Played Like a Fiddle

Nero played what is now an awfully familiar tune. Met a familiarly awful end.

One of the most notable events of the self-indulgent and corrupt 1st Century Roman emperor’s reign was the fire of Rome in 64 AD. While the blaze spread and raged furiously for nine days, destroying much of the empire’s greatest city, the musically inclined Nero is famously said to have fiddled while Rome burned.

The tyrant’s extravagances and cruelties brought misery to a great many, still he laughed off brewing revolts, putting on megalomaniacal displays of his artistic prowess. In the end, Nero was sentenced to death. Fled Rome to a suburban villa, where he died by his own hand at the age of only 30.

As civil society is systematically dismantled in our day, there’s likewise a lot a fiddling going on. The melody is mesmerizing, even hypnotic. Once under the spell, the trance it induces makes one easy to steer.

The spell, the trance, the steering, they’re not hard to spot. People who just a few weeks ago were b…