Sex, scandal and slander: who was Messalina?

Messalina was an empress of the Roman empire and the third wife of the emperor Claudius, ruling between 41 and 48 AD. She came to power upon Claudius’ accession, after the assassination of the notorious Emperor Caligula, and she then ruled until her own assassination or execution, under somewhat mysterious and immensely dramatic circumstances, in AD 48.

For the best part of a decade, she was probably the most powerful woman in the Mediterranean. She sat right at the top of the Palatine Court, which was the most cutthroat, dangerous, ruthless and intense type of court – and she was willing, and able, to do almost anything to maintain her position at the top of that court. She engaged in political intrigues, arranging for charges to be brought against her political enemies and for them to be exiled and executed. She was immensely successful for almost a decade.

Messalina’s love affairs

During this time, she was also said to be engaging in a number of illicit, immensely powerful and not particularly subtle love affairs. She was said to have had a relationship with Mnester, the superstar actor of the day, and with Gaius Silius who was said to have been the most handsome aristocrat in the whole of Rome.

All of this went on until the end of AD 48, at which point she fell from power under very dramatic circumstances amid rumours of a bigamist wedding and a plot against Claudius. After she died, she became subject to an order of damnatio memoriae; her statues were smashed and her name was chiselled off inscriptions.

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In the decades that followed, the rumours about Messalina’s personality, promiscuity, and her alleged sexual debauchery mutated and grew. There are rumours that she engaged in a sex competition with the most notorious prostitute in Rome over who could sleep with the most men in 24 hours – and she won, with a total of 25 men. It’s also claimed that she snuck out of the palace every night to work in a low-class brothel. All these rumours contributed to an image of Messalina that makes it very hard for us to work out who the real woman actually was.

Honor Cargill-Martin is a classicist and author of Messalina: A Story of Empire, Slander and Adultery (Bloomsbury, 2023). She was speaking with Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast, considering how far Messalina’s story encapsulates the cutthroat political manoeuvring of imperial Rome. Hear more from this conversation in the full the audio episode.