Of all the Roman emperors, very few are better known today than Nero. Perhaps none is more familiar as a popular image and personality. Even Augustus is a colorless figure to most people, hardly more than a name, lost in the shadow of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. In contrast, Nero endures in the popular culture as the symbol of Roman decadence: hedonism in food, drink, and above all sex; lurid spectacles; persecution of Christians. Everything that Hollywood loves about Rome is exemplified in the popular image of Nero, and though the Roman Empire did not actually fall till four hundred years after Nero's death, it is the Neronian image that most people have in mind when they imagine the Fall of Rome.
A variety of factors have led to Nero's special prominence as the human symbol of Roman decadence. Petronius Arbiter, whose Satyricon, and especially the Dinner of Trimalchio, form a large part of the popular image, belonged to the literary circle that gathered around Nero. Nero's reign was, moreover, marked by numerous executions of prominent Romans, and--more colorfully--by his murder of his mother and of two wives.
But above all, Nero is remembered as the Emperor who fiddled while Rome burned. As catch-phrase and image, this picture is irresistable; the emperor amusing himself amid the Fall of Rome in a literal sense, even if not in the political sense. Moreover, in the aftermath of the Great Fire of AD 64--and evidently in large measure to divert suspicion from himself--Nero launched the first notable persecution of Christians. This in turn went far to assure his lasting ill repute; the Roman historians who recorded his reign might care little about the fate of Christians, but in later centuries, dominated by Christianity, his persecution of Christians would be the crowning proof of his villainy.
The following is a discussion of the Great Fire, Nero's part in it, and the consequences it had for the remainder ...