Did Nero Really Fiddle While Rome Burned?

Summary

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Instant Classics: Did Nero Really Fiddle While Rome Burned?

Podcast: Instant Classics
Host: Vespucci
Guests: Mary Beard (classicist), Charlotte Higgins (Guardian chief culture writer)
Date: October 23, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the infamous legend of Emperor Nero "fiddling while Rome burned," exploring its historical origins and why the story became such a lasting—and potent—symbol. Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins unpack the reality behind the myth, the context of Rome's great fire of 64 CE, the political fallout, and how the phrase endures and adapts in modern culture to represent political negligence or frivolity. They also consider the motives for scapegoating minorities, the malleability of symbolic stories, and whether there’s any truth behind the myth itself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Great Fire of Rome: Event and Aftermath

• Description of the Disaster

  • The fire started in 64 CE, near the Circus Maximus and raged for nine days, destroying much of Rome. Nero was initially out of town but returned swiftly to coordinate relief efforts.
  • "It was a huge humanitarian disaster." — Charlotte Higgins [00:00]

• Nero's Response

  • Despite later myths, Nero implemented many humanitarian measures: opened his properties for the homeless, stabilized grain prices, and enacted strict building codes to prevent future fires.
  • "Looking to the future with the flair of a modern town planner, he introduces all kinds of new regulations about how high buildings should be..." — Mary Beard [09:28]

The Blame Game & Scapegoating

• Blame Shifts to Christians

  • Early Christians, a small and suspicious minority, were brutally scapegoated for the fire. Tacitus provides vivid accounts of their persecution.
  • "They were sort of wrapped in wild animal skins...a particularly unspeakably vile thing was that they were...human torches." — Charlotte Higgins [10:35]
  • Even Tacitus, anti-Christian in sentiment, was appalled by Nero's brutality.
  • "Even Tacitus says that people did not like this. This was shocking." — Mary Beard [11:26]

• Blame Returns to Nero

  • Ancient historians (Tacitus, Suetonius, Cassius Dio) also spread rumors Nero started the fire to clear land for his enormous new palace, the Domus Aurea (Golden House).
  • "Why would he have wanted to do that? ...The easiest way to clear the ground...was to have a disastrous accidental fire..." — Mary Beard [13:48]

Nero’s Building Projects and Symbolism

• The Lasting Legacy of the Fire

  • The land cleared by the fire allowed Nero to build his palatial Golden House, featuring a 30-meter statue of himself—the later site of the Colosseum.
  • "Romans flee. The whole city has become one man's house." — Mary Beard [18:24]

• Physical Memory

  • Modern visitors can still view remnants of the Golden House and trace the fire’s monumental legacy in Rome’s architecture.

Myth vs. Reality: Did Nero Really Fiddle?

• The Instrument
  • The fiddle, as we know it, did not exist (the violin emerged much later); Nero played the lyre, an ancient stringed instrument.
  • "Nero definitely did not play the fiddle." — Charlotte Higgins [03:09]
  • "You pedant, Charlotte...We'll call it the fiddle, even though...it's an ancient lyre..." — Mary Beard [03:32]

Why the Image Endures

• Power of the Image: Lyre and Lyric

  • The enduring story is colored by Nero’s supposed performance from a vantage point, dressed in stage costume, while playing and singing “The Destruction of Troy.”
  • "Why is it that this picture of Nero playing his lyre...has stuck in the popular imagination...?" — Mary Beard [24:17]
  • "Nero is playing...The Destruction of Troy. ...He is singing about the destruction of Troy while watching Rome being destroyed." — Charlotte Higgins [24:56]
  • The specific song—about Troy’s fall, Rome’s mythical ancestor—deepens the symbolic resonance.

• Ancient to Modern Parallels

  • In the Roman context: The story represents a ruler's detachment, cruelty, and perhaps complicity.
  • In modern usage: The phrase “fiddling while Rome burns” has evolved to mean neglecting important affairs in favor of trivialities.
  • "X fiddles while Y burns...is generally about X concentrating on something frivolous or ignoring something super important, while Y...suffers calamity." — Charlotte Higgins [31:29]
  • Noted in political satire (from Shakespeare to 18th-century cartoons to present-day memes targeting leaders from Obama to Modi and Berlusconi).

