Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-10-26

Yo, are no doubt accustomed TO
~ think of him as a monster of iniquity,
q fiend incarnate, who callously murdered ms
mother and other close relations. ana was SO
utterly without heart that, having himself set
his capital ON fire, he gioated over the spec
tacle and fiddled while Rome burned
The picture of him standing on the roo1 OF
mis- nalace playing his mad music in the glare
~ the flames IS perhaps impressed upon your
imagination no wildly that it Is almost TOO
much to hone that the absurd Islander Will ever
he disposed Of but in my new book Nero'
the Singing Emperor Of Rome. nave Done
INV best to remove this stigma from his name
and to show him as he really was-a red-hared.
hulking good-natured creature who employed
his glorious voice to sing his way into the
hearts of his people 30 that their love and
alteration of him actually outlived him by
centuries.
with the masses Of Rome his popularity was
greater than that Of any other emperor ana
as for this incident of his adding while his
capital, went up In smoke and hame-weu, 1t
simply did not happen -e'..-.
The fact of the matter Is that Nero made
two distinct sets Of enemies. ana the story OF
his life has come down to US from these tainted
sources and it is only by searching for and
piecing together the isolated statements in his
favor that have been able to show the other
side of the picture and to prove, hope beyond
question, that he was actually kindly man OF
genius, a great artist and q great lover, driven
by fate TO perpetrate only some of those terrible
deeds which have blackened his name. He was
quite innocent of others, including this matter
of glcating over the fire of Rome.
ToSEpHUS the ancient Jewish historian, puts
y it in a nutshell when he writes that certain
authors of his day "have SO impudently raved
against Nero with their lies that they them
selves are mere worthy of execration than he"
These maligning authors all belonged to the
aristocracy and it was the ariStocracy whom
Nero SO deeply offended by his unconvention-
atty, and particularly by his insistence upon
singing in public to his people like profess
sional musician.
Nero possessed a marvellous voice, and. in
fact, during the last years of his life was sing
ing at concerts almost every day, and naturally
the old nobility thought that he was in this way
running the prestige OF the imperial throne.
They had nothing good to say of him.
But at the same time Nero also MORALLY
offended the early Christians, for he supposed
them to be villains who had set fire to his be-
loved Rome, and he therefore punished them
severely. 1t was the first persecution" of the
then small sect, and when, four years after this
fire. the Apocalypse was written, which is the
last book in the Bible. Nero was castigated in
it as The Beast" whose number for &C.,
a cypher which conceals the name Nero
Caesar cas- all scholars now admit).
In time the later Christian writer's came to
speak of him as AntichriSt and as such he was
the dctested figure of medieval tales, and in
this way all modern accounts of him have been
based upon prejudice which 1 have tried to
expose and remove
THE real story of the fire of Rome in A. D.
81 is as follows: The Emperor was spend
ing the height of the Summer at his seaside
palace at Antium. IS miles from the city. when,
during the night Of July 10. A. d. "a, a con-
flagration broke out In the wooden sheds and
small shops at the east end Of the Circus Max