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Home affairs, be it always remembered, were what the Princeps expected the senate to attend to: their duty, under the constitution. Instead, however, they fawned on Sejanus ad lib.
His youth and early manhood were spent during those three-and-twenty years of the reign of Tiberius, that reign of terror, during which the Roman world was reduced to a frightful silence and torpor as of death; and, although he was not thrown into personal collision with that "brutal monster," he not unfrequently alludes to him, and to the dangerous power and headlong ruin of his wicked minister Sejanus.
For this purpose, he had the presumption to seduce Livia, the wife of Drusus, to whom she had borne several children; and she consented to marry her adulterer upon the death of her husband, who was soon after poisoned, through the means of an eunuch named Lygdus, by order of her and Sejanus. Drusus was the son of Tiberius by Vipsania, one of Agrippa's daughters.
In Jonson's hands, the subject continues history, without becoming poetry; the political events which he has described have more the appearance of a business than an action. Cataline and Sejanus are solid dramatic studies after Sallust and Cicero, after Tacitus, Suetonius, Juvenal, and others; and that is the best which we can say of them.
Sejanus, the emperor’s favorite, to whom he owed his procuratorship, had for suspected treason been strangled in a dumb dungeon only a little before. Under Tiberius there was quiet, a future historian was to note; and Pilate was aware that, should a disturbance occur, the disturbance would be quelled, but at his expense.
The author of the Annals, in order that his full meaning may be brought out, wants the reader to supply, after the words "a show of refusal," some such as the following: "the Senators could see from the sham of Blaesus that the promotion to the office would be highly acceptable to him, and, as they knew it would please Sejanus, they were desirous of doing what would gratify the minister": then should come the words: "and by the assent of the sycophants he was not supported," that is, in his refusal: accordingly the writer leaves his reader to infer that the Senators gave their universal approval to the appointment of Blaesus as the Proconsul of Africa.
X. Another instance in the first part of the Annnals of how Bracciolini modified circumstances from his own period, and then, knowing that human actions are ever repeating themselves, just as that the human passions remain the same in all ages, remitted them to the first century, is his account of the fawning of the Roman Senators, when he represents them imploring Tiberius and Sejanus to deign to vouchsafe to the citizens the honour of an audience: the Emperor and the Minister refuse the supplication; their condescension extends no further than to their not crossing over to the island of Caprea, but remaining on the coast of Campania: thither the Senators, the knights, and the vast mass of the commonalty of the City resort to exhibit a disgraceful spirit of sycophancy and servility; they hurry continually to and from Rome, crowd into Campania in such numbers that they are forced to lie in the open fields night and day, some on the bare sands of the seashore, without distinction of rank; and they put up with the insolence of the porters of Sejanus, who deny them ingress to the Minister.
Then the young sons of Germanicus became the accepted representatives of the imperial line, for the infant sons of Drusus died very shortly afterwards. Accordingly, Sejanus now directed his attacks against the more powerful persons who might be regarded as partisans of the house of Germanicus.
And yet, the eleven years he spent in his retreat were marked by great complaints against him, and by many revolting crimes and needless cruelties. He persecuted the family of Germanicus, banished Agrippina, and imprisoned her son, Drusus. Sejanus, however, instigated these proceedings, and worked upon the jealousy of the emperor.
Sejanus had dared to do what Tiberius had never succeeded in doing; he had destroyed that center of opposition which gathered about Agrippina in the house of Germanicus. It is therefore scarcely necessary to say that the ruin of Agrippina still further increased the power of Sejanus. All bowed trembling before the man who had dared humiliate the very family of the Julio-Claudii.
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