Nero's Fiddle

wildfire thoughts I should've kept in my journal

Plantagenet, I will; and like thee, Nero,
Play on the lute, beholding the towns burn.

William Shakespeare, Henry VI

I mull over the phrase “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” since I first heard a reference to it during Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s musical episode in a number performed excellently by Hinton Battle and his Cab Calloway hips.¹ The term comes from …