The Example of Favourites; a Warning for Sovereigns. The Memory of Aelius Sejanus and the Spanish Monarchy (1588-1621)

Abstract

The classical image of Aelius Sejanus, præfectus Pretorii and favourite of Tiberius Caesar, reached the Early Modern Age transmitted by the historiography of Cornelius Tacitus. Beyond an aseptic memory, in the late sixteenth century his story engendered a double reading of discourses on the rising valimientos: the education of royal favourites, their relationship with sovereigns, their political limits and their potential final failure. The present essay focuses on the textual genealogies of Castilian, Portuguese and Genoese authors or translators who took the “prodigious example” of Aelius Sejanus to articulate their own (negative) ideas about the privanza that arose in times of crisis and transition.