“Messalina, the wife of Claudius Caesar, thinking the palm quite worthy of an empress, selected for the purpose of deciding the question, one of the most notorious of the women who followed the profession of a hired prostitute; the empress outdid her, after continuous intercourse, night and day, at the twenty-fifth embrace.”
Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, 77AD.
Scylla, the prostitute, arrives at the palace and is told that she is not being paid, this contest is for honour and reputation. Scylla responds “I’m a professional, my lady. I work for money. The honour I leave to you.”
***
“To begin at the beginning… and go on till you come to the end: then stop”, as the King said.
So…
Valeria Messalina, great-grandniece of Emperor Augustus, was chosen to be the third wife of Claudius, her first cousin once removed, the runt of the Julio-Claudian close knit interbred dynasty. Born in about 20 AD, Messalina was around 17 years old. Claudius was about 47. Messalina had two healthy children in quick succession, Octavia and Britannicus.
In 41 AD, Messalina became Empress following the murder of the much hated relative Emperor Caligula by his Praetorian Guard. The triumphant Guard had quickly grabbed Claudius from hiding, and proclaimed him Emperor before the Senate could intervene.
Reportedly, Claudius was seriously unattractive, somehow physically deformed, unsurprisingly withdrawn, with a severe speech defect. His own mother had vividly described him as “a monstrosity of a human being, one that nature began and never finished”. Medical historians have postulated that Claudius had cerebral palsy, which would have been known as being “spastic”, or from Tourette’s Syndrome, typified by uncontrollable physical and vocal tics. But, he was most assuredly not unintelligent in any way whatsoever.
The new Emperor was quick to pay the Praetorian Guard, his adoptive protectors, enormous sums of money in return for their continued services.
Claudius visited Britain to complete its submission, and heavily invested in the infrastructure of the Roman Empire and its legal system. The Roman Empire was fast becoming the wealthiest of world powers.
Perhaps Claudius had been party to the murder of his nephew, Emperor Caligula.
***
Claudius was totally smitten by the sexual allure of Messalina, deeply obsessed. Heedlessly, he let her loose on an already viciously competitive Roman society, which immediately became both her playground and her battleground. Indeed, Messalina had just two objectives in life, to protect the safety of her children, and, for her urgent amusement, to pick off any man she fancied for a fuck. She could and would exile or have murdered any man who refused her blandishments, and exile or have murdered anybody whom she deemed to be a threat to her position as Empress or to the lives of her children. She claimed many victims.
Messalina had weaponised her superabundant sexuality to a gross extent. The whole of Rome would have known of her all too obvious proclivities, and were appropriately anxious for themselves and for their families. Some simply preferred to move abroad to a safe haven. Husband Claudius apparently pretended not to notice: after all, Claudius himself was preoccupied in subduing multiple threats from his turbulent Senate.
***
Messalina, now aged 28, fell fatally for Gaius Silius, a senator, “ the most handsome young man in Rome”. Her reasoning is subject to academic speculation, but their pseudo-marriage was most probably a theatrical part of a bacchic piss up whilst celebrating the grape harvest, the Vinalia. They were betrayed by one Narcissus. Claudius was forced to listen to the accusation of treachery, the threat of a coup, and, before he had a chance to think further, the Praetorian Guard set out to execute Messalina and her senator.
Messalina was found, with her mother, in the splendid gardens of Lucullus (which she had recently killed for). She was given a knife to cut her own throat. She could not do this. A kindly soldier dispatched her with a single thrust of his sword.
On her failure to appear at dinner, Claudius made no comment, but ordered a further flagon of wine.
As the King said, “… and go on till you come to the end: then stop”.
***
Following Messalina’s death, the Senate immediately declared “the condemnation of memory”, damnatio memoriae, an order that required that all documentary references, inscriptions and likeness that existed throughout the Roman Empire be destroyed.
The only evidence relating to Messalina’s life comes from historians writing one or two generations later, such as Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Elder. Tacitus said he was relating “what was heard and written by my elders”. All these authors were contributing to the propaganda against the resurgence of power of the feared Julio-Claudian regime, and Messalina was obvious fair game.
Whether she was quite as bad as she has been made out to be….
to be continued
