 Suspicious by the way that Nero refashioned the charred city into his own image, as well as by rumors that he, quote, fiddled while Rome burned, many Romans began to suspect that he had started the fire himself. To forestall these rumors, Nero blamed Christians. And why not? Hey, after all, Christians were weird. They talked about eating flesh and drinking blood. They called their husbands brother and their wives sister. They denied the gods like the atheists. They thought a dead man had come back to life.