Caligula's Rise: the Funny Young Ruler Whom Everybody Loved

A History of Mankind (237)

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By 26 AD, sick of dealing with her mother and the senate, Tiberius started to spend long periods in a luxurious villa in Capri, near Neapolis, and left day-to-day management in the hands of Lucius Aelius Sejanus, the long-serving Praetorian Prefect in charge of the powerful guard protecting the emperor and the city.

Rome filled up with statues of Sejanus, who harbored ambitious plans and was denied permission to marry Livilla, the widow of Tiberius’ son Drusus. It likely was Sejanus who instigated the downfall of Aulus Cremetius Cordus, a historian who was forced to kill himself supposedly because his work depicting the latter Republican phase – full of praise for the likes of Brutus and Cassius¹ – had violated the law against attacking the emperor; but the well-informed Seneca later reported that the brutal Sejanus was simply enraged because Cordus criticized his statues.

When Livia died in 29 AD, Sejanus launched purge trials of senators, feeding Tiberius’ worries about conspiracies against himself. In 31 AD, Sejanus – a consul for the year – tried to make his move with the help of Livilla, his secret lover for years, but was pre-empted by Tiberius: summoned to the senate, he was read a letter in which the emperor accused him of plotting and ordered his execution; Livilla, handed over to her mother, was locked up in a room and starved to death² amid suspicions that she had conspired with Sejanus to kill Drusus the Younger, her husband and empire’s heir.