• Scapegoating as Social Pattern

  • Both the ancient and modern reactions showcase the human tendency to blame vulnerable minorities in a crisis, as with Christians after Rome’s fire or Catholics post-Great Fire of London.
  • "We see throughout history, when catastrophes happen, the desire to blame the small minoritized other...is a constant temptation." — Charlotte Higgins [37:32]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Rome’s Architecture and Danger:
  "The city of Rome is a tinderbox...People are cooking up...in high up in rickety apartment buildings...the history of Rome...is marked by one devastating fire after another."
  — Mary Beard [06:40]

• On Nero’s Build Projects’ Influence:
  "If you say, where's the monument to the Fire of Rome in Rome? Well, actually it's the Colosseum."
  — Mary Beard [20:46]

• On Nero’s Performance During Disaster:
  "Nero is specifically said to have got himself dressed in his stage costume because he was very keen on acting. He got himself dressed up to do this."
  — Mary Beard [30:34]

• On the Meaning of the Phrase Today:
  "I did a quick experiment and Googled this phrase in relation to every British Prime Minister of the last 30 years. They have all been fiddling while Rome burnt."
  — Charlotte Higgins [34:55]

• On the Uncertainty of Responsibility:
  "You don't quite know where responsibility lies."
  — Mary Beard [41:20]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:00–02:00 — Setting the scene: Fire of 64 CE and Nero’s response
• 03:09–04:07 — Myth-busting: Fiddle vs. lyre
• 04:07–10:17 — Who was Nero? His background, reign, and the turning point
• 10:17–13:48 — The search for scapegoats: Christians and Nero himself
• 17:12–20:46 — Symbolism of fire, turning points, and the legacy of the Domus Aurea and Colosseum
• 24:17–29:12 — Why the myth endures: Nero’s song choice, “Destruction of Troy”
• 31:29–37:21 — Transformation of the phrase in modern politics, global uptake, and cartoon examples
• 37:32–39:15 — Catastrophe and scapegoating, parallels in history
• 41:20–43:00 — Did it really happen? Both Beard and Higgins say “yes”—the myth is (probably) true

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Conclusion: Did Nero Really Fiddle While Rome Burned?

• Mary Beard's Verdict:
  "I think he probably did. I mean we've got...as reliable evidence as we could possibly have and no reason for him not to have." [41:41]
• Charlotte Higgins' Verdict:
  "I'm gonna go with you. I'm going to say yes. Nero fiddled while Rome burns." [42:30]

The phrase’s power, they argue, lies in both its ambiguity and resonance—a vivid image layered with historical, political, and psychological complexity.

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Contact:
For comments, ideas, and questions: instantclassicspodmail.com or @instantclassicspod

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Transcript

[Charlotte Higgins]

One night in the year 64 CE, a fire broke out near the Circus Maximus, the great chariot racing track in Rome. The wind was strong and the fire spread rapidly into the streets, around into the local neighbourhoods. Apartment buildings, houses, temples and public buildings were all destroyed and it was a huge humanitarian disaster. The Emperor Nero was out of town at his villa, the Coast. But by most accounts, he returned quickly to establish relief efforts. Still, the fire lasted for nine days, leaving much of the city completely devastated.

[Mary Beard]

Then, of course, the blame game began, as it so often does with big fires. Had it been started deliberately, perhaps, by the Emperor Nero himself, who wanted to clear the ground for some vast new building projects? And then there was the story that Nero had gone up to a vantage point, had watched the flames, had got out his lyre, his little mini harp, and had fiddled while Rome burnt. That's what's gone down in history. There's hardly a modern politician who hasn't sometimes been satirized as a new Nero.

[Charlotte Higgins]

So how much truth is there in this ancient story? And why did it take on such symbolic significance, both at the time and now? What are we really saying when we accuse some hapless politician of fiddling while Rome burns?

[Mary Beard]

This is Instant Classics, the podcast that uncovers the ancient stories that still shape our modern world. And I'm Mary Beard.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And I'm Charlotte Higgins.

