Ben Jonson's two tragedies, "Sejanus" and "Catiline," reveal an effort to treat Roman history with accuracy and dignity, and to enforce on the public stage what he regarded as the essential rules of tragedy. Such representations of Roman history as "The Wounds of Civil War" or the still more incongruous medley of Heywood's "Lucrece" must have excited in him still greater condemnation than did the English chronicle plays. Even Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar" provoked a sneer, though its dramatization of Plutarch's portraits of the great conspirators apparently excited his emulation and suggested much in his treatment of Sejanus and Catiline. Incongruous spectacle and farce disappear from these plays, and the events are treated upon a well thought out theory of historical tragedy. Jonson strove to present the main events and characters with accurate fidelity to authorities, and even minor persons and deeds in constant harmony with the historical narrative. But the scholar overtopped the dramatist. "Sejanus" has a paraphernalia of notes like a doctor's dissertation; and "Catiline" long excerpts from Cicero's orations. His plays, however, were intended for the public stage, and are by no means to be classed with closet dramas like Daniel's "Philotas," the tragedies of Fulke Greville and Alexander, or the earlier translations of Kyd and the Countess of Pembroke. Jonson started with current popular forms, with "Julius Cæsar" rather than the Senecan models for a basis. His purpose was to rebuild these, not without some recognition of current dramatic method, but with his main reliance upon classical rules. His cardinal error was his acceptance of the current classical theory of tragedy, the belief that the essential difference between epic and dramatic fable lay in the observance of the three unities and similar proprieties. As he was forced to confess, the ambitious careers of Sejanus and Catiline and the style of action demanded by the audiences of the day did not lend themselves easily to such limitations. But he persevered in his doughty fashion. If in "Sejanus" he gave up the unity of time, he maintained the unity of place; if he retained the comic scenes of the courtesan, he avoided any grotesque mixture of the comic and tragic; he omitted battles, jigs, and spectacles, and secured a coherent development of the main action. In "Catiline," which he boldly proclaimed a "dramatic poem," he adopted the Senecan technic of an introductory ghost and a segregated chorus. But though the action be one, perfect and entire, according to Jonson's understanding of those terms, he never learned Shakespeare's art of focusing events about a spiritual conflict.