Sejanus Quotes

I’m planning to,” said Sejanus. “I’m planning to build a whole new beautiful life here. One where, in my own small way, I can make the world a better place.

His girl. His. Here in the Capitol, it was a given that Lucy Gray belonged to him, as if she’d had no life before her name was called out at the reaping. Even that sanctimonious Sejanus believed she was something he could trade for. If that wasn’t ownership, what was? With her song, Lucy Gray had repudiated all that by featuring a life that had nothing to do with him, and a great deal to do with someone else. Someone she referred to as “lover,” no less. And while he had no claim on her heart — he barely knew the girl! — he didn’t like the idea of anyone else having it either. Although the song had been a clear success, he felt somehow betrayed by it. Even humiliated.

You've no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom. Those are things everyone is born with, and they're not yours for the taking. Winning a war doesn't give you that right. Having more weapons doesn't give you that right. Being from the Capitol doesn't give you that right. Nothing does.

Sejanus. “My friend, your life has just begun!” And then Coriolanus was laughing; they both were. “So this isn’t our ruin?” “I’d call it our salvation.

Say what you will, I've done more for Capital reconstruction than the president himself', Sejanus joked halfheartedly.

Once you give way to a metaphor, Claudius, which is rare, you pursue it too far. Surely you remember Athenodorus’s injunctions against this sort of thing? Well, call Sejanus the maggot and get it done with; then return to your usual homely style!

A Capitol-born citizen would have expected a building to be renamed for them. Sejanus’s father had only requested an education for his son.

He adopted a suffering look, as befitted a man who grieved for his wayward friend. “Sejanus wasn’t bad, just . . . confused.

Poor Sejanus. Poor sensitive, foolish, dead Sejanus.

What is it?” he asked. “Aren’t you happy? District Two, the boy — that’s the pick of the litter.” “You forget. I’m part of that litter,” said Sejanus hoarsely.

If having Marcus as a tribute made Sejanus squirm, then good. Let him squirm. Lucy Gray was one thing belonging to Coriolanus that he would never, ever get.

He could not imagine what he and Sejanus had to discuss. Perhaps they’d found some mutual grievance — like how their families didn’t understand them — to whine about?

Coriolanus felt self-conscious. "Do I look okay?" "Gorgeous. Trust me, that lip's working for you, soldier," said Sejanus, and he headed back toward the house with Maude Ivory.

Coriolanus felt self-conscious. “Do I look okay?” “Gorgeous. Trust me, that lip’s working for you, soldier,” said Sejanus, and he headed back toward the house

By Saturday, he almost looked forward to confronting Sejanus. He hoped it would come to blows. Someone should pay for the indignities of the Snow family, and who better than a Plinth?

Coryo was a nickname for old friends. For family. For people Coriolanus loved. And this was the moment Sejanus decided to try it out? If he’d had the energy, Coriolanus would have reached over and strangled him.

Strabo şu anda bizim için zor olsa da gelecekte Sejanus ve onun çocukları için hayatın daha iyi olacağını söylüyor ama bilemiyorum. İnsanın hayatı, ailesi ve arkadaşlarıdır. Biz kendi hayatımızı 2. mıntıkada bıraktık.

Sejanus appeared, in another brand-new suit, with a rumpled little woman in an expensive flowered dress on his arm. It didn't matter. You could put a turnip in a ball gown and it would still beg to be mashed. Coriolanus had no doubt this could only be Ma.

Coriolanus moved back to his seat - she knew where to find him now - to listen and to savor their actual reunion, which was only a song away. His eyes teared up when she began the song from the zoo. "Down in the valley, valley so low, Late in the evening, hear the train blow. The train, love, hear the train blow. Late in the evening, hear the train blow." Coriolanus felt an elbow nudge his ribs and looked over to see Sejanus beaming at him. It was nice, after all, to have someone else who knew the significance of the song. Someone who knew what they'd been through. "Go build me a mansion, build it so high, So I can see my true love go by. See him go by, love, see him go by. So I can see my true love go by." That's me, Coriolanus wanted to tell people around him. I'm her true love. And I saved her life. "Go write me a letter, send it by mail. Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail. Capitol jail, love, to the Capitol jail. Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail." Should he say hello first? Or just kiss her? "Roses are red, love; violets are blue. Birds in the heavens know I love you." Kiss her. Definitely, just kiss her. "Know I love you, oh, know I love you, Birds in the heavens know I love you. "Good night, everybody. Hope we see you next week, and until then, keep singing your song," said Lucy Gray, and the whole Covey took one final blow.

