Over the last few days Vridar has been investigating the "Neronian Fire", as the Senatorial party nicknamed it under Domitian. Vridar does not see anybody outside the Senate blaming Nero until then.
For one, Josephus Flavius - tied with Domitian's family, not with the Senate - is not a Nero fanboy but to blame the fire upon that one never crossed his mind. We start seeing that blame being cast with Cassius Dio, Suetonius, and some poets. Also Tacitus of course. If we trust Tacitus. Vridar does not trust Tacitus.
Unlike Vridar I am prepared to trust Tacitus - at least as a transmitter of his sources. Tacitus' friends, like the younger Pliny, were aware of Christianity at least as practiced in Asia Minor.
I find feasible that there was an anti-Domitian faction among the Christians just as among the Senators. Also, inasmuch as Christians anticipate Christ's return, if they had to compete with a faction anticipating Nero's return, which in Asia Minor they did, then they had that much more motive to do Nero down.
Tacitus as a good Senator despised Nero anyway, and transmitted anti-Neronian slanders from whatever source. If other historians and biographers didn't transmit such, it might be because the slanders were just that obvious, so unfit for print. Until the Christians, at last, took over.
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