Nero did not fiddle while Rome burned

The Great Fire of Rome happened in 64 CE, long before the violin existed. Ancient accounts disagree on whether Nero was even in the city when it started.

Context

The Great Fire of Rome began in July of 64 CE and burned for several days, destroying or damaging large parts of the city. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing decades later, reports that Nero was away at Antium when it started and returned to organize relief, including opening public buildings and providing shelter and food for those who lost homes.

The violin did not exist in the Roman world, so Nero cannot have played a fiddle. The idea that he sang or played an instrument while the city burned comes from later writers, notably Suetonius and Cassius Dio, who wrote long after the event and disliked him. They describe him as singing about the fall of Troy, and Dio mentions a lyre, but even they differ in the details, and Tacitus treats the story as only a rumor.

The phrase 'fiddling while Rome burns' became a stock expression in English in the nineteenth century, long after the original accounts. Nero's reputation also suffered because he blamed Christians for the fire and had many of them punished. Historians still debate how much of the surrounding story is true, but they agree that the image of a man with a fiddle is an anachronism.