Nero

[snopes]

Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus is alleged to have played his fiddle while Rome burned to the ground. Nero did watch Rome burn on the hot night of July 18, 64 B.C. But he didn't fiddle - at least not with a violin - because the instrument had yet to be invented. This apocryphal tale persists, however, because it captures moments when imperial governments are caught looking the other way when things get hot.

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/...,5697338.story

[matches]

And I have actually often heard that he had played the harp or lyre (which may have esited at the time) or some other stringed instrument when Rome burned.

Since it is belived by some that Nero was involved in setting the fire, the playing of music as the fire burned is not impossible.

But it is wholy unverifiable. I had always presumed that this story came from the biographies of the ceasars writen while rome was still in existance, though the validity of those biographies, and the existance of the story are both in question.

Either way it's a good story, especially if he actually played "The Sack of Troy" while Rome Burned.

[Silas Sparkhammer]

He said he played the buccina, but he's such a terrible lyre.

Silas (when is a lyricist a pyricist?)

[TB Tabby]

According to Uncle John's Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader:

Contrary to belief, he never "fiddled while Rome burned." In fact, as one historian sayds, "Nero didn't even own a fiddle--he owned a lyre--and he was 50 miles away when the fire began." And he responded to the emergency admirably, "opening shelters for the homeless, reducing the price of corn, and bringing in food from the provinces."

I really thought this has been debunked beyond all doubt years ago.

[BrianB]

I'm surprised no one at the Hartford Courant caught this.

Originally Posted by snopes

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/...,5697338.story

Nero lived from 37 to 68 C.E. A little hard, I would imagine, to fiddle decades before your birth.
Brian
ETA:

Originally Posted by Silas Sparkhammer

He said he played the buccina, but he's such a terrible lyre.

[Tarquin Farquart]

I don't think he was ever supposed to have played the violin. It's a pun on "fiddle" isn't it?

[Tantei Kid]

Aren't a lot of the stories about Nero suspect? Like the chariot race where he fell out and still "won" or people feigning death to get out of his long recitals were told by a guy a long time after his death who had an agenda against him?
I wonder how much of the fiddling comes from the same guy (well, obviously not the mistaken instrument itself.)

[Joostik]

One reason why Nero received such a bad press may be because he had quite a serious conflict with the early Christians. They were considered subversive, and not just by Nero. Later Christian historians just got back at him.

[mcolakis]

Most of the sensational stories about Nero come from the popular historian Suetonius; below (in John Rolfe's translation) is Suetonius' account of the fire:

For under cover of displeasure at the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets, he set fire to the city so openly that several ex-consuls did not venture to lay hands on his chamberlains although they caught them on their estates with tow and firebrands, while some granaries near the Golden House, whose room he particularly desired, were demolished by engines of war and then set on fire, because their walls were of stone. For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs. At that time, besides an immense number of dwellings, the houses of leaders of old were burned, still adorned with trophies of victory, and the temples of the gods vowed and dedicated by the kings and later in the Punic and Gallic wars, and whatever else interesting and noteworthy had survived from antiquity. Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas, and exulting, as he said, "with the beauty of the flames," he sang the whole time the "Sack of Ilium," in his regular stage costume.

Suetonius also tells the stories of his competing in chariot races and music contests, which others prudently let him win. Contemporary historians are generally suspicious of Suetonius--he is to history what Kitty Kelley is to journalism--but the early Christians probably accepted his stories as gospel (no pun intended). In any event, there was no fiddle, but he may have accompanied him song on the lyre.