Lord Acton is quoted as having said "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."; so I would tend to believe that these reports were true.

I searched what I could on my phone, but could not find it. Can somebody run a search for a question posted a while back about Nero? I remember someone gave a rather detailed explanation of how Nero may have been ruined by writers after the fact, and was actually not as evil as he was written out to be.

OP, I would direct you to search for that particular response. It's quite the task, and I can only direct you to a post that was about Nero and possibly included fiddles. I'll keep looking once I get home, because I feel that response really fits what you're looking for.