Roman Anti-Heroes and Villains
The theme of Heroes and Villains does not only celebrate courage. Some of the most memorable Latin writing constructs anti-heroes — figures whose ambition, cruelty or dishonesty threaten the values Romans prized. In the exam you do not need to translate these passages from memory, since the literature and sources paper is open-book, but you do need to know the content in detail and understand exactly how each writer builds a picture of villainy through the language they choose.
Three anti-heroes appear in this part of the theme: Seianus — Sejanus, the ambitious adviser described by Tacitus; Mezentius — the cruel Etruscan king described by Virgil; and Sempronia — the dangerous noblewoman described by Sallust.
Tacitus’s Sejanus: A Hero or a Villain?
Tacitus introduces Sejanus by explaining his rise from an ordinary background: genitus Vulsiniis patre equite Romano — born at Vulsinii, with a father who was a Roman knight. As a young man he attached himself to the family of the emperor Augustus, and later became the most trusted adviser of the emperor Tiberius, controlling the Praetorian Guard.
Tacitus is careful not to give Sejanus all the credit for his own success. He writes that Sejanus’s hold over Tiberius came non tam sollertia — not so much through cleverness — quam deorum ira in rem Romanam — as through the anger of the gods against the Roman state. Tacitus also describes how Tiberius became obscurum adversum alios sibi uni incautum intectumque — secretive towards everyone else but open and unguarded towards Sejanus alone. The mirrored word order here is an example of chiasmus, and it reinforces the total contrast between how Tiberius treated Sejanus and how he treated everybody else.
Tacitus complicates his own portrait with one dramatic episode. During a dinner at the villa Spelunca in AD 26, rocks suddenly fell and crushed several servants. Tacitus writes that Sejanus — genu utroque et manibus super Caesarem suspensus opposuit sese incidentibus — supported himself on both knees and his hands above Tiberius and placed himself in the way of the falling rocks.
The result, Tacitus notes drily, was that Sejanus became maior ex eo — more influential after this. Even when he went on to give Tiberius advice that would prove disastrous, he was trusted because he no longer seemed anxious for his own advancement. This single act of physical courage sits uneasily alongside the portrait of secret ambition Tacitus builds elsewhere, which is exactly why the question ‘hero or villain?’ is so hard to answer.
Tacitus builds a deliberately unstable portrait of Sejanus. His secret ambition and flattery are undercut by his genuine physical bravery in the cave collapse, so the reader is left to judge whether he is a hero, a villain, or both.
Virgil’s Mezentius: A Ruler’s Gruesome Behaviour
In the Aeneid, Aeneas’s host Evander, the Arcadian king of Pallanteum, tells Aeneas about the Etruscan tyrant Mezentius, who ruled the city of Agylla for many years with superbo imperio — arrogant power — and a reputation for savage armed force. Mezentius’s own people eventually exiled him for his cruelty, and he fled to take refuge with Turnus, the enemy of the Trojans, which is part of the reason the Etruscans later become Aeneas’s allies.
Evander refuses to describe every one of Mezentius’s crimes, using a rhetorical question to suggest they are too numerous and horrific to list in full: quid memorem infandas caedes, quid facta tyranni effera? — why should I recall his unspeakable slaughters, why the savage deeds of this tyrant? The device lets Virgil imply endless cruelty without having to catalogue it.
He does give one specific example. Mezentius used to torture prisoners by binding them to corpses: mortua quin etiam iungebat corpora vivis — indeed he even used to join dead bodies to the living, leaving his victims to die slowly, complexu in misero longa sic morte necabat — killing them by such a long death in a wretched embrace. The gruesome physical detail, and the slow pace created by the drawn-out description, force the reader to imagine the suffering rather than simply being told about it.
Mezentius’s own citizens eventually turned on him. Evander explains that Etruria rose up in righteous fury and that the people regem ad supplicium praesenti Marte reposcunt — demanded that the king be brought to punishment through immediate war. Unlike Sejanus, Mezentius is given no redeeming episode: Virgil’s portrait of him is villainy without complication.
Sallust introduces Sempronia, a noblewoman involved in Catiline’s conspiracy, with a pointed accusation: she is a woman quae multa saepe virilis audaciae facinora commiserat — who had often committed many crimes of a boldness more fitting for a man. He then lists her offences in a rapid triple statement with no connecting words — fidem prodiderat, creditum abiuraverat, caedis conscia fuerat — she had betrayed trust, denied a debt under oath, and been party to murder. This technique, joining clauses without linking words, is called asyndeton, and it makes the list of crimes feel breathless and damning.
Sallust is especially troubled by Sempronia stepping outside expected female behaviour: libido tam accensa, ut saepius peteret viros quam peteretur — her desire was so inflamed that she more often pursued men than was pursued by them. For a conservative Roman writer, a woman who reversed this expected pattern was not just immoral but genuinely threatening to social order — which is exactly why Sallust includes her among the dangerous figures behind Catiline’s plot.
Villains in the Picture Sources
The prescribed images extend the same themes. One bas-relief shows Tullia, daughter of King Servius Tullius, deliberately driving her chariot over her own father’s dead body after he was murdered on the orders of her husband — a visual shorthand for a family, and a reign, built on betrayal. A coin minted by Brutus after the assassination of Julius Caesar shows a freedman’s cap between two daggers, one for each of the chief assassins, presenting the killing of a man they called a tyrant as an act that restored liberty. Both sources show that whether a figure counts as hero or villain in Roman culture often depends entirely on whose version of events survives.