https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-was-the-great-fire-of-rome.html Lib. One of the most popular stories about the fire is that while Rome burned, Nero simply played his lyre and sang. Ten of 14 districts burned. Writing around 150 years after the Great Fire of Rome, he seems to have based his history on Suetonius’s biography, as he reports Nero’s complicity in the fire as concrete fact. The first is that he was a mad megalomaniac who burned down the city simply because he could. The account of Suetonius, Nero, c.16, is very short and unsatisfactory: "Afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficaea." The city burned on 18 July AD 64. The event in ancient Rome was so significant that we still remember it, albeit, with crucial details confused. Suetonius describes Nero's suicide, and remarks that his death meant the end of the reign of the Julio-Claudians (because Nero had no heir). Rome burned, true, in A.D. 64. According to Tacitus he was said to have seized Christians as scapegoats for the fire and burned them alive, seemingly motivated not by public justice but by personal cruelty. 112 A.D.) 40: Control of the initial conflagration and a new outbreak. much of the population blamed Nero for failing to control the fire. Despite the well-known stories, there is … But 18 July 64 AD, the date on which the Great Fire of Rome broke out, can certainly be remembered as a day on which centuries of building were undone.. A mad despot. Nero the Emperor of Rome (pictured) is infamous for his tyrannical rule and a devastating fire which is said to have ravaged much of the city. Nero’s father died when at the … But a … 41: Assessment of the damages. Suetonius recounts how Nero, while watching Rome burn, exclaimed how beautiful it was, and sang an epic poem about the sack of Troy while playing the lyre. In the aftermath of the fire, rumors quickly spread about the cause of the fire. Suetonius tells that many Romans believed that the Great Fire of Rome was instigated by Nero to clear the way for his planned palatial complex, the Domus Aurea. Richard Cavendish | Published in History Today Volume 64 Issue 7 July 2014. Artwork of the Great Fire of Rome .Photo source: Wikimedia. See vol. According to Suetonius, the play became a … He does not connect the persecution with the conflagration, but with police regulations. The legends are given by Ordericus Vitalis. Nero’s Rome burns The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city on this day in the year 64. According to Suetonius, he observed the fire in the tower of Maecenas (Nero 38.2); Cassius Dion believed that he was on the roof of his palace (Roman History 62.18.1); when Tacitus thought Nero was outside Rome, in Antium (Annals 15.39). The fire is the last big event in Tacitus’ account of AD 64 ( Annals 15.33–47). Nero was born with name Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus in 37 AD, but renamed as Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus because his mother, Agrippina the Younger, married Emperor Claudius in 49 AD, who adopted Nero in 50 AD. After the conflagration, Nero embarked on an ambitious rebuilding programme – one that, according to the Roman historian Tacitus, he tackled with such gusto that many Romans soon suspected that he’d ordered the fire to be started in the first place. Rome, as the saying goes, was not built in a day. As one popular account goes, Nero had been planning the construction of his grand palace, the Domus Aurea, but needed to clear a large area to accommodate the palatial complex. At the first news of the Gallic revolt Nero is thought to have formed a characteristically perverse and wicked plan to depose the army commanders and provincial governors and execute them on charges of conspiracy; to murder all exiles, for fear they might join the rebels, and all the Gallic residents of Rome as sharing in and abetting their countrymen’s designs; to allow his armies to ravage the Gallic provinces; to poison … Augustus himself famously burned paperwork that erased a huge debt owed to the Roman treasury, thus earning him an equally huge debt of gratitude by the Roman people. Cassius Dio gives the most detailed version of the story. pp. Tacitus’ account of the fire of Rome can be divided as follows: 38: The outbreak of the fire and its devastation of the city. Lyre, lyre, Rome. Following the fire that ravaged Rome in 64 C.E.—during which Nero was rumored to have fiddled—the Roman emperor erected his extravagant Domus Aurea, or Golden House, in the center of the city. Two years later when this coin was struck circa 64-66 CE at Rome, Nero’s image was almost completely different than the youthful portrait from a … The Great Fire of Rome. Nero had a reputation as an arsonist even in antiquity, with rumours that he started the Fire of Rome in A.D. 64 appearing in the histories of Tacitus and Cassius Dio and the biography of Nero … In AD 64, a fire ripped through Rome, devastating 10 of its 14 districts. The fire quickly spread to … Ancient historians have a different opinion about Nero's whereabouts during a fire. There are two reasons usually given for why Nero set fire to Rome. After the Great Fire of Rome in July 64 C.E. He ordered that Christians were to be arrested and sentenced to be eaten by lions in public arenas, such as the Colosseum, for the entertainment of the common people. 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