[Mary Beard]

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[Charlotte Higgins]

Subscribe to Empire wherever you get your podcasts to listen now. Well, Mary, as an amateur violinist myself, I think we can knock on the head that Nero played the fiddle While Rome burns, since stringed instruments of this sort has not yet been invented. Like Nero definitely did not play the fiddle,

[Mary Beard]

you pedant. Charlotte.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Let's say we always want to know one.

[Mary Beard]

We all know what we mean and we'll call it the fiddle, even though what we're talking about is an ancient liar. Okay, L, Y, R, E. Yeah, right,

[Charlotte Higgins]

yes, as opposed to L, I, A, R. But look, Mary, let's, let's go back into the history a bit of this, like what was going on in Rome at the time of this fire, you know, tell us about Nero. Where was he in his reign at this point?

[Mary Beard]

Look, this is all quite simple, actually. Nero, he's gone down in history as, you know, one of the imperial monsters, but it's a bit more complicated. He came to the throne in 54 CE as a teenager. Impeccable credentials. He's descended directly from the first emperor, Augustus. He's the adopted son of the emperor Claudius. It seems that the reign starts quite well, that Nero, you know, even though a teenager has at least good advisors and things go okay. Now, the question with the reign of Nero has always been, so when did it all go to the bad? Because we've also got all the stories about how Nero kind of murdered his mother, had his first wife carefully removed, taken out, and was in all kinds of ways the sort of lurid playboy of the popular imagination. Now what's interesting. What's interesting is that this fire is in 64. We're 10 years into Nero's reign. There's another four years to go. Quite a lot of people thought that this was at least, very least, a symbol of things really now going to the bad. The idea of being an emperor while most of the city of Rome, the capital, is destroyed. You know, what could be worse than that, I guess.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yeah, I think it's really important to try and put our heads back in that place and that time. It's such a vividly described event in the sort of best, I would say the best piece of written history we have of that period, which is Tacitus, the historian, writing in the second century ce, so, you know, a little bit later. But the sort of vividness with which he summons up this completely devastating fire that sort of races really through the whole city and the chaos. You know, there's no fire brigades in ancient Rome. You get this impression of, you know, people are being made homeless, people are dashing through the streets. Some of them are trying to help, some of them are being brave and saving people. Some of them are apparently Making the fire worse in ways that we'll talk about a bit later. It's absolute chaos and absolute sort of human devastation, isn't it?

[Mary Beard]

Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. And I think that the descriptions of people rushing to kind of take refuge in tombs and things like that, it gives you a sense of the real fear, I think, the. That a kind of more. A more distant historian like me is going to say this is actually very common in ancient Rome. Maybe this was a very, very big fire, but the city of Rome is a tinderbox. The city of Rome is built out of flammable materials, as you say, there's no fire brigade. People are cooking up on little what we would call Bunsen burners or camp stoves, you know, in high up in rickety apartment buildings, that the history of Rome in some ways is absolutely marked by one devastating fire after another. What's interesting is that this one becomes written up so vividly. This one becomes the great fire fire of Rome, by which we mean not all the other fires of Rome, some of which were also pretty devastating, that happened throughout the history of the city.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Honestly, you've made me remember, Mary, that, you know, we think of Rome as being the city of enormous stone temples, but actually it was a city of narrow streets, tenement blocks, you know, narrow. Much more like this was medieval feeling. Town of narrow streets and fairly high rise, several storey, not high rise in the kind of skyscraper sense, but, you know, several stories of cramped accommodation. So, yeah, when there was a fire, it was pretty horrific.

[Mary Beard]

