He is our monster: forfeited to vice So far, as no rack’d virtue can redeem him. His loathed person fouler than all crimes: An emperor, only in his lusts. Retired, From all regard of his own fame, or Rome’s, Into an obscure island; where he lives Acting his tragedies with a comic face, Amidst his rout of Chaldees: spending hours, Days, weeks, and months, in the unkind abuse Of grave astrology, to the bane of men, Casting the scope of men’s nativities, And having found aught worthy in their fortune, Kill, or precipitate them in the sea, And boast, he can mock fate. Nay, muse not: these Are far from ends of evil, scarce degrees. He hath his slaughter-house at Capreae; Where he doth study murder, as an art; And they are dearest in his grace, that can Devise the deepest tortures. Thither, too, He hath his boys, and beauteous girls ta’en up Out of our noblest houses, the best form’d, Best nurtured, and most modest; what’s their good, Serves to provoke his bad. Some are allured, Some threaten’d; others, by their friends detained, Are ravish’d hence, like captives, and, in sight Of their most grieved parents, dealt away Unto his spintries, sellaries, and slaves, Masters of strange and new commented lusts, For which wise nature hath not left a name. To this (what most strikes us, and bleeding Rome) He is, with all his craft, become the ward To his own vassal, a stale catamite: Whom he, upon our low and suffering necks, Hath raised from excrement to side the gods, And have his proper sacrifice in Rome: Which Jove beholds, and yet will sooner rive A senseless oak with thunder than his trunk!— Re-enter Laco with Pomponius and Minutius.

Arruntius Monologue from Sejanus His Fall

About this piece

Rehearse Arruntius's monologue

More from Sejanus His Fall

Browse