Nero blamed theChristiansto deflect blame from himself. That he started the fire is just an allegation. The suspicions arose because after the fire he built his wast Golden House (Domus Aurea). That he payed the fiddle during the fire was adistortionby later historians. The fiddle did not exist in his days.Nerodid his best to help the people affected by the fire.
Nero Or at least Nero gets the blame for setting the fire in popular mythology. However, there is no proof that he started it and just as much blame can be thrown on the Christians who hindered the firefighters and aided its spread. It is generally believed that the fire started by pure accident in the hot, dry, Italian summer.
If you are referring to the great fire in Nero's reign, no one actually burnt the city. The fire started by accident in one of the shops that lined the Circus Maximus. It was a hot dry summer and the winds caused the fire to spread out of control. Poor old Nero got blamed for it because it was a known fact that he wanted to rebuild the slums of the city. The Christians , who were a disliked religious group due to their clannishness and aggressiveness, were hindering the firefighters and some ancient sources say that they even were seen carrying torches to spread the fire. This was due to the Christian belief at the time that Rome would be destroyed by fire before the Second Coming of Christ, which they thought was to happen immediately. So we have the blame game. Nero (who wasn't even in the city at the time) wanted cleared space for his building projects and the Christians who thought they were helping their God. So an accidental fire has become a two thousand year old controversy.
A Christian tradition holds that Nero persecuted the Christians living in Rome because he blamed them for the Great Fire in the year 64 CE, and to divert suspicion from himself. However, historians have been unable to find any evidence of such persecution or even a reason for Nero to want to blame them unjustly - he is believed not to have been in Rome at the time, so did not need to divert suspicion from himself. And there is no record of any Christian mentioning this supposed persecution until some centuries later.
16 sq miles
Richard Holland (Nero: The Man Behind the Myth) says that the evidence suggests that Nero was less cruel than any of his predecessors and probably had no taste for cruelty at all. He is, of course, blamed for the Great Fire of Rome, but modern historians are virtually unanimous in dismissing the ancient view that Nero started the fire deliberately, and the evidence is that he was personally involved in attempts to bring the fire under control.Decades after the fire, Nero was accused by Tacitus, who held great animosity towards some of the past emperors, and Nero in particular, of making the Christians of Rome scapegoats for the fire:Tacitus Annals 15.44: To quash the rumour, therefore, Nero substituted other culprits, those commonly known as Christians, who were hated for their disgraceful activities - and he inflicted excruciating punishments on them. Christus, the originator of this name [of Christians], had been executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. This deadly superstition, though repressed for a while, was breaking out again, not only in Judaea where the evil originated, but even in the city [Rome], where all atrocious or shameful things flow in from all sides and flourish. So, at first, those who acknowledged it were arrested, and then by their evidence a great multitude were convicted, not so much for the crime of arson as for their hatred of the human race.Holland says the reference attributed to Tacitus has often been assumed to mean that some thousands of Christians were executed, but the description is vague enough to apply to a much lower figure. In fact, he cites Warnington (Nero Reality and Legend): “No other writer, Christian or pagan, in the following centuries refers to Nero using the Christians as scapegoats, although Christian tradition knew of Nero as a persecutor ...†On balance, it is likely that Nero did blame the Christians of Rome for the Great Fire, punishing them or expelling them from the city, but without the extreme cruelty that Tacitus attributed to him.Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) says that the religious tenets of the Christians were never made a subject of punishment by Nero, or even of inquiry.
St. Peter, the first pope, was ordered executed by the Roman Emperor Nero because he was a Christian and Nero had decided to blame the great fire that destroyed much of Rome in the year 64 on the Christians.
Nero Or at least Nero gets the blame for setting the fire in popular mythology. However, there is no proof that he started it and just as much blame can be thrown on the Christians who hindered the firefighters and aided its spread. It is generally believed that the fire started by pure accident in the hot, dry, Italian summer.
In 64 AD. much of Rome was destroyed in a great fire. Some say it was an accident, others said that the Roman Emperor Nero had it started so that he could rebuild the city in his own vision. Nero had little use for the new Christian religion so decided to blame the fire on them and began arresting, torturing and killing them. Peter was the leader of the Christians so he was a principal target of Nero's insanity.
St. Paul had been arrested and sent to Rome for trial. While awaiting his trial in prison, much of the city of Rome was destroyed by fire. Nero, who was probably responsible for the fire, needed a scapegoat on which to blame the fire. Since the Christians were already an irritation to him, he chose to persecute them. Both Peter and Paul were leaders of this new religion and Nero thought that if he had them executed, the new church would collapse.
If you are referring to the great fire in Nero's reign, no one actually burnt the city. The fire started by accident in one of the shops that lined the Circus Maximus. It was a hot dry summer and the winds caused the fire to spread out of control. Poor old Nero got blamed for it because it was a known fact that he wanted to rebuild the slums of the city. The Christians , who were a disliked religious group due to their clannishness and aggressiveness, were hindering the firefighters and some ancient sources say that they even were seen carrying torches to spread the fire. This was due to the Christian belief at the time that Rome would be destroyed by fire before the Second Coming of Christ, which they thought was to happen immediately. So we have the blame game. Nero (who wasn't even in the city at the time) wanted cleared space for his building projects and the Christians who thought they were helping their God. So an accidental fire has become a two thousand year old controversy.
During the reign of Roman emperor Nero, the city of Rome was nearly destroyed by a disastrous fire that some say Nero, himself, started. Nero had no use for the early Christian Church and decided to blame the fire on them. Christians were arrested, tortured and killed, including St. Peter.
A Christian tradition holds that Nero persecuted the Christians living in Rome because he blamed them for the Great Fire in the year 64 CE, and to divert suspicion from himself. However, historians have been unable to find any evidence of such persecution or even a reason for Nero to want to blame them unjustly - he is believed not to have been in Rome at the time, so did not need to divert suspicion from himself. And there is no record of any Christian mentioning this supposed persecution until some centuries later.
The fire basically destroyed two-thirds of the city of Rome.
Four square miles of Chicago were destroyed in the fire.
In 2000, there was more than $5 billion in lost property due to fire
Fires are a natural part of Yellowstone ecosystem, with out fire some trees wouldn't be able to reproduce.
It's an expression to show that Nero was a terrible, selfish emperor of Rome. The expression is "When Rome was burning, Nero fiddled." Rome had a huge fire and burned down while Nero was the leader and he did nothing to help the cause and was very interested in the arts and played the violin so they came up with that statement to show how much he didn't care about the people.