It was. And there wasn't. They had no recourse apart from demolishing buildings in order to leave a firebreak. And what I think is interesting in many ways about this fire and the likelihood, of course, is it started in some shop by entirely. It's a matter of, you know, an appalling accident rather than arson. But however it started, spreads terribly quickly. It is devastating. And Nero actually does do much better things to relieve the problem and the instant humanitarian disaster than many other emperors are said to have done. He, for example, opens up his. His own properties so that people who've been left homeless can go and sleep there and have a place to be. He makes sure that the price of grain is brought down so that people can get food. And looking to the future with the flair of a modern town planner, he introduces all kinds of new regulations about how high buildings should be and how distant they should be from each other, intended to stop fires in the future spreading in the way that this one had done. So on paper, Nero does everything right.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yeah, but then, as so often with fires even in the modern world, right, like wildfires or any kind of fire, then there's the hunt for someone to blame. And the sort of contender number one for the spot of who started the fire is the Christians. This very. This small and insignificant sect of weirdos who are rounded up and picked out for, according to Tacitus, unbelievably grim punishments. The things he did were genuinely appalling. So Tacitus tells us that the Christians were sort of wrapped in wild animal skins and, you know, torn apart by, you know, animals for the pleasure of the masses. And a particularly unspeakably vile thing was that they were sort of satellite sort of human tortures. I mean, it's really, really horrific, really unpleasant stuff.

[Mary Beard]

I think it's interesting that even Tacitus, who as a pagan historian had no time for Christians, even Tacitus says that people did not like this. This was shocking. And I think that's a good measure of how appalling the persecution of the Christians must have been. I mean, I think it's worth saying this is not to exonerate Nero and it's not, certainly not to suggest that I think the Christians were guilty. I'm sure they were not. We shouldn't think about Christians. The earliest Christians, we're just a few decades into Christianity here, There were not gentle Jesus, meek and mild type Christians. They were quite radical. They were suspected of violence. They were believed to want to bring the Roman Empire down. They were believed to think that the end of the world is coming and we can make it come quicker. So Nero was probably. I mean, he terribly misjudged it in a terribly cruel way, but he was picking on some plausible suspects.

[Charlotte Higgins]

But of course, he's not the. The Christians are not the only scapegoat in this situation, because Nero himself, as you say, it rebounds. Nero himself, according to Tacitus and other historians who were writing about these events, including Suetonius, who's writing in the early second century ce, biographer of, of Nero, and also another guy, Cassius Dio, who's writing in sort of early third century ce. He writes in Greek, but he's a Roman citizen. All of these historians talk about Nero himself as being at least strongly rumoured. I mean, they vary in how far they go themselves. In blaming Nero, Tacitus leaves it kind of open and Cassius Dio really goes for it. You know, the blame starts to land on Nero. Did Nero deliberately burn down his own city?

[Mary Beard]

That provokes them to collect bits of evidence. And there are rumors going around that some of Nero's own staff have been seen introducing and fanning the flames. And they say, well, why would he have wanted to do that? I mean, burn your own city down? Well, the answer to that was that he did have big, big building projects in mind, including for a vast new palace for himself. And the easiest way to clear the ground so that he could start the city afresh was to have a disastrous accidental fire that or Christian inspired fire that would do the demolition work for him. And that's where fiddling while Rome burns comes in. Because again, it's repeatedly said in the historians who write about this that Nero, once he'd come back to the city from his palace at Antium seaside, his seaside villa really. And once he'd started all the relief measures, what did he then do? Well, he finds a convenient vantage point, little tower, and he goes up, he dresses himself up in his tragic stage costume, he gets his lyre out and he watches the flames as a spectacle while accompanying that to his own playing on the lyre. And you know, in a sense, that somehow was the absolute clincher. It is a symbol that was the clincher that he was wanting this and had planned this rather than just being horrified by what had happened.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And by the time you get onto Cassius Dio, this sort of slightly later historian of the early third century ce, he ramps it up considerably. You know, he actually goes so far as to say that Nero had this fire started for the pure love of wanton destruction. Effectively, you know, forget your sort of clearing the city to do a lovely capital project, that this was just a sort of symptom of Nero's depravity and vice and his enjoyment of destruction, which then when that then sort of goes on to the playing of the lyre from the vantage point, you know, seems particularly, you know, even more twisted and grotesque.

[Mary Beard]

Yeah. And I think that's where the idea of the fire as a symbol of Nero's reign really going to the bad comes in. It might or might not be the turning point of Nero's reign. I think it's very hard ever to identify a kind of single moment when things start to go wrong. But it symbolically, it fixes the idea that this reign is not going to end. Well, in 64 we've got what happens afterwards in the four years of Nero's reign is one disaster after the next.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yeah. And it's sort of built up to in Tacitus, isn't it? So that there's a series of. Before the fire starts, there are a series of bad things happen. Not quite as bad, but sort of portents and the collapse of a building. And you know, it's all sort of leading up to this point where Rome itself, the the center of the empire is going to be devastated and laid flat by this fire. You know, it couldn't be more powerful as a sort of image really of a turning point even in its literary sense. Even if Mary, in your skeptical way, as you say, well, fires were happening all the time.