Coriolanus felt a stab of annoyance. Had Sejanus forgotten that it was his own reckless behavior that had led to Coriolanus killing Bobbin? That his selfishness had robbed his friend of the luxury of such a statement? Then he suppressed a laugh at the thought of old Strabo Plinth. A munitions giant with a pacifist heir. He could imagine the conversations that had transpired between father and son. What a waste, he thought. What a waste of a dynasty.

He had killed Sejanus as surely as if he’d bludgeoned him to death like Bobbin or gunned him down like Mayfair. He’d killed the person who considered him his brother. But even as the vileness of the act threatened to drown him, a tiny voice kept asking, What choice did you have? What choice? No choice. Sejanus had been bent on self-destruction, and Coriolanus had been swept along in his wake, only to be deposited at the foot of the hanging tree himself.

Coriolanus acted engrossed in the show as 8, 6, and 11 called their tributes, but his brain spun with the repercussions of landing Lucy Gray Baird. She was a gift, he knew it, and he must treat her as such. But how best to exploit her showstopping entrance? How to wrangle some success from a dress, a snake, a song? The tributes would be given precious little time with the audience before the Games began. How could he get the audience to invest in her and, by extension, him, in just an interview? He half registered the other tributes, mostly pitiful creatures, and took note of the stronger ones. Sejanus got a towering fellow from District 2, and Livia’s District 1 boy looked like he could be a contender as well. Coriolanus’s girl seemed fairly healthy, but her slight build was more suited to dancing than hand-to-hand combat. He bet she could run fast enough, though, and that was important. As the reaping drew to a close, the smell of food from the buffet wafted over the audience

There was one more consideration. He had something Sejanus Plinth wanted, and wanted badly. Sejanus had already usurped his position, his inheritance, his clothes, his candy, his sandwiches, and the privilege due a Snow. Now he was coming for his apartment, his spot at the University, his very future, and had the gall to be resentful of his good fortune. To reject it. To consider it a punishment, even. If having Marcus as a tribute made Sejanus squirm, then good. Let him squirm. Lucy Gray was one thing belonging to Coriolanus that he would never, ever get

I have watched your career with fascination, Sejanus. It's been a revelation it's been to me! I've never fully realized before how a small mind, allied to unlimited ambition and without scruple, can destroy a country full of clever men. I've seen how fragile is the structure of a civilization before the onslaught of a gust of really bad breath! But I suppose you are not really the destroyer. No, we must look elsewhere for that. You are merely the putrefaction that spreads after death - the outward and visible signs of its presence! You're a lesson in history to me, Sejanus, proving that, above all, Mankind needs its sense of smell.

I heard he was trying to sabotage coal production and accidentally killed the three,” said Sejanus. “Sabotage production? To what end?” asked Coriolanus. “I don’t know,” said Sejanus. “Hoping to get the rebellion going again?” Coriolanus only shook his head. Why did these people think that all they needed to start a rebellion was anger? They had no army, weapons, or authority. At the Academy, they’d been taught that the recent war had been incited by rebels in District 13 who were able to access and disseminate arms and communications to their cohorts around Panem. But 13 had vanished in a nuclear puff of smoke, along with the Snow fortune. Nothing remained, and any thought of re-upping the rebellion was pure stupidity.

