about the Great Fire of Rome. Ten of 14 districts burned. The city burned on 18 July AD 64. The fire is the last big event in Tacitus’ account of AD 64 ( Annals 15.33–47). There are two reasons usually given for why Nero set fire to Rome. He ordered that Christians were to be arrested and sentenced to be eaten by lions in public arenas, such as the Colosseum, for the entertainment of the common people. But if the disagreement among our three sources isn’t enough to debunk one of history’s most pervasive myths , there’s one final detail: the fiddle wasn’t invented until around the eleventh century. But 18 July 64 AD, the date on which the Great Fire of Rome broke out, can certainly be remembered as a day on which centuries of building were undone.. A mad despot. Nero’s Rome burns The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city on this day in the year 64. Nero had a reputation as an arsonist even in antiquity, with rumours that he started the Fire of Rome in A.D. 64 appearing in the histories of Tacitus and Cassius Dio and the biography of Nero … SUETONIUS, Life of the Emperor Nero, chapter 16: "[After the Great Fire]...punishments were also inflicted on the CHRISTIANS, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief ...." PLINY (Governor of the Province of Bithynia-Pontus) Epistles Book 10 #96 addressed to the Emperor Trajan (ca. The first is that he was a mad megalomaniac who burned down the city simply because he could. See vol. Nero was born with name Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus in 37 AD, but renamed as Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus because his mother, Agrippina the Younger, married Emperor Claudius in 49 AD, who adopted Nero in 50 AD. The Great Fire of Rome. Agrippina the Younger was the daughter of Agrippina the Elder and the great-granddaughter of Emperor Augustus. On the evening of July 18, in the scorching summer of 64 CE, a fire started in a shop under the Circus Maximus in Rome. Artwork of the Great Fire of Rome .Photo source: Wikimedia. Even at this distance it is possible to hear the anti-Neronian axes grinding away. Separated by almost two millennia from a devastating event in the ancient city of Rome, came a software program called Nero Burning Rom that allows you to burn discs. The event in ancient Rome was so significant that we still remember it, albeit, with crucial details confused. After the Great Fire of Rome in July 64 C.E. Ancient historians have a different opinion about Nero's whereabouts during a fire. Rome burned, true, in A.D. 64. Suetonius (Nero 38.1) maintains that Nero “set the City ablaze because of his disgust with the unsightliness of its antiquated buildings and the narrow and winding streets.” According to Tacitus (Ann. One of the most popular stories about the fire is that while Rome burned, Nero simply played his lyre and sang. 15.40), Nero wanted to re-found Rome, naming it after himself (i.e., as Neropolis: Suet. pp. The account of Suetonius, Nero, c.16, is very short and unsatisfactory: "Afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficaea." Traditions of the church place the martyrdoms of SS Peter and Paul at Rome, under the reign of Nero. A century after the Timagenes episode, the emperor was Nero, “who oversaw a revival of Afrianus’ Incendium, a farce in which characters escape from an urban conflagration. In the aftermath of the fire, rumors quickly spread about the cause of the fire. According to Suetonius, he observed the fire in the tower of Maecenas (Nero 38.2); Cassius Dion believed that he was on the roof of his palace (Roman History 62.18.1); when Tacitus thought Nero was outside Rome, in Antium (Annals 15.39). —Suetonius, Nero 31.1. Suetonius describes Nero's suicide, and remarks that his death meant the end of the reign of the Julio-Claudians (because Nero had no heir). No hard evidence, however, is produced for this claim other than the fact that he undertook a large … 39: Nero’s return to Rome and his counter-measures. There is a story told by Suetonius that when a man said to Nero, ‘When I am dead, let the earth be consumed by fire’, the emperor replied, ‘No, while I live!’ That is thanks to the historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio Cassius, but especially to the figure of Nero. Tacitus’ account of the fire of Rome can be divided as follows: 38: The outbreak of the fire and its devastation of the city. After the conflagration, Nero embarked on an ambitious rebuilding programme – one that, according to the Roman historian Tacitus, he tackled with such gusto that many Romans soon suspected that he’d ordered the fire to be started in the first place. 112 A.D.) In AD 64, a fire ripped through Rome, devastating 10 of its 14 districts. Following the fire that ravaged Rome in 64 C.E.—during which Nero was rumored to have fiddled—the Roman emperor erected his extravagant Domus Aurea, or Golden House, in the center of the city. Rome, as the saying goes, was not built in a day. According to Tacitus he was said to have seized Christians as scapegoats for the fire and burned them alive, seemingly motivated not by public justice but by personal cruelty. As one popular account goes, Nero had been planning the construction of his grand palace, the Domus Aurea, but needed to clear a large area to accommodate the palatial complex. The legends are given by Ordericus Vitalis. Journalists take pictures during a visit organized for the media of the Roman Emperor Nero's Golden Palace "Domus Aurea" in Rome in June 2014 during a restoration project. The fire quickly spread to … But a … i. of the edition in the Antiq. Nero’s father was violent and died when his son was only three years old. Before Dio and Suetonius even mention the fire they foreshadow that Nero’s intentions are to destroy and burn Rome. At the first news of the Gallic revolt Nero is thought to have formed a characteristically perverse and wicked plan to depose the army commanders and provincial governors and execute them on charges of conspiracy; to murder all exiles, for fear they might join the rebels, and all the Gallic residents of Rome as sharing in and abetting their countrymen’s designs; to allow his armies to ravage the Gallic provinces; to poison … According to the Roman historian Suetonius, Nero sang and played the lyre while Rome burned. Their bias against Nero gives their audience a negative view before reading their narratives about the fire, thus already creating a grim opinion of the emperor. Suetonius recounts how Nero, while watching Rome burn, exclaimed how beautiful it was, and sang an epic poem about the sack of Troy while playing the lyre. Two years later when this coin was struck circa 64-66 CE at Rome, Nero’s image was almost completely different than the youthful portrait from a … The emperor Nero commandeered many of the neighborhoods razed by the Great Fire of A.D. 64 to build a palace complex of staggering dimensions. 41: Assessment of the damages. 40: Control of the initial conflagration and a new outbreak. Lib. According to Suetonius, the play became a … Writing around 150 years after the Great Fire of Rome, he seems to have based his history on Suetonius’s biography, as he reports Nero’s complicity in the fire as concrete fact. In retaliation, Nero began to persecute Christians. Lyre, lyre, Rome. Augustus himself famously burned paperwork that erased a huge debt owed to the Roman treasury, thus earning him an equally huge debt of gratitude by the Roman people. Of the early Roman emperors, Nero alone rivalled Caligula in his reputation for sheer unbridled viciousness. Everyone thought that Nero had started the fire so that he could rebuild a more beautiful city, including his Golden House. Nero’s father died when at the … https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-was-the-great-fire-of-rome.html Despite the well-known stories, there is … 206, etc., with the notes and reference to the apocryphal works on which they are founded. Richard Cavendish | Published in History Today Volume 64 Issue 7 July 2014. Of its 14 districts are two reasons usually given for why Nero set to... As Neropolis: Suet his lyre and sang the conflagration, but especially to Roman! Is that while Rome burned, Nero wanted to re-found Rome, devastating 10 of its 14 districts )... 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