[Mary Beard]

All the time.

[Charlotte Higgins]

This one was nothing special.

[Mary Beard]

That's right, Great Fire, nothing special here. But I think also there is a sense that the scapegoating is picking on plausible targets. When people say how did the fire begin? And we've already said that people were suspicious and there were some grounds, wrong grounds, let me stress, to be suspicious of Christians. But also what happens next with Nero must also have given credence to the idea that he was behind it. Because most of the great capital building projects that come after the fire, most of them are actually a humongous new palace for the emperor called the Golden House. He's going to build a house in which he can live like a real emperor, not the rather more down to earth domestic sort of palace that he'd had before. And what's very interesting about this is you can still visit some parts of the Golden House in Rome now. Now they're probably only the service quarters of the Golden House mostly, but they're very, very big and impressive. You can see that the idea of the takeover of the city by the emperor, starting with the fire, those kind of suspicions, they focus on this new palace. So the fire is related to the palace. And we get stories of things like, oh, graffiti going round the city in the years afterwards saying Romans flee. The whole city has become one man's house. Right. And there's. So there is a sense that the opprobrium, the opprobrium of the fire then goes on to being the opprobrium of really building something at enormous scale. And it included most extraordinary things like a revolving dining room. There was a 30 meter high statue of Nero himself, the Colossus of Nero. Right. Which he put up or is said to have put up did, I think, in this palace. And so you can't ever forget the fire. And this is partly why it kind of is the Great Fire of Rome. I think you can't ever forget the fire because it is somehow monumentalized in Nero's palace. And then of course when you get. When Nero is basically overthrown in 68 and they get a new regime, the popularity of the new regime under the new emperor Vespasian, what he does is he also capitalizes on the opprobrium of the building and the fire by demolishing a lot of the palace. Not all of it, he lives in some of the it, but demolishing a lot. And what does he erect at the very center of Nero's golden house here? It's a monumental pleasure palace for the people. And that is what we call the Colosseum. They didn't call it the Colosseum. We have called it by late antiquity, by the 5th century it was being called the Colosseum after the great colossal statue of Nero, which did apparently survive for many centuries. So if you say where's the monument to the fire of Rome in Rome. Well, actually it's a Colosseum.

[Charlotte Higgins]

It's a reminder. I mean I have visited the golden house in Rome and it's a big and you know, as is often the way with these things, slightly confusing sites, but it is actually beautifully explained and huge. Like hugely recommended a visit by the way, but one of the confounding things is trying to understand the scale of it because you see a relatively. It seems quite spacious actually. It's a minute part of the site that, you know, it covered acres and acres, didn't it? It was absolutely enormous. And by the way. Yes, 30 meter tall statue. That's really tall. Thinking of Ukraine, where I am now, I did last time I was here, I went and visited a 27 meter tall statue of a Cabolshevik hero in eastern Ukraine and Donetsk region. And yeah, that's a massive statue. That is a massive, massive statue. Yeah. It would have dominate. Absolutely dominated. Yes, the area.

[Mary Beard]

Yes. And it's supposed to be in the kind of entrance way to this new golden house. And I think houses probably gives the wrong impression in a way because it's not a single house. It is a vast parkland with different buildings, ornamental lakes. And the ornamental lake is where the Coliseum now is. And really it's an elegant stately home with pavilions and pleasure palaces in different parts of the city. All really joined up to be Nero's new property. And it is, you know, it is the memorial in it was for Romans the memorial to the great fire.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Mary, let's talk about Nero fiddling and the remarkable staying power of that image. But should we do it after a quick break?

[Mary Beard]

Yeah, let's have a break some.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Follow the noise. Bloomberg Follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe [e-mail].

