Rome Burns for Six Days, and Nero Blames the Christians
What happened
The Great Fire of Rome broke out in July 64 CE and burned, with a brief lull and a second flare-up, for about six days total. According to the senator and historian Tacitus, who was alive at the time, the fire was finally contained after five days near the Esquiline hill, only for flames to break out again with fresh fury. When it was over, only 4 of Rome's 14 districts had escaped damage entirely, 3 were leveled completely, and the other 7 were left with only scattered, half-burnt ruins. Tacitus places Nero away from the city when the fire started, and says he did not return until the flames reached his own palace, after which he opened public buildings to the homeless and brought in emergency grain supplies. The popular legend that Nero fiddled while Rome burned is not ancient, the fiddle did not exist until roughly the 16th century. What ancient writers actually describe is contested among themselves: Tacitus reports only a rumor that Nero appeared on a private stage during the fire and sang about the fall of Troy, while Suetonius and Cassius Dio, writing decades later, place him watching or performing from elsewhere in the city.
Why it matters
The fire's aftermath mattered as much as the fire itself. Because Nero cleared a large stretch of central Rome to build his new palace complex, the Domus Aurea, rumors spread that he had started the fire deliberately to make room for it. Tacitus writes that no relief effort could kill that rumor, so Nero redirected the blame onto Rome's Christian community, arresting and torturing them in what Tacitus describes in graphic detail, including victims sewn into animal skins and torn apart by dogs, crucified, or burned alive as human torches to light Nero's gardens at night. This is the first documented state persecution of Christians in Roman history, and Tacitus's account is also one of the earliest non-Christian references to Jesus's execution under Pontius Pilate.
How we know
The primary source is Tacitus's Annals, preserved in Latin and available in English translation through the Perseus Digital Library. Tacitus was an adult contemporary of the events, unlike Suetonius, who was not born until after the fire, and unlike Cassius Dio, who wrote more than a century later. Modern historians generally treat Tacitus as the most reliable of the three ancient accounts for the fire's course and Nero's relief measures, while treating the specific detail of Nero performing on a stage as a rumor Tacitus himself frames as unconfirmed, not settled fact.
Sources
- Tacitus, trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, Perseus Digital Library (Tufts University). The Annals, Book 15, Chapters 39-44 (the Great Fire and its aftermath) · Primary source (author-declared)perseus.tufts.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Nero: The Artist Who Became an Emperor Who Became a Tyrant · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineAncient Rome30 events · From a legendary fratricide on the Palatine Hill to a teenage emperor's quiet deposition twelve centuries later, told through the battles, plagues, and one bridge-crossing that ended a republic.View all →