As he helped Sejanus unpack and make his bed, Coriolanus got caught up on the Capitol news. His suspicions about the Hunger Games were right. “By the next morning, there was no mention of it,” said Sejanus. “When I went into the Academy for my review, I heard some of the faculty talking about what a mistake it’d been to involve the students, so I think that was a one-off. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Lucky Flickerman back again next year, or the post office open for gifts and betting.” “Our legacy,” said Coriolanus. “So it seems,” said Sejanus. “Satyria told Professor Sickle that Dr. Gaul is determined to keep it going somehow. A part of her eternal war, I guess. Instead of battles, we have the Hunger Games.” “Yes, to punish the districts and remind us what beasts we are,” said Coriolanus, focused on lining up Sejanus’s folded socks in the locker. “What?” asked Sejanus, giving him a funny look. “I don’t know,” said Coriolanus. “It’s like . . . you know how she’s always torturing that rabbit or melting the flesh off something?” “Like she enjoys it?” asked Sejanus. “Exactly. I think that’s how she thinks we all are. Natural-born killers. Inherently violent,” Coriolanus said. “The Hunger Games are a reminder of what monsters we are and how we need the Capitol to keep us from chaos.” “So, not only is the world a brutal place, but people enjoy its brutality? Like the essay on everything we loved about the war,” said Sejanus. “As if it had been some big show.” He shook his head. “So much for not thinking.” “Forget it,” said Coriolanus. “Let’s just be happy that she’s out of our lives.” A downcast Beanpole appeared, reeking of urinals and bleach. Coriolanus introduced him to Sejanus, who, upon learning of his predicament, cheered him up by promising to help him with the drills. “It took me awhile to get it, too, back at school. But if I can master it, so can you.

Your daughter is delightful!" Sejanus was saying to Aelia. I gripped the edge of the bench and bit my tongue as he spoke. "She is a living testament to the good looks that seem to follow the gens Aelia." Aelia smiled. "Cousin, you flatter me." Sejanus had set the tone for the evening with the clear slight against the Gavia clan. "It's only a shame I share the name through adoption- not blood- or who knows how much more attractive I might have been!" Nearby guests laughed at the joke but to me it seemed the true intent was to point out that Apicius had, at least at one time, found him attractive. Sejanus looked directly at Apicius directly as he spoke, a smile on his face. Apicius gave away nothing. He waved a boy over with a tray. "Have you tried the fried hare livers, Sejanus?" Apicata jumped up and down and smiled at her father. "May I? May I?" Her father smiled. Apicata could always melt his heart. "Only one and don't share with Perseus!" The serving boy lowered the tray so she could reach for the liver but not so low that the jumping puppy could steal treats for himself. She snatched a morsel and popped it into her mouth. I knew what she tasted, a sublime mixture of textures, the crispy breaded exterior and the smooth, sumptuous richness of the liver itself. The combination is unexpected. When I first introduced the recipe, it immediately became a family favorite. Apicata turned to Sejanus. She did not appear to recognize him from the market. "Oh, you must try! These are my favorite!" "If you say so, I must try!" Sejanus reached for the tray. He took a bite of the liver and surprise registered in his eyes. Sejanus reached for another liver. "Where on earth did you find your cook?" "Baiae." Aelia reached for her own sample. "Thrasius's cooking is always exceptional. Wait until you try the hyacinth bulbs!" "Hyacinth bulbs are one of my favorites." Sejanus ran his fingers affectionately through Apicata's hair as he talked. I stared, wondering what his intentions were. My right eye began to twitch. Apicius nodded at Passia to come forward and collect Apicata and her puppy. The girl went begrudgingly and only after Sejanus had planted a kiss on her forehead and promised he would visit again soon.

It was true. They’d been close enough to recognize him. But they’d hunted down him and Sejanus — Sejanus, who’d treated the tributes so well, fed them, defended them, given them last rites! — even though they could have used that opportunity to kill one another. “I think I underestimated how much they hate us,” said Coriolanus. “And when you realized that, what was your response?” she asked. He thought back to Bobbin, to the escape, to the tributes’ bloodlust even after he’d cleared the bars. “I wanted them dead. I wanted every one of them dead.” Dr. Gaul nodded. “Well, mission accomplished with that little one from Eight. You beat him to a pulp. Have to make up some story for that buffoon Flickerman to tell in the morning. But what a wonderful opportunity for you. Transformative.” “Was it?” Coriolanus remembered the sickening thuds of his board against Bobbin. So he had what? Murdered the boy? No, not that. It was an open-and-shut case of self-defense. But what, then? He had killed him, certainly. There would never be any erasing that. No regaining that innocence. He had taken human life. “Wasn’t it? More than I could’ve hoped. I needed you to get Sejanus out of the arena, of course, but I wanted you to taste that as well,” she said. “Even if it killed me?” asked Coriolanus. “Without the threat of death, it wouldn’t have been much of a lesson,” said Dr. Gaul. “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.” The idea, laid out as such, shocked him, but he attempted a laugh. “Are we really as bad as all that?” “I would say yes, absolutely. But it’s a matter of personal opinion.” Dr. Gaul pulled a roll of gauze from the pocket of her lab coat. “What do you think?” “I think I wouldn’t have beaten anyone to death if you hadn’t stuck me in that arena!” he retorted. “You can blame it on the circumstances, the environment, but you made the choices you made, no one else. It’s a lot to take in all at once, but it’s essential that you make an effort to answer that question. Who are human beings? Because who we are determines the type of governing we need. Later on, I hope you can reflect and be honest with yourself about what you learned tonight.

