FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNS: THE AETIOLOGY OF A FAMILIAR ENGLISH EXPRESSION

Abstract

‘Fiddling while Rome burns’ is arguably the most familiar English saying inspired by classical antiquity. The image of Nero actually playing an instrument during the Great Fire is not, in fact, found in ancient sources: the first English reference belongs to Cooper's 1548 revision of Elyot's Latin–English Dictionary, where Nero is said to play a harp during the conflagration. In 1649 the royalist poet George Daniel applied the term ‘fiddle’, and the familiar modern form of the expression, as a byword for a leader's neglect, was apparently coined in a 1680 English parliamentary speech by Silius Titus.