Who gave Nero the fiddle?
Everyone knows Nero fiddled while Rome burned. But the fiddle didn't exist yet: instruments played with a bow reached Europe at least 800 years after he died.
Subscribe to Ancient Fine PrintWatch on YouTubeThe Short
In this story
Sources
Sources
- Tacitus, Annals 15.33-44 and Histories 2.8 (trans. A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb); Suetonius, Life of Nero 20, 23, 25, 31, 38 and 49 (trans. J. C. Rolfe, Loeb 1914); Cassius Dio, Roman History 62.16-18 and 63.21 (trans. E. Cary, Loeb 1925); Pliny the Elder, Natural History 17.5; the Public Advertiser, 15 March 1770, and the Oxford Magazine, May 1770; Grey's Debates of the House of Commons, 17 November 1680; Shakespeare, Henry VI Part 1, 1.4; The Tragedy of Nero (1624); Revelation 13:18 and Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 4499; A. A. Barrett, "Fiddling while Rome Burns: The Aetiology of a Familiar English Expression", Greece & Rome 68 (2021).
Pictures
- the silent films Quo Vadis? (1913), Nero, or the Fall of Rome (1909), The Sign of the Cross (1914) and Helena (1924); the 1770 print "Nero Fiddling, Rome Burning, Pompaja & Agrippina Smiling" (British Museum); paintings by Franz Rösler, Hubert Robert, Honthorst, Adriaen van Ostade, Jan Steen, Allan Ramsay, John Michael Wright, Waterhouse, Piloty, Jan Styka, Siemiradzki, Alma-Tadema, Panini, Barocci, Ciseri, Caravaggio and Mattia Preti; prints by Hollar, Piranesi, Lauro, Bowles and Du Pérac; Dürer's Apocalypse; the pages read in the script in old printed editions (Church and Brodribb's Tacitus, Rolfe's Suetonius, Cary's Dio); the Medicean manuscript of Tacitus; objects from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum and the Yale Center for British Art (CC0). The 1932 and 1951 films are named, not shown.
Credits (via Wikimedia Commons)
- Nero's bust in the Capitoline Museums by cjh1452000 (CC BY-SA 3.0); the Tacitus statue in Vienna by Walter Maderbacher (CC BY-SA 3.0); the First Folio page of Henry VI (CC BY-SA 4.0); Nero's coins from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Winchester Museums Service (CC BY-SA 2.0) and Suffolk County Council (CC BY 2.0); the Colossus denarius by 22mil (CC BY-SA 4.0); the Isis Giminiana fresco by Joel Bellviure (CC BY-SA 4.0); the Ostia mosaics by Dennis G. Jarvis and MumblerJamie (CC BY-SA 2.0); the Golden House by Tyler Bell (CC BY 2.0).