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Popular legend has it that the Roman Emperor Nero played the fiddle (a colloquial term for the violin) during the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. This story has given rise to the idiom "fiddling while Rome burns", which means to occupy oneself with unimportant matters and neglect priorities during a crisis.
In this cartoon from The Sun, Andy Davey portrays Italian Prime Minister (but not for much longer) Silvio Berlusconi as the Emperor fiddling while Rome burns, a metaphor for the Cavaliere's failure to take decisive action to combat Italy's rapidly worsening debt crisis, distracted as he is by corruption trials and sex scandals (hence the bevy of beautiful maidens fleeing the flames).
VOCABULARY
In informal English to fiddle also means 'to produce false results or records, in order to get money or other benefits'.
• They all fiddle their taxes.
Fiddle the figures/books/accounts:
They accused the government of fiddling the unemployment figures.
In fact, Berlusconi has been accused of tax fraud and false accounting, which adds another possible layer of meaning to the cartoon.
In fact, Berlusconi has been accused of tax fraud and false accounting, which adds another possible layer of meaning to the cartoon.
ORIGIN:
The source of this phrase is the story that Nero played the fiddle (violin) while Rome burned, during the great fire in AD 64. [Link]
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