[Mary Beard]

What I think is really, in a way, the most intriguing thing to think about is not just the, the destruction, the building, the scapegoats, but why is it that this picture of Nero playing his lyre, Nero fiddling, why has that stuck in the popular imagination when to be honest, the fire has become only a backdrop to that? What is it? What is it with fiddling? Charlotte, you're a fiddler. Come on.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Thanks a lot. Well, I think for me there are two things. Why was it so resonant for these Roman historians? That's one thing. And then secondly, why has it then become such a sort of phrase saying image in the modern world? I think if one reads that passage of Tacitus where the fire is described, I think something becomes really clear, right? Nero is playing the thing that he is playing on his lyre. The song that he is playing is called we are told the Destruction of Troy. So, you know, we don't know quite, you know, whether he wrote that song himself or whether it's. He was playing, as it were, part of the ancient Greek epic style cycle which told this story, or whether he was thinking or, you know, riffing on how that the destruction of Troy is told. And in the great national epic of Rome, Virgil's Aeneid, which had been written a few decades before, but there's something incredibly powerful about him telling this particular. As he's singing, he is singing about the destruction of Troy and singing about the destruction of Troy while watching Rome being destroyed. And this is really, you know, this is not exactly rammed down our throats and tasked us, but it's absolutely there to be thought about in a kind of metaphorical and poetic sense almost. And later historians pick up on it and do more with it as well, is that, you know, you know, what are we looking at here? Are we looking at the destruction of Troy in some sense? We're looking at this, the sort of the cataclysmic mythical destruction of a great city by an army, actually. Okay, the army causes the fire. It's a kind of, it's the fall of a city by fire and the sword. You know, what's going on there. So there's a sort of idea that we're looking maybe at the future destruction of Rome in some sense.

[Mary Beard]

If you were to believe the story that Nero has started, it for his own ends. Nero, then is like, he's an emperor who is taking the kind of destruction that the Greeks took against the Trojan city of Troy. He is taking that violence, he's directing it to his own city and his own people. So it kind of makes the destruction of the mythical city of Troy not half as bad in a way as what Nero's doing. Because Nero is taking fire, if not fire and the sword, he's taking fire to his homeland, his own homeland.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And of course, the resonance of Troy in relation to Rome is that those two cities, in terms of the Roman historical and mythological imagination are umbilically linked. Right. Because, you know, Troy was the mythical origin of Rome in the Roman mythological imagination. It was refugees from Troy who had founded Rome. So what does it mean to be sort of enjoying the destruction of Rome? It's a sort of extremely potent mix. And that sort of sense when you read the Tacitus, that somehow you're reading not only about a fire that's doing great damage to Rome. Okay, fine. But you're also, in some sense, reading about something that feels very cataclysmic, that feels like some kind of foreshadowing of a real collapse of Rome itself. Rome, the empire, Rome, the political entity. It's sort of being brought to bear on the city by this corrupt emperor. I think that's super powerful and keeps on being powerful and elaborated in these later historians. So that gives it massive heft in its time.

[Mary Beard]

That's why, of course, they note the title of the song that he's singing. I remember when I first worked on the Fire of Rome, I thought, oh, how interesting. They actually tell us what song he's singing. He's singing about the destruction of the city of Troy, and it took some time for the penny to drop that. Why they tell you why each of these historians says this is what he was singing, is because it was so important, that is the message. It is not just that he sings, it's that he sings that song. I think that bit has got a bit left out of our own modern myth of it.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Agreed.

[Mary Beard]

You can say to people, nero fiddled while Rome burned. And they say, oh, yeah, we, you know, that's still a familiar. A familiar phrase and a familiar image. If you say, do you know what song he was singing? People don't. And in some ways, in ancient terms, it was the song he was singing that was as crucial as the fact that he was singing.

