SEJANUS: Regent of Rome

Sejanus was feared, loathed, despised and loved, but he was above all a consummate and immensely gifted politician. He became a master of all through his control of imperial gifts and honours due to the increasing reluctance of Tiberius to fulfil his role as Emperor. Tiberius had become increasingly frustrated by the futility of encouraging the Senate to take responsibility for the governance of the Empire. In Ancient Rome, power lay in the ability to distribute resources, wealth, offices and honours, and Sejanus filled the space once occupied by his master. He is presented in our overwhelmingly hostile sources as a sinister figure, consumed by ambition who used proxies to eliminate his rivals. L Aelius Sejanus was born around 20BC into a world of intense political, social and economic change while the fabric of the old traditional Roman order and Republican aristocracy was decimated by years of civil war. The infamous Praetorian Prefect Sejanus is now synonymous with over-reaching ambition, murder, conspiracy and betrayal. The traditional storyline is that he craved the imperial throne for himself and isolated the naïve Emperor in his island pleasure palace on Capri while using his control over the Praetorian Guard, coupled with his immense power and influence in Rome to purge the capital of potential opponents. His victims supposedly included the emperor's son Drusus, poisoned by his own wife who had been seduced by Sejanus. The Emperor, warned of Sejanus' ambition, struck first, and the Prefect was arrested in the Senate, strangled, and his corpse cast down the Gemonian Stairs. A fresh reappraisal, 312pp, colour photos and timeline.