Enemy of the State?

What did Nero do to become Enemy of the State? He allowed the destitute to take shelter in the Palace, as I recalled in 10th June’s Diary. He sold corn at a subsidised price to all citizens, averting a famine. And he nationalised the legal system; nationalisation still being a dirty word to the ruling classes even today. His good friend and Arbiter of Taste was the satirical author Petronius (I recommend his surviving book The Satyricon, an hilarious laddish adventure), who wrote the lines “what uses are laws when money is king, when poverty’s helpless and can’t win a thing. There’s no justice at law, it’s the bidding that counts, and the job of the judge is to fix the amounts.” Nero’s solution was to put all lawyers on a set State fee, so their services were freely available to rich and poor alike. By now, even his childhood friend Senecio was plotting against his life; Nero was a menace to decent society!

Nero - The Last Caesar