Latest / Nero: Mad Tyrant or Misunderstood Emperor? — Fexingo History / Nero's Christian Persecution: Scapegoats After the Great Fire
Transcript
- Luna: We've talked a lot about Nero's building projects and his artistic ambitions, but there's one thing he's probably most infamous for—persecuting Christians. Lucas: Right, that's the image that sticks: Nero fiddling while Rome burns, then blaming the Christians. But the historical record is much more complicated. The Great Fire of 64 AD devastated the city—ten of fourteen districts were destroyed. Nero was in Antium when it started, and he rushed back to organize relief, opening his own palaces to the homeless. But rumors spread that he had started the fire himself, to clear land for his Golden House. So he needed a scapegoat. Luna: And he picked the Christians. Lucas: According to Tacitus, who wrote his Annals about fifty years later, Nero 'fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.' That's the first clear mention of Christians in Roman historical writing—and it's a hostile one. But we have to be careful: Tacitus was writing with hindsight, after the persecution had already become a defining story. He may have exaggerated Nero's role to make a point about tyranny. Luna: What exactly did they do to them? Lucas: Tacitus describes horrific punishments: Christians were covered in animal skins and torn apart by dogs, or crucified. Others were set on fire as human torches, to light Nero's gardens at night. These executions were held in the Vatican Hill area, near Nero's circus. Later Christian tradition would place the martyrdom of Saint Peter there—crucified upside down, they say, because he didn't consider himself worthy to die like Jesus. And Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was beheaded around the same time, probably on the Via Appia. But the historical evidence for their deaths under Nero is thin—mostly from later church writers like Clement of Rome, who wrote around 96 AD, and Eusebius in the fourth century. Luna: So it's possible Peter and Paul weren't actually killed by Nero? Lucas: It's possible, but most scholars accept a broad tradition that both died in Rome during Nero's reign. The real question is how many Christians actually died. Tacitus says a 'vast multitude'—but that could be rhetorical. The Christian community in Rome was still small, maybe a few thousand. What's more important is the legal precedent. Before Nero, Christianity was a sect within Judaism, which was a tolerated religion. After the fire, Romans began to see Christianity as a separate, illegal superstition—superstitio illicita. This persecution set a pattern: for the next 250 years, Christians could be executed simply for being Christian. Nero didn't start a systematic empire-wide persecution—that came later, under Decius and Diocletian—but he made Christians a distinct target. Luna: And this is where Nero's legacy as the Antichrist comes from, right? The Book of Revelation was written around this time, and some see the 'beast' as Nero. Lucas: Exactly. The Book of Revelation, likely written in the 90s AD, includes cryptic references to a beast with a number 666—which in some gematria adds up to 'Neron Caesar' in Hebrew. Many scholars think John of Patmos was encoding his hatred for Nero, who had already been dead for decades. Nero also became the archetype of the persecuting emperor in Christian tradition. Writers like Tertullian and Lactantius vilified him. And the legend that Nero would return—the Nero Redivivus myth—fed into the idea of a final Antichrist. So Nero's persecution, while short and localized, had a massive cultural impact. Luna: It's like the fire and the persecution defined his image for two thousand years. Lucas: In some ways unfairly. Nero's reign had many aspects—economic reforms, building programs, even a diplomatic settlement with Parthia—that were quite competent. But the fire and the persecution are the things people remember. And that's partly because of the sources: Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio were all members of the senatorial class that despised Nero for his populism and his disregard for tradition. They had every reason to paint him as a monster. Modern historians have tried to rehabilitate him, but the charge of persecuting Christians—innocent people burned alive for a fire they didn't start—is hard to explain away. Luna: And speaking of explaining things away, I think there's a lesson here about how power seeks scapegoats in moments of crisis. Lucas: That's a really sharp observation. And it's why we keep coming back to these stories—they're not just ancient history. They're about how propaganda works, how fear is manipulated, how a regime can sacrifice a minority to save itself. And in that sense, Nero's story is painfully modern. Luna: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you know we don't run ads. This show exists because listeners like you help keep it ad-free. Lucas: Yeah, we really appreciate anyone who chips in. It's a small way to support independent history conversations—no sponsors, no breaks. If you'd like to help out, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Just a simple way to say this show matters to you. Luna: So back to that night in Nero's gardens: the bodies burning, the crowd watching. What did the ordinary Roman think? Lucas: Tacitus says the executions aroused pity—even for criminals who deserved punishment, the crowd felt sympathy because they were being killed not for the public good but to satisfy one man's cruelty. That suggests the propaganda backfired. Nero may have hoped to divert anger onto a hated group, but instead he made himself look worse. The historian also notes that the Christians were 'convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.' That phrase—odium humani generis—became a standard Roman accusation against Christians: that they were antisocial, disloyal, secretive. And that suspicion lingered for centuries. Luna: All because of one fire and one emperor's need to blame someone. Lucas: Exactly. And the irony is that Nero's persecution probably helped Christianity grow. The martyrs became heroes, their stories spread, and the church gained a moral authority it hadn't had before. By the fourth century, Christians would be running the empire. So Nero's scheme to eliminate them ended up seeding their triumph. Luna: That's a twist the historians couldn't have predicted. Lucas: No, they couldn't. And it reminds us that historical outcomes are rarely what the actors intended. Nero wanted to secure his throne; instead, he built the foundation of a religion's myth of origin. It's one of those stories that makes you rethink everything you thought you knew.