One of the greatest villains of the Roman Empire is the empress Messalina. The third wife of the emperor Claudius, she is remembered today as the most promiscuous woman in Rome, the nymphomaniac empress. The Messalina in the modern imagination is a pinnacle of uncontrolled, violent, irrational, and impulsive behavior.
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Her sexual appetite is unrivaled, and her motivations quite wicked. When Mikhail Bulgakov was filling Satan's ball in The Master and Margarita, he included Messalina as a guest. When Charlotte Bronte needed to describe the mad wife in the attic in Jane Eyre, Bronte liked her to a German vampire as well as Messalina. Of all the scandalous women who violated Roman gender roles, Messalina has come down through history as the most scandalous of all.
Noble beginnings
Valeria Messalina was at most 18 in A.D. 38 when she married her only husband, Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus. Claudius on the other hand was a 47-year-old, twice-divorced, father of two. The pair were first cousins once removed, both descended from the Divine Augustus's sister Octavia.
The marriage was a great honor for Claudius, as his previous wives had been of moderate prestige compared to Messalina. His marriage to a descendant of Octavia coincided with his belated entry into public life and was a sign that the new emperor—his nephew Caligula—approved of him and was tying him closely to the line of succession.
For Messalina, however, the marriage was likely less thrilling. Her new husband had spent his entire life until this point as a family embarrassment. He had visible disabilities that allegedly prompted his mother to refer to him as a monster, his great-uncle Augustus to forbid him from sitting with the rest of the family in public, and his uncle Tiberius to banish him from any public office. Imperial Rome was an unfriendly place for disabled people, and no one knew that better than Claudius.
The pair had two children in quick succession, and Claudius unexpectedly—and controversially—became emperor. After Caligula was assassinated in A.D. 41, Claudius took refuge in the army camps and haggled for two days to convince the Senate to accept him as emperor.
Messalina's husband, with no experience and little promise, had surpassed everyone's expectations when he took power. Still in her early 20s and prepared for a life of aristocratic leisure, Messalina had become an empress. Just weeks after her husband ascended to the Roman throne, she made history by being the first woman to give birth to a Roman emperor's son. He had seen his siblings receive glorious honors and advantageous marriages. Claudius had no prestige and brought little but his bloodline to enhance Messalina's own. It is hard to imagine that she looked forward to marriage to a man 30 years her senior ella whose achievements ella she could not even brag about.