Short Stuff: Nero and His Fiddle

"Fiddling" didn't mean playing a fiddle. It meant doing something useless with your hands—and Nero probably wasn't doing that either.

The great fire of Rome in A.D. 64 destroyed 70 percent of the city and left half a million people homeless across six days and seven nights. Only four of Rome's fourteen districts survived intact. The Roman historian Tacitus, who was a boy during the blaze, documented the catastrophe. And almost immediately, rumors spread that the emperor Nero had started the fire himself—or at least let it burn—so he could rebuild Rome in his preferred style.

That rumor eventually hardened into the enduring image of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. But the story is almost certainly ancient propaganda that survived nearly two thousand years.

Why Nero Couldn't Have Fiddled

The most straightforward reason is technological. Music historians agree that the viol class of instruments—which includes the violin and fiddle—didn't emerge until the 11th century, about 1,500 years after the fire. There were literally no fiddles in Nero's Rome.