So if Nero was in fact participating in a play (merriment) he would have indeed been fiddling while Rome burned. Roman historians record that Nero had a real passion for the cithara. Nero's reign started well, he was a reformer who taxed the wealthy to help the poorer classes much to the angst of the senate. Deserted and reviled, Nero had fled Rome in […] Nero had many enemies and is remembered as one of history’s most sadistic and cruelest leaders. It was an ignominious death for the last of the original imperial dynasty, the Julio-Claudians. Nero also had the sage advice of Burrus and the philosopher Seneca whom he listened to and learned from and slowly a power play ensued between Agrippina and the advisors. The Great Fire of Rome (Latin: incendium magnum Romae), was an urban fire that occurred in July, 64 AD. Even if he did not realize it at the time. Marble Bust of Nero: British Museum “But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor (Nero) and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration (burning of Rome in 64 AD) was the result of an order (given by Nero). In AD 64, about 30 years after Jesus’s death, Peter was trying to spread Christianity throughout Rome and that put him directly in Nero’s path. Try 6 issues of BBC History Magazine or BBC History Revealed for only £9.99 Nero, the fifth Roman emperor, is among the most despised figures from history for his horrific cruelty to early Christians and, as the legend goes, for playing the fiddle while Rome was consumed by fire. Perhaps, as Barrett suggests, no comparable historical disaster is so closely associated with one individual. Nero Wolfe is a fictional character, a brilliant, oversized, eccentric armchair detective created in 1934 by American mystery writer Rex Stout.Wolfe was born in Montenegro and keeps his past murky. Julius Caesar was a general, politician and scholar who became dictator of ancient Rome until he was assassinated in 44 B.C., inspiring a play by Shakespeare. Nero had an older resolution forbidding the introduction of new religions, but the application to Christians is seen as coming from the much older Republican principle that it was a capital offense to introduce a new superstition without the authorization of the Roman state. On June 9th, 68 AD, Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar— better known as Emperor Nero — died by his own hand after being declared an enemy of the state by the Roman senate. Nero captured and crucified Peter—and, according to the popular story, hung him upside down. Nero didn’t just kill nameless Christians—he executed Peter, one of Jesus’s disciples. But there are a couple of problems with the story. 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