[Charlotte Higgins]

But of course, it does become incredibly potent in the modern world. Broadly, actually quite broadly taken, because it pops up in Shakespeare, right, the idea of Nero fiddling or playing on the lutes, beholding the town's burn in Henry

[Mary Beard]

VI, Part 1, and that Shakespeare picks up the frivolity of it, which is also actually stressed in the ancient text. I mean, I think it's fascinating that Nero is specifically said to have got himself dressed in his stage costume because he was very keen on acting. He got himself dressed up to do this. And there is that sort of idea of frivolity that Shakespeare picks up on, you know, playing on the Lyft.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yes. Talbot saying he's going to. It's Talbot in Henry VI Part 1, saying that he's going to take revenge on the French and he'll watch those towns burn while playing like Nero. So this kind of. There's also a sense of vindictiveness in there. I think it's like, yeah, we don't care about your towns burning, we're just going to watch them and we're going to play the lute and it's going

[Mary Beard]

to be our spectacle. It's going to be our. We are turning your towns into our spectacle.

[Charlotte Higgins]

But it feels like it's a little bit later that it starts to acquire what I think is a different modern sense that, you know, when X fiddles while Y burns, in R sort of modern political cliche parlance, it's generally about X concentrating on something frivolous or ignoring something super important, while Y, of huge importance, comes to some kind of calamity.

[Mary Beard]

The leader hasn't noticed that something really important is going on that needs his or sometimes her attention, because instead they're concentrating on something utterly trivial.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And it comes up earlier than you think. I think there's an 18th century goose that's like this, right, Mary,

[Mary Beard]

the earliest one I've ever found, there may be earlier ones, but is in 1770 and it is George III. And there he is looking for all the world, like a kind of mixture of George III and Nero, plus some. Some of his female relatives enjoying it too. But it is in 1770, just after the Boston Massacre in America, where the British army has opened fire and killed some people in the city of Boston. And so you have this sense that George III is having a kind of lovely time. And meanwhile, what he ought to be concentrating on is the violence wreaked by his army. And one of his women folk, I can't remember, which is saying, pity you didn't get the money out of them first, or something like that. So there's a nasty edge of sadism. Really coming out in the 1770 version.

[Charlotte Higgins]

I think that's his mum. I think that's his mum. Was it his Daris the Queen? Isn't it? Yeah.

[Mary Beard]

Most of the modern ones, though, and they really do come in newspaper cartoons and memes and everything else all the time. It's mostly not so much the sadistic George III kind of quality, but it is that you haven't got your mind on the job. And so there are interesting ones of Barack Obama, for example. Barack Obama is not playing the liar, though many of them are. Many of these modern politicians are depicted playing the liar. Barack Obama is depicted playing golf. You know, he's gone to the golf course.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Historical irony, I would say, given how much the President's. The present President of the United States plays golf well on the job.

[Mary Beard]

But, you know, that is true.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Who am I to judge?

[Mary Beard]

But you can replace the fiddle with, you know, other. All kinds of other ways of enjoying yourself, like golf clubs or in some cases, a selfie. So, yeah, a phone, you know, what. What is Barack Obama doing? Well, he's taking a selfie of himself while the American economy is tanking or whatever. Yes.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And sometimes it's a politician doing something less important than, you know, I mean, I did a quick experiment and Googled this phrase in relation to every British Prime Minister of the last 30 years. They have all been fiddling while Rome burnt. You know, it is absolutely something that gets said about every political leader at some point. Even Liz Truss, who was only in power for 49 days, was fiddling while Rome burned. I think she was looking at speed limits on motorways when she should have been thinking about the tanking economy, which could burn. I mean, that's fair enough. To me, it's really easy. It's a really, really easy jibe. At some point, all politicians are going to need to take a day off. They do not need to be told that they're fiddling while Rome is burning. I think that is extremely unfortunate. I mean, some work harder than others, but who would human beings need a few hours off?

[Mary Beard]

You can't begrudge Liz Truss an hour or so off looking at motorway speed science. But what I think is interesting about it, though, is that, I mean, most of the examples we've been bringing up have been Anglo American examples. But it gets everywhere. You know, it gets to India, to Modi, it gets to Bolsonaro. It is one of the places where this. Where a classical image really has gone global.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yeah. And with Bolsonaro, I think it's used of the Burning of. The destruction of forests. I mean, sometimes it's applied quite literally where far is happening. So it has. Yeah, it has this extraordinary currency.

[Mary Beard]

There's a great one of Berlusconi. And, you know, of course, there he is, he's in Rome. So it's a. You know, this is a good image for an Italian leader. His lyre is interestingly different because he is playing the lyre, which is actually the back of a naked woman. So it's bunga, bunga.

