Valeria Messallina

Roman empress

• Born: c. 20 c.e.
• Birthplace: Probably Rome (now in Italy)
• Died: 48 c.e.
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

Empress of Rome for more than seven years, Valeria Messallina was intimately involved in the highest level of Roman politics.

Early Life

Nothing is known of the childhood of Valeria Messallina (mehs-uh-LI-nuh). By the time she is first mentioned in historical sources, she had already married the Emperor Claudius I. Because their daughter, Octavia, was born in 40 c.e., the marriage is generally assigned to 39 c.e. The much older Claudius (born 10 b.c.e.) had three children by two earlier wives.

The Valerii Messallae (sometimes spelled with one l) were among the most illustrious families of Rome, one of the five gentes maiores—the inner circle of the patrician elite. Prominent through the early Republic, they faded into obscurity for more than a century after 164 b.c.e. An overview of the complicated family tree reveals the standing of the Valerii from the late Republic onward and goes far to explain Messallina’s marriage to Claudius. Members of the high nobility often married for reasons of political advantage. This is true even of Claudius, who for fifty years was dismissed as an embarrassment to the Imperial house and kept largely out of public view.

Life’s Work

Messallina presents major difficulties to students, as the ancient sources are uniformly extremely hostile. According to them, her only positive accomplishment was to produce two children for Claudius: Octavia and her brother, Britannicus, born in 42. According to the Roman writers, Messallina was addicted to sex and was utterly without principle, and she worked in tandem with the Imperial freedmen to manipulate her Imperial husband. Her scandalous life was known to everyone but Claudius. She had numerous lovers, participated in frequent orgies in the palace (on occasion compelling senators to watch their wives participate), destroyed several prominent politicians (some for refusing to have sex with her), and finally took reckless advantage of Claudius’s absence to divorce him and marry her latest lover, Gaius Silius. Saved by the decisive action of the freedman Narcissus, Claudius ordered Messallina’s death. She fled to her mother’s gardens but lacked the courage to commit suicide and was executed by a soldier.

There are good reasons to disbelieve accounts that characterize Messallina as a world-class nymphomaniac. The writers all lived at least two generations later and doubtless used stories that had grown in frequent retelling. Further, these writers were all men, and the most important of them, Tacitus, was a senator. More important, they hated women who refused to conform to Roman expectations. Women were not allowed to participate in politics; no ancient state allowed women to hold office, command troops, or vote. Men were supposed to discipline their womenfolk. In his Ab excessu divi Augusti (c. 116 c.e., also known as Annales; Annals, 1598), Tacitus discredited individual emperors, the Imperial families, and the entire Imperial system; all had reduced the senate to subservience.

In this light, the accounts of Messallina are part of a larger drama involving the ferocious women of the ruling family: Augustus’s wife Livia and her allies Urgulania and Munatia Plancina; Augustus’s daughter Julia III; and Julia’s daughters, Julia the Younger and Agrippina the Elder. The Annals’ cast of infamous women culminates in Agrippina the Elder’s daughter, Agrippina the Younger, who, though Claudius’s niece, became his wife after Messallina’s death and who reportedly murdered the emperor by poisoning his favorite snack, mushrooms.

The ancient writers also often omitted, minimized, or distorted the sound policies of the various reigns and hurried past them to put emphasis on scandals. Claudius is no exception, appearing as a bumbling fool, timid, addicted to wine, gambling, cruelty, sex, and—worst of all—unable to control either his wives or his freedmen. Messallina teamed with the powerful Narcissus to dominate the doddering man who became emperor almost by accident. The ancient historians give differing views of the era: Dio Cassius crams many good points into his opening survey of the reign (book 60); Suetonius categorizes events rather than proceeding chronologically; and Juvenal’s Saturae (100-127 c.e.; Satires, 1693) are notoriously biased and bitter. The masterful Tacitus is the best source, but his account of the period from the accession of Caligula in March, 37, to midway through 47 c.e. is lost.

Recent scholarship sees Messallina as using whatever weapons were available to her, including sex, to secure political goals. Her aim was to keep Claudius alive and on the throne until their son, Britannicus, was old enough to take control. Because Claudius had many opponents who thought they had better claims and better talents to be emperor and who were prepared to act ruthlessly to achieve their ends, Messallina responded in kind. Those whom she eliminated were all powerful politicians, actual or potential enemies, or their wives. One victim was Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great), married to Antonia, Claudius’s daughter by an earlier wife; that combination of bloodlines was an obvious threat to Messallina’s children. In several cases, she may have struck enemies only barely before they had their forces in place.