Much to my discredit and shame, I had found that Iudas had taken my advice and hung himself. With a length of rope he went out to a high hill and did himself in. In the heat of the sun his insides burst over the valley floor, and now the locals are calling the place Hakeldama which means ‘the field of blood’’. Barabbas Bar Jesus gave up on the slavery business, fell in with the disciples, changed his name to Barnabas and went to Antioch to start a church. Tiberius Caesar being of great age and paranoia began bringing in people on various charges weather substantiated or not, starting with his advisors. With his popularity waning, Tiberius retired to the island of Capri and left his authority to General Sejanus who with great enthusiasm kept up with the treason trials.

the young daughter of Sejanus is taken away to be killed. “What have I done?” Tacitus has her say. “Where are you taking me? I won’t do it again.

Observe him, as his watch observes his clock, and true as turquoise in the dear lord's ring, looks well or ill with him.

This was a personal and direct attack on the assembled senators. Caligula presented a historical analysis of the behavior of the aristocracy under Tiberius, evidently supported by the advance work and documentary research of his freedmen. He confronted the senators with the fact that members of their own body, motivated by opportunistic desires to win the emperor’s favor, had denounced other members. Furthermore, they themselves had pronounced the sentences of death against their colleagues. One can vividly imagine how the members of that august body felt as the freedmen on the imperial staff quoted from the records the statements they themselves had made during the trials for treason and then read the verdicts that the whole Senate had handed down. It must have been even worse, however, that in their presence—to their consternation, being senators—Caligula broached the subject of the opportunism and flattery that had characterized the Senate’s communication with the emperor since the time of Augustus. By confronting the aristocrats in the Senate first with the honors they had bestowed on Tiberius and Sejanus and then with their completely contrary behavior after the two men’s deaths—actions no one could deny—he exposed their behavior toward the emperor as consisting of hypocrisy, deception, and lies. Yet

Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame, a flatterer.

Meanwhile, with Sejanus’s eldest son already put to death, orders were given for his two youngest children to be taken to the city prison. One, a boy, was old enough to understand what lay ahead; but his little sister, bewildered and not knowing what she had done wrong, kept asking why she could not be punished like any other child – with a beating? Since it would naturally have been an offence against the most sacred traditions of the Roman people to put a virgin to death, the executioner made sure to rape her first. The bodies of the two children, once they had been strangled, were dumped on the Gemonian Steps.

Sejanus's' lips formed his name, Coryo, and his face contorted in pain. But whether it was a plea for help or an accusation of his betrayal he couldn't tell.

Oh, my dear Apicata, how you have changed since we last met!" Apicata didn't respond, or if she did we couldn't hear her. "Apicata has been studying philosophy," Aelia said, trying to be conversational. "Apicata, recite for us some Plato, will you?" I could hear a waver in her voice, although it was slight. I wondered if Apicius could hear it too. "Yes, Mother." She was as obedient as you would ever hope a well-educated Roman child to be. She cleared her throat and her voice rang out in a loud, clear tone. "From his Republic: 'The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding; but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and with the comfort of old age." Oh, I could not have had more pride than I did then. Our little bird had spread her wings and let her voice take flight. I wished I could see the look on Sejanus's face. There was silence, then a brief flurry of applause. "Lovely, my dear!" Aelia crowed, clearly pleased with her daughter's choice of words. "Oh, Sejanus, I'm sure you would be even more delighted by her poetry.

It crossed his mind that, given his rescue of Sejanus, the Plinths might provide a loan, or even a payout for his silence, but the Grandma’am would never allow that, and the idea of a Snow groveling before a Plinth was unthinkable