[Charlotte Higgins]

In that case, it's a cello. It's not, you know, it's another. It's supposed to be a cello. So it's a kind of. It's another misapplication of the whole stringed instrument image, which, of course, as a pedant, I find, you know, mildly offensive.

[Mary Beard]

I should learn not to talk about Nero fiddling my own bird with someone who plays a stringed instrument. Sorry, I didn't even Playing the cello. I didn't spot it with a cello.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Well, of course. And then, you know, that's obviously situated in Rome. But just to glance back to the story itself for a second, I do think one of the things about the story itself that doesn't exactly have a lesson for us, but I think is very resonant, is the desire to find culprits. And I hear you when you said the Christians were. We neither of us think the Christians did this, of course, but there were reasons at the time for suspecting the Christians. Okay. On the other hand, the Christians were a small, minoritized other. And we see throughout history when catastrophes happened, the desire to blame the small minoritized other is constant. It's a constant temptation. And we see that now in the way that small groups are blamed for society's ills or of the time. And even, you know, a sort of very direct comparison is the Great Fire of London, where some decades after the Great Fire of London of 1666, the Catholics were blamed and an inscription was put on the monument, which. This monument to the Fire of London in London, which is just called the monument, an inscription blaming the Catholics was put on that monster monument, which was then thankfully removed in the early 19th century because it was clear that it really was absolute nonsense. But, you know, this desire to blame and all of that is lurking behind this sort of weird phrase that we've ended up with about fiddling while rain burned.

[Mary Beard]

But there's more to it, isn't there? I mean, I think that we can see all the background to it. We can see how fast Fiddling While Rome Burned works as a very powerful image. It's a great cartoon image. You know, it's handed to the cartoonist on absolute plague this. But I still think it's very interesting that it has such resonance. And in some ways I think that that is because it is still a bit puzzling. You know, you are, you are drawn into the sight of the politician fiddling while Rome burned because you can't quite ever get to the bottom of it. And you don't know whether the fiddling is just as we often see it, whether it's just frivolity, it's just the guy who prefers fun or the golf course or, or taking a selfie to really getting to grips with the problems of their, of the people they're supposed to be leading, which is bad enough, but the extra spin that Nero injects into this is that you can't quite be certain whether what's going on isn't their fault in the first place, you know, so there's, there's the question of how far are we looking just at frivolity, how far are we looking at a politician who in some ways has masterminded this, that he or she is the evil genius that he is behind the trouble. I think that's what gives this 2000 year old story. I think it's what gives that story real legs that you don't quite know where responsibility lies.

[Charlotte Higgins]

I love that point. I love that point. That's really interesting. And I have one final question to ask you, Mary. Does Nero really fizzle while Rome burns? Did really Nero really get out of his lyre and play the destruction of Troy whilst looking at the conflagration of the greatest city in the world?

[Mary Beard]

Well, you know, what a terrible skeptic I am, Charlotte. You know, give me, and give me an ancient story and mostly I will try to find you a reason of why it cannot possibly be literally true, even if it's true in some interestingly symbolic way. I have to say that in the case of Nero Fiddling while Rome burned, I think he probably did. I mean we've got very clear as reliable evidence as we could possibly have and no reason for him not to have. So yeah, I'm going to say 2000 years later, Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

[Charlotte Higgins]

How's that?

[Mary Beard]

What about you? You indeed.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Who am I to argue with you, Mary? Yes, go on. Yeah, Nero Fiddlewild Roanburn. I mean, it's too good to be true to be fair, but it rubs you off. On the other hand, sometimes sometimes. Sometimes things that are too good to be true actually happened. And it seems totally within character for Nery to have done this. And I'm gonna go with you. I'm going to say yes. Nero fiddled while Rome burns.

[Mary Beard]

Yippee.

[Charlotte Higgins]

We have an answer.

[Mary Beard]

We found a myth that's true.

[Charlotte Higgins]

As ever, we want to know your thoughts and comments, ideas, questions, and so if you have them, please do send them to [e-mail] or on our social mediatlassicspod. Bye.

[Mary Beard]

Bye.