I recently read “Quo Vadis” but I have to ask, is there any evidence at ALL that Nero started the infamous fire that burned Rome and then “fiddled” while Rome burned? I have read a little bit about it, but I see no evidence of it. Emperor Nero has a horrible reputation because of history, but I have to wonder: Was he really all that bad? If so, then he deserves it. If not, why did even the pagan historians seem to despise him. FYI–world history was not my forte’ so if anybody here has anything concrete to offer then I would appreciate it.
Nero was nasty in some ways, but blaming him for the Great Fire is a canard.
I don’t think that this is going to be much of a debate.
You might get some more answers with expanded information in General Questions.
Off it goes.
In all likelihood, Nero predates the fiddle. It was a kithara.
There’s no proof but some people look at the same evidence that BrainGlutton posted and find it suspicious.
Nero wasn’t in Rome when it burned? Well, nobody is suggesting he personally torched the city. If he was planning on having the city burnt, he’d have his minions do it. He meanwhile would be out of the city where he’d be safe from the fire and any suspicions.
Nero took charge the recovery and rebuilding efforts? Somewhat unusual for him - he wasn’t normally overly concerned with the public welfare. But he seemed to have some real enthusiasm for this project - almost as if it was something he’d been looking forward to. And it’s a little strange how he already had a set of plans drawn up for how Rome could be rebuilt after a major fire.
And it’s clear a lot of people did suspect Nero at the time. Which doesn’t prove he’s guilty but does show it wouldn’t have been considered out of character for him.
Why would he burn Rome? What would he gain. As for the rumors, Governments are always blamed in the aftermath of disasters, not necessarily for causing them, but for being incompetent, indifferent etc.
Electric or acoustic?
Nero was an artist first and foremost. He loved beauty. Through the Great Fire, he could clear away all those ugly, smelly old tenements, and gain space to build his Golden House. (I think there was a Dr. Who episode where that was his clear motivation.)
He blamed it on Christians, the burning was a reason to round them up and kill them
He blamed it on Christians, sure, but there’s not really any evidence that I know of that Nero particularly cared about the Christians before the burning of the city. I think it was more like “The city burned. Lets blame those guys. They’re pretty weird and horrible anyway.”
Fires in Rome weren’t exactly uncommon things, though. The place was a firetrap.
From Tacitus:
Tigellinus was Nero’s prefect of the Praetorians (essentially head of the emperor’s secret police) and his drinking buddy.
Tacitus’ narrative frequently alludes to the popular hatred and distrust of Nero–here he’s rumored to have callously celebrated the fire, then to have restarted it. Tacitus even records some rather petty criticism of measures Nero ordered to improve fire safety as part of the rebuild (bolding mine):
It’s little details like this that make Tacitus (even with his sometimes cryptic Latin) such a delight. Even though he considers the idea that Nero deliberately burned Rome to be just a rumor, it is the fact that the rumor existed at all which says volumes about the emperor’s character.
Tacitus was not particularly fond of Nero, I think its telling that he thinks the rumor is incorrect.
Ted Champlin’s work makes a powerful case that Nero caused the fire deliberately.
Apocryphal story no doubt, but one that I find amusing: detractors of Nero chose to translate ‘fretted’ in “Nero fretted while Rome burned” in a manner that loses the proper meaning of fretting in that context, but is a technically correct meaning of fretting nonetheless.
Even at that, where in ancient Rome would Nero have hung out and watched it burn? The Domus Aurea was built on the Palatine Hill after the fire. The Palatine hill is right there by the Forum, Capitoline Hill and most everything else- literally downtown.
I think it’s just a legend meant to emphasize Nero’s general bad reputation.
Neither kitharae nor fiddles have frets.
Lyre! 
Nero was not liked by the aristocrats because he collected further power to himself, reduced the influence of the aristocrats and played to the masses. The survivors write history and the long term survivors were aristocrats, like Tacitus.
IIRC reading some Roman history years ago, Nero had just before the fire brought to Rome a lot of artifacts from Greece, probably worth of millions that he had paid from his own pocket. They all went up in flames with his Domus Transitoria, so either Nero was innocent or the arson was pretty badly botched.
It was also mentioned that when the city was burning, Christians thought that the world was ending and went dancing in the streets. Which obviously made others furious as they were losing all they owned and people were dying. Allegedly some Christians even started additional fires and even sabotaged firefighting. So when Nero heard those cases and then the rumors about himself, his next actions were quite predictable.
Nero himself was apparently a spoiled rich kid full of himself and very nasty and violent when he was drunk ( and he was drunk often ). The senators and patricians, who eventually wrote the history, obviously hated him for this. With general population that never met him personally, he was at first very popular, but after he started public performances ( singing and acting ), they considered him just a buffoon and a disgrace to the throne.
People still saw his ghost in Vatican more than a thousand years later ( up to 1600’s? )…