Quote:Nero was so hated because he was an easy scapegoat.
Nero is one of those people in history ( Caligula and Herod the Great immediately spring to mind as two others ) for whom we have nothing except the reports of his enemies surviving. And who were those enemies? The upper classes who were taxed for his ambitious building projects and his restoration of the city after the fire.
The empire was generally at peace until the Jews got uppity. There were no reports of unrest among the populace which generally benefited from the emperor's largesse but the senatorial and equestrian classes were always pissed about the costs associated. If there was one thing that the Julio-Claudian emperors understood it was that you could not get blood from a stone. There was no point to taxing the urban mob in Rome so the rich fucks got handed the bill and just like the WLB and his rich-fuck buddies today they resented it because they were just as greedy as modern republicunts.
So generations later upper class writers - and given the limitations on literacy almost all writers were upper class - wrote down every calumny about Nero that they ever heard. That does not make any of it true. The lack of popular resentment suggests that Nero was continuing the same policies as the other early emperors ( even Caligula ) in keeping the populace quiet.
And yes, Nero was reported to have been at Antium ( modern Anzio ). The fire started in July and the Roman elites normally headed out of the city to escape the stifling heat of Rome in the Summer. Nothing unusual there at all. Tacitus himself, in 15:39 of Annales reports that Nero hurried back to Rome and undertook extraordinary steps to relieve the suffering of the homeless. BTW, he also sneaks in at the end of the passage that there was "a rumor" that Nero sang about the burning of Troy while Rome burned.
