The Roman State in Julius Caesar and Sejanus

Abstract

Viewed in the political and historical perspectives which the plays themselves set up and which their choice of subject would in any case invite, Julius Caesar and Sejanus offer strikingly different readings of the workings and destiny of the Roman state. The difference lies in the significance they attribute to the transformation of the Roman republic into the empire of the Caesars.[1] The action of Julius Caesar is governed by a powerful sense of historical destiny. This force first raises up Caesar to begin the process of settling the government of Rome upon one man; after his murder it sustains the spirit of Caesar, working through his heirs — Octavius, Antony and the Roman people. At the same time as it evokes the providential necessity at work in the transition from republic to empire, Julius Caesar shows negatively, as it were, the political desirability of the transition. The factious nature of republican Rome and the contentious spirit of most of its defenders are for Shakespeare, as for any number of Renaissance writers, the best argument for a monarchical state. An approach to Julius Caesar which takes its bearings from the play’s central political antithesis helps us appreciate several aspects of its dramatic character.