Ben Johnsons Seianus
Your idle, virtuous definitions
Keep Honour poor, and are as scorned as vain.
Those deeds breathe Honor, that do suck in gain
By Sejanus, in Sejanus His Fall (1.331-332), Ben Jonson
in Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson poetry 117, f. 149v (rev)

Go, and speed
Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need
By Sejanus, in Sejanus His Fall (1.365-366), Ben Jonson
in Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson poetry 117, f. 149v (rev)

Of all wild beasts, preserve me from a tyrant; And of all tame a flatterer!
By Arruntius, in Sejanus His Fall (1.437-438), Ben Jonson
in Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson poetry 117, f. 149v (rev)

obloquies
If they despisèd be, they die suppressed
If with rage acknowledged, they are confessed
By Cordus, in Sejanus His Fall (3.439-441), Ben Jonson
in Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson poetry 117, f. 149v (rev)

Be not secure, none switflier are oppressed
Than they whom confidence betrays to rest.
By Sejanus, in Sejanus His Fall (2.2.206-207), Ben Jonson
in Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson poetry 117, f.164r (rev)

Obloquies: If they despised be, they die suppressed
But if with rage acknowledged they are confessed.
By Cordus, in Sejanus His Fall (3.1.439-441), Ben Jonson
in Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson poetry 117, f.164r (rev)

He that will thrive in state, he must neglect
the trodden paths, that truth & right respect./
By Macro, in Sejanus His Fall (3.1.736-737), Ben Jonson
in Bodleian Library MS Don. e. 6, f. 17v

Sejanus speaks.
by you that fools call gods
Hang all the like with your prodigious signs
Fill earth with monsters, drop the scorpion down
Out of the Zodiac, or the fiercer Lion
shake off the loosened globe from her long hinge
Roll all the world in darkness; and let loose
With forked fire and unpitied die
Who fears is worthy of calamity.
By Sejanus, in Sejanus His Fall (5.1.390-399), Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 28r