Arr.  The lapwing, the lapwing!

“Yet in things which shall worthily and more near concern the majesty of a prince, we shall fear to be so unnaturally cruel to our own fame, as to neglect them.  True it is, conscript fathers, that we have raised Sejanus from obscure, and almost unknown gentry”

Sen.  How, how!

“to the highest and most conspicuous point of greatness, and, we hope, deservingly, yet not without danger:  it being a most bold hazard in that sovereign, who, by his particular love to one, dares adventure the hatred of all his other subjects.”

Arr.  This touches; the blood turns.

“But we affy in your loves and understandings, and do no way suspect the merit of our Sejanus, to make our favours offensive to any.”

Sen.  O! good, good.

“Though we could have wished his zeal had run a calmer course against Agrippina and our nephews, howsoever the openness of their actions declared them delinquents, and, that he would have remembered, no innocence is so safe, but it rejoiceth to stand in the sight of mercy:  the use of which in us, he hath so quite taken away, towards them, by his loyal fury, as now our clemency would be thought but wearied cruelty, if we should offer to exercise it.”

Arr.  I thank him; there I look’d for’t.  A good fox!

“Some there be that would interpret this his public severity to be particular ambition, and that, under a pretext of service to us, he doth but remove his own lets:  alleging the strengths he hath made to himself, by the praetorian soldiers, by his faction in court and senate, by the offices he holds himself, and confers on others, his popularity and dependents, his urging and almost driving us to this our unwilling retirement, and, lastly, his aspiring to be our son-in-law.”

Sen.  This is strange!

Arr.  I shall anon believe your vultures, Marcus.

“Your wisdoms, conscript fathers, are able to examine, and censure these suggestions.  But, were they left to our absolving voice, we durst pronounce them, as we think them, most malicious.”

Sen.  O, he has restored all; list!

“Yet are they offered to be averred, and on the lives of the informers.  What we should say, or rather what we should not say, lords of the senate, if this be true, our gods and goddesses confound us if we know!  Only we must think, we have placed our benefits ill; and conclude, that in our choice, either we were wanting to the gods, or the gods to us.”
                                  [The Senators shift their places.

Arr.  The place grows hot; they shift.

“We have not been covetous, honourable fathers, to change, neither is it now any new lust that alters our affection, or old lothing, but those needful jealousies of state, that warn wiser princes hourly to provide their safety, and do teach them how learned a thing it is to beware of the humblest enemy; much more of those great ones, whom their own employed favours have made fit for their fears.”