Play: Sejanus His Fall

Setting and Premise

Set in imperial Rome under Tiberius, the tragedy follows the rise and catastrophic fall of Aelius Sejanus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard. Jonson fashions a densely classical stage world, drawing on Tacitus and Juvenal, where the Senate, the palace, and the streets register the tremors of power. Rome is depicted as a state diseased by fear, flattery, and informers, with virtue forced into silence while a single favorite bends institutions to his will.

Sejanus’s Ascent

Sejanus begins as the emperor’s indispensable lieutenant, organizing the Praetorians into a centralized force and reshaping court and Senate to his advantage. He cultivates Tiberius with vigilant service, abject humility, and strategic boldness. To secure access to the imperial house, he seduces Livilla, widow of Tiberius’s son Drusus, and conspires in Drusus’s death, removing the most immediate obstacle to his designs. With the grieving court pliable and the city awed by his military presence, he steps into the vacuum of trust around the aging emperor, dispensing offices, forging alliances with ambitious senators, and raising statues that proclaim his quasi-royal status.

Silencing Dissent

Early resistance gathers around figures of republican memory and Stoic virtue. The general Silius is accused of treason by informers and dies rather than submit to a corrupt verdict. The historian Cremutius Cordus, prosecuted for praising Brutus and Cassius, defends the liberty of history and chooses death, while his books are consigned to the flames. These episodes make Sejanus’s methods plain: fabricate charges, weaponize the law of treason, and let fear police speech. Meanwhile the household of Germanicus is squeezed. Agrippina and her sons, once symbols of popular hope, are isolated and then removed on charges of pride and conspiracy, events that embolden Sejanus to dream of marriage into the imperial line and even succession.

Tiberius Withdraws

Tiberius himself recedes from Rome to Capri, a move that magnifies Sejanus’s visibility and tempts him into overreach. The emperor’s letters, read ceremonially in the Senate, both authorize and obscure the regime’s cruelties. Jonson paints Tiberius as a master of reserve, whose ambiguous missives keep rivals guessing and preserve the forms of legality while real power hardens in the prefect’s hands. Loyalists and moderates such as Lepidus and Arruntius maneuver to survive, speaking in riddles and aside, while courtiers perfect the art of praise that is also self-preservation.

Unmasking and Ruin

The turning point comes when the emperor’s suspicion, fed by private intelligence from Antonia and others, crystallizes. Tiberius quietly replaces Sejanus’s command with the tough and unambiguous Macro, and dispatches a letter to be read before the Senate. What begins as another effusion of favor swerves, clause by clause, into an indictment. The Praetorians, already won over by Macro, change front at the decisive instant. Stripped of his guards, honors, and friends, Sejanus is arrested amidst the same fawning voices that had hailed him. He is condemned, executed, and his statues dragged down, while the people glut themselves on the spectacle of a fallen favorite.

Aftermath and Themes

The purge that follows is indiscriminate. Associates, dependents, and even the innocent are swept away as those who once advanced under Sejanus are denounced to prove others’ loyalty. Arruntius and the few unbent spirits remark on the cycle of fear that outlives any single tyrant. Jonson’s tragedy sets the rhetoric of virtue against the machinery of the state, showing how law becomes theater and theater becomes a weapon. The fall of Sejanus offers no easy restoration: Tiberius remains, inscrutable; Rome learns only that power devours its instruments as readily as its enemies.