He was called Nero and the association of his name leads to fiery thoughts ... But in the end he was the monster presented by some historians, Nero, or was he their victim, who neither Rome burned, nor the Christians chased?
A day like today dawned , July 19 64 years after the birth of Christ and the inhabitants of the capital of the world at that time, Rome, felt a smell of smoke irritating their sense of smell. The city was burning ! Who burned her? Christians and historians say that the haters of the emperor, led by Dion Cassius, exaggerate obliquely, leaving a crevice of doubt so as not to be exposed...
Nero is considered "vicious, reckless, wasteful, capricious, shameless , pyromaniac"... This is how History presents him - with a first reading - . And yet, many of the above epithets that historians "stuck" on the Roman emperor were from unfair to unacceptable, as can be seen from other more moderate colleagues.
Victim of intrigue of his enemies
The coldest scholars come to the conclusion that the Philhellenic, philanthropic and democrat Nero was the victim of one of the dirtiest intrigues of History and historians! The same scholars, for the most part, end up "showing" the Christians as guilty of the arson. Let us note that the leading apologists of Christianity (Tertullian, Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea) keep silent about such an important event as the burning of Rome, which led to the first great persecution against Christians!
Suetonius and Dion Cassius did not write a good word about Nero in their histories, which makes their negative attitude at least suspicious, since he had done well and many of his decisions were greeted with enthusiasm by the people.
Tacitus says that the Romans thought of him as merely impulsive and corrupt, not the paranoid and perversely tyrannical emperor that his later colleagues want.
And something else quite important:When the fire in Rome went out, Nero did not from the construction of his magnificent palace, but threw the burden into the general planning of the city; he cleared away the ruins, laid out new and wider streets, and built modern houses of brick rather than of wood, as before. And if you say about the lyre that "the emperor played while Rome was burning"...
Tacitus - although an opponent of Nero - argues that the lyre did not exist in the story that was spread and if the event finally happened, it would have taken place in summer palaces, with Nero lamenting Rome symbolically singing the destruction of Troy. And after referring to the history of the lyre, he finally rejects it as a myth!
Nor did he persecute the Christians
In our time, in the era of the revival of history and the questioning of stereotypes, in the age of the internet and fake news, even the established opinion that Nero was the initiator and creator of the first persecution of Christians is seriously questioned. The event was spread by Tacitus and - mainly - by Christian tradition, points out the great Princeton professor Brent Shaw, and it is also extremely doubtful that the emperor actually blamed the Christians for the fire and crucified them in his gardens...
Lactantius, one of the first Christian writers, who was even taken under his protection by the emperor Constantine the Great , separates his position from the rest of the Christian historians of his time and does not attribute to Nero the "directing" of the arson as the reason for the persecution of the Christians.
The people mourned him, not the rulers
Suetonius and Dion Cassius wrote that the people celebrated the death of Nero, which is probably completely untrue. The aristocracy and the Synods, yes, were happy when Nero got out of the way, but not the common people and the slaves, who really mourned him, which is confirmed by both Tacitus and other Roman historians. Two subsequent emperors besides, Marcus Salvius Othon and Vitellios Germanikos , the memory of Nero was invoked to elicit popular support. Nero was a patron of the arts, an excellent composer of music and supported Greece and its culture.
Let's close by emphasizing that the historian Suetonius has written that for years and years people decorated Nero's tomb with flowers in the spring and summer. The entire people mourned Nero's death. So something rotten exists in the... realm of History .
A popular leader, over his grave, would receive an embrace of weeds and the boundless derision of those who suffered of his tenure, however... But Nero was also honored after his death by the citizens of Rome, but he was misrepresented by historians in the following generations who received him dirty.
The fire that burned credibility
On fire now:the event is considered one of the most important events of the 1st century. On the night of July 18-19 in the year 64 AD, in shops in the heart of Rome, in the Circus Maximus , a fire broke out. The focus started at the Kapini gate towards the great Amphitheatre, which was continuous with the Palatine Hill and the Caelion. This district had many stores full of inflammable materials, which, combined with the strong wind, caused the fire to spread with great speed. It has been written that in the midst of the panic, organized groups were active that fueled the fire by creating new outbreaks. Still others entered the abandoned houses and indulged in looting.
The fire left behind ruins. The Temple of Zeus Statorus, the House of the Hosts of the Virgins and also a large part of the imperial palaces the Domus Transitoria (which Suetonius describes as "a palace that stretched between two hills") were destroyed! The account was tragic:the "Eternal City" was at the mercy of the fire for six days. The death toll was reported to have reached 12,000 people , while 4,000 small houses and 132 mansions were completely destroyed.
Along with them, the reputation of Nero's virtue was burned in the depths of the centuries...