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As he grew older, he retired more and more. He trusted in his minister Sejanus who had once heroically save his life: an exceedingly able, but unfortunately also an exceedingly wicked man. Sejanus became his link with Rome and the senate; and used that position, and the senate's incompetence, to gather into his own hands a power practically absolute in home affairs.
Agrippina was so much loved and respected that he dreaded and disliked her beyond all others; and Sejanus contrived to get up an accusation of plotting against the state, upon which she and her eldest son were banished to two small rocky isles in the Mediterranean Sea.
What the barber Olivier le Diable was under Louis XI., what Mesdames du Barri and Pompadour were under Louis XV., what the infamous Earl of Somerset was under James I., what George Villiers became under Charles I., will furnish us with a faint analogy of the far more exaggerated and detestable position held by the freedman Glabrio under Domitian, by the actor Tigellinus under Nero, by Pallus and Narcissus under Claudius, by the obscure knight Sejanus under the iron tyranny of the gloomy Tiberius.
Certainly, one must never for a moment forget that Rome was at bottom nearly one-half Etruscan in character; that during the imperial period it became, in fact, the capital of Etruria; that myriads of Etruscans flocked to Rome; and that many of them, like Sejanus, had much to do with moulding and building up the imperial system.
For he shows you only the latter end of SEJANUS his favour; and the conspiracy of CATILINE already ripe, and just breaking out into action.
“Our king!” he cried. “The procurator says he is our king!” As the thunder peals, a roar surged back: “We have no other king than Cæsar.” “Think of Sejanus,” the high-priest suggested. The thrust was so well timed it told. Pilate looked sullenly about. “Fetch me water,” he ordered. A silver bowl was brought, and borrowing a custom from the Jews he loathed, he dipped his fingers in it.
Ben Jonson found in Shakspeare a ready encourager of his talents. His first piece, imperfect in many respects, Every Man in his Humour, was by Shakspeare's intervention brought out on the stage; Sejanus was even retouched by him, and in both he undertook a principal character.
If by to-morrow at noon he has not thy order acted upon in favor of my Messala for six-and-twenty talents mark the sum! thou shalt settle with the Lord Sejanus. Be wise and farewell." As she was going to the door, he put himself in her way. "The old Egypt lives in you," he said. "Whether you see Messala to-morrow or the next day, here or in Rome, give him this message.
At Rome, in all affairs of serious or slight importance, the senators turned to Sejanus, and about him, whom all fell into the habit of considering as the true emperor, a court and party were formed. In fear of his great power, the senators and the old aristocracy suppressed the envy which the dizzy rise of this obscure knight had aroused.
Baring-Gould takes the incidents of his reign, and show how the plot was worked up against him, and every happening, all his deeds and motives, colorless or finely colored, given a coat of pitch. We can only glance at one or two points here: his relations with Germanicus, and with Agrippina; the rise and fall of Sejanus.
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