Lucius Aelius Sejanus

Sejanus rises to unimaginable power from obscurity. Once he had sold his love to the rich Apicius, but then he became the emperor’s closest confidant. Unscrupulously, he sells appointments to offices, fills Rome with informers, and does away with everyone who gets in his way. Having eliminated Drusus, who hated him, Sejanus plots a scheme to obtain the emperor’s crown, but Tiberius’s numerous relatives are the obstacle.

Jonson puts in Sejanus’s mouth a succinct and clear expression of the theory of “reasons of state” expounded by a ruler who sees himself as the state personified. If his authority is under threat, he needs to reject everything that makes one refrain from violence.

Sejanus wants to turn Tiberius into a cruel tyrant hated by his subjects by constantly feeding his fears and exaggerating rumors of impending perils. Once Tiberius tastes his enemies’ blood, he will not be able to stop, and when his life and state are ruined, when he is hated by everyone, Sejanus will arrive as savior and will sacrifice the tyrant for the sake of the state, as Sejanus says:

. . . The way to put

A prince in blood, is to present the shapes

Of dangers greater than they are, like late,

Or early shadows and, sometimes, to feign

Where there are none, only to make him fear?

His fear will make him cruel: and once he entered,

He doth not easily learn to stop, or spare

Where he may doubt. This I have made my rule,

To thrust Tiberius into tyranny.

Sejanus, however, is not aware of the fact that his rival is much more artful in Machiavellianism. Tiberius deceives Sejanus into thinking that he is fully in control. Together they devise a strategy against Agrippina’s party.

Tiberius

Tiberius is the emperor of Rome, whose duplicity is evident in his treatment of Rome’s political traditions, and though he always pretends that he honors them by referring to the things that are sacred to Rome, everyone understands that he has suppressed the law and deprived the citizens of their rights. Tiberius is a despot to the bone. That is why, in talking to Sejanus, he calls himself “the master prince of all the world.” Jonson puts in his mouth the words referring to the idea of inscrutability of the ruler’s decisions, of his mystical connection to a higher power, and of his not being accountable to his subjects.

Princes have still their grounds reared with themselves,

Above the poor low flats of common men,

And, who will search the reasons of their acts,

Must stand on equal bases.

Quintus Naevius Cordus Sutorius Macro

As an artful Machiavellian, Tiberius decides to play Sejanus off against another politician, Macro. Eventually, the emperor hopes to get rid of both. In Tiberius’s opinion, Macro is cunning and secretive, and he knows human nature well, understanding man’s weaknesses and passions, and the consequences of human actions.

He reasons with himself:

Were it to plot against the fame, the life

Of one, with whom I twinned; remove a wife

From my warm side, as loved as is the air;

Practice sway each parent; draw mine heir

In compass, though but one; work all my kin

To swift perdition; leave no untrained engine,

For friendship, or for innocence; nay, make

The gods all guilty; I would undertake

This, being imposed me, both with gain and ease:

The way to rise is to obey and please.

Macro is yet another Machiavellian. Cynical as he is, he revels in his new role as an instrument in the sovereign’s hands. He is confident that the ruler’s authority turns his every act into virtue. Macro’s rise to power means that an even more unprincipled favorite has come in Sejanus’s stead. Sejanus’s death does not look like a retribution. Macro’s first order is to murder Sejanus’s innocent children.