Monologue

Silius Monologue from Sejanus His Fall

From Sejanus His Fall by Ben Jonson

male · defiant · 2:02 min

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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.

About this piece

Silius confronts the conspirators who have betrayed him, expressing his outrage and disillusionment with their treachery while reflecting on his past glories and sacrifices for Rome.

30s · anger · betrayal · honor · power · revenge

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