Myth: Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned

This weird legend comes from the ancient authors, who were notoriously biased against Nero. There are three main sources on Nero: sensationalistic and not very reliable Suetonius and his work “The Twelve Ceasars”, the history written by Cassius Dio, who lived almost two centuries after Nero, and Tacitus.

Nero, just like Caligula for example, was almost certainly a subject of character assassination. Nero was considered a “bad emperor” and almost everything he did was interpreted in a negative light. To a point that some of the stories told by the ancient historians make almost no sense whatsoever.