Sejanus: His Fall

by Ben Jonson

SEJANUS.
This, to the consul, is most insolent,
And impious.

SILIUS.
Ay, take part. Reveal yourselves,
Alas! I scent not your confederacies,
Your plots, and combinations! I not know
Minion Sejanus hates me: and that all,
This boast of law, and law, is but a form,
A net of Vulcan’s filing, a mere ingine,
To take that life by a pretext of justice,
Which you pursue in malice! I want brain,
Or nostril to persuade me, that your ends,
And purposes are made to what they are,
Before my answer! O, you equal gods,
Whose justice not a world of wolf-turn’d men
Shall make me to accuse, howe’er provoked;
Have I for this so oft engaged myself?
Stood in the heat and fervour of a fight,
When Phœbus sooner hath forsook the day
Than I the field, against the blue-eyed Gauls,
And crisped Germans? when our Roman eagles
Have fann’d the fire, with their labouring wings,
And no blow dealt, that left not death behind it?
When I have charged, alone, into the troops
Of curl’d Sicambrians, routed them, and came
Not off, with backward ensigns of a slave;
But forward marks, wounds on my breast and face,
Were meant to thee, O Cæsar, and thy Rome?
And have I this return! did I, for this,
Perform so noble and so brave defeat
On Sacrovir! O Jove, let it become me
To boast my deeds, when he whom they concern,
Shall thus forget them.

AFER.
Silius, Silius,
These are the common customs of thy blood,
When it is high with wine, as now with rage:
This well agrees with that intemperate vaunt,
Thou lately mad’st at Agrippina’s table,
That, when all other of the troops were prone
To fall into rebellion, only thine
Remain’d in their obedience. Thou wert he
That saved the empire, which had then been lost
Had but thy legions, there, rebell’d, or mutined;
Thy virtue met, and fronted every peril.
Thou gav’st to Cæsar, and to Rome their surety;
Their name, their strength, their spirit, and their state,
Their being was a donative from thee.

ARRUNTIUS.
Well worded, and most like an orator.

TIBERIUS.
Is this true, Silius?

SILIUS.
Save thy question, Cæsar;
Thy spy of famous credit hath affirm’d it.

ARRUNTIUS.
Excellent Roman!

SABINUS.
He doth answer stoutly.

SEJANUS.
If this be so, there needs no farther cause
Of crime against him.

VARRO.
What can more impeach
The royal dignity and state of Cæsar,
Than to be urged with a benefit He cannot pay?