Messallina’s orchestration of the downfall of D. Valerius Maximus in 47 c.e. was the beginning of the end. Her spectacular collapse remains an impenetrable mystery—her “marriage” to Gaius Silius while Claudius was at Ostia inspecting his new port facilities, Claudius’s enraged return to Rome, her flight to her mother’s house, and her death at the hands of the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard. Most would regard her as an adulteress to her lawful husband and as guilty of treason to the state. Tacitus speaks of her furor, or madness; he, too, was unable to make sense of the events.

Significance

It is probably accurate to say that Messallina had relatively little significance in the long run. She was empress for a fairly short period, 41-48 c.e., and because women were excluded from office, she could not set government policies. Her influence over Claudius was limited to helping him eliminate their enemies, which she did ruthlessly. Her chief weapons were shrewd political sense and, evidently, sex. An inexplicable failure to control her political and sexual passions brought her to ruin in 48 c.e. Nero had her son, Britannicus, killed early in 55 c.e. and set aside her daughter, Octavia, a few years later, ending her bloodline. Tacitus’s description of her has proved enduring. Moderns will find equally compelling the fictional account in Robert Graves’s 1934 novels I, Claudius and Claudius, the God and His Wife Messallina. Also notable are the Masterpiece Theater productions of Graves’s books, which introduced millions of television viewers to the intrigue and decadence of Imperial Rome.

Bibliography

Balsdon, J. P. V. D. Roman Women: Their History and Habits. 1962. Reprint. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1983. Valuable background, although many of Balsdon’s views now seem quaintly dated.

Barrett, Anthony A. Agrippina. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996. Agrippina Major and Agrippina Minor were the dominant Roman women before and after Messallina. Agrippina Minor probably has the worst reputation of any Roman woman: empress for only five years as Claudius’s wife but then powerful as the mother of Nero until he had her executed in 59. She may have learned much from close observation of Messallina.

Barrett, Anthony A. Caligula: The Corruption of Power. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990. Contains little on Messallina but much on Caligula’s mother, Agrippina the Elder, and his sisters.

Bauman, Richard. Women and Politics in Ancient Rome. New York: Routledge, 1992. A detailed study of the period from about 330 b.c.e. to 68 c.e. Bauman ranks Messallina among the most powerful women of Rome, credits her with a sharp knowledge of criminal law, and dismisses some of the rumors about her sexual exploits as worthless.

Dudley, Donald R. The World of Tacitus. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968. A readable survey of the people who dominate Tacitus’s historical works.

L’Hoir, Francesca Santoro. “Tacitus and Women’s Usurpation of Power.” Classical World 88 (1994): 5-25. A persuasive study of Tacitus’s portrayal of women who “interfere” in politics and usurp men’s place; according to Tacitus, any society that permits this “unnatural” occurrence is doomed.

Kokkinos, Nikkos. Antonia Augusta: Portrait of a Great Roman Lady. New York: Routledge, 1992. A sympathetic portrait of the mother of Claudius. She and her mother, Octavia, were perhaps the most dignified women of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty.

Levick, B. M. Claudius. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990. A good modern study of Claudius’s reign; contains much useful information on Messallina.

Momigliano, Arnaldo. Claudius: The Emperor and His Achievement. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. Though superseded by Levick’s biography, this earlier study, originally published in 1934, remains valuable.

Syme, Sir Ronald. The Augustan Aristocracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. An immensely detailed analysis of the Roman elite under the early Empire; much on the Agrippinas, Messallina, her mother, Domitia Lepida, and others. Family trees in the back are invaluable for sorting out the tangled aristocratic genealogies.

Syme, Sir Ronald. Tacitus. 2 vols. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1963. A magisterial study of the greatest Roman historian; however, like all of Syme’s works, it is not for beginners.

Wiseman, T. P. “Calpurnius Siculus and the Claudian Civil War.” Journal of Roman Studies 72 (1982): 57-67. Discusses a neglected poetic text that throws light on the opposition to Claudius at the beginning of his reign; the government crackdown reveals Messallina at work.