{"id":116,"date":"2016-07-15T16:07:35","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T16:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/?p=116"},"modified":"2016-07-15T16:07:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T16:07:35","slug":"did-nero-play-the-fiddle-while-rome-burned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/did-nero-play-the-fiddle-while-rome-burned\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Nero play the fiddle while Rome burned?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AD 64, Jul 18<sup>th<\/sup>:\u00a0 Nero&#8217;s Rome burns<\/p>\n<p>The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city on this day in the year 64.\u00a0 Despite the well-known stories, there is no evidence that the Roman emperor, Nero, either started the fire or played the fiddle while it burned.\u00a0 Still, he did use the disaster to further his political agenda.<\/p>\n<p>The fire began in the slums of a district south of the legendary Palatine Hill.\u00a0 The area&#8217;s homes burned very quickly and the fire spread north, fueled by high winds.\u00a0 During the chaos of the fire, there were reports of heavy looting.\u00a0 The fire ended up raging out of control for nearly three days.\u00a0 Three of Rome&#8217;s 14 districts were completely wiped out; only four were untouched by the tremendous conflagration.\u00a0 Hundreds of people died in the fire and many thousands were left homeless.<\/p>\n<p>Although popular legend holds that Emperor Nero fiddled while the city burned, this account is wrong on several accounts.\u00a0 First, the fiddle did not even exist at the time. Instead, Nero was well known for his talent on the lyre; he often composed his own music.\u00a0 More importantly, Nero was actually 35 miles away in Antium when the fire broke out.\u00a0 In fact, he let his palace be used as a shelter.<\/p>\n<p>Legend has long blamed Nero for a couple of reasons.\u00a0 Nero did not like the aesthetics of the city and used the devastation of the fire in order to change much of it and institute new building codes throughout the city.\u00a0 Nero also used the fire to clamp down on the growing influence of Christians in Rome.\u00a0 He arrested, tortured and executed hundreds of Christians on the pretext that they had something to do with the fire.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.history.com\/this-day-in-history\/neros-rome-burns\">History.com\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AD 64, Jul 18th:\u00a0 Nero&#8217;s Rome burns The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city on this day in the year 64.\u00a0 Despite the well-known stories, there is no evidence that the Roman emperor, Nero, either started the fire or played the fiddle while it burned.\u00a0 Still, he did use &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/did-nero-play-the-fiddle-while-rome-burned\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Did Nero play the fiddle while Rome burned?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":117,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-association-news","category-fire-investigation-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nafi.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}