Messalina
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Messalinam Proper-name noun feminine accusative singular of Messalina
- The profligate wife of the emperor Claudius, daughter of M. Valerius Messalla Barbatus, Suet. Claud. 17; 26; Tac. A. 11, 1 sq.; Juv. 10, 333; cf. id. 6, 116 al.—
- II The wife of the emperor Nero, Suet. Ner. 35; id. Oth. 10; Tac. A. 15, 68.
and Messallīna. (1) Statilia, granddaughter of T. Statilius Taurus, consul in A.D. 11. She was the third wife of the emperor Nero, who married her in A.D. 66. She had previously espoused Atticus Vestinus, whom Nero put to death without accusation or trial merely that he might marry Messalina.
(2) Valeria, daughter of M. Valerius Messala Barbatus and of Domitia Lepida. She was the third wife of the emperor Claudius. She married Claudius, to whom she was previously related, before his accession to the Empire. Her profligacy and licentiousness were notorious; and the absence of virtue was not concealed by a lingering sense of shame or even by a specious veil of decorum, inasmuch as she often visited the public brothels (Juv.vi. 115). She was as cruel as she was profligate, and many members of the most illustrious families of Rome were sacrificed to her fears or her hatred. She long exercised an unbounded empire over her weak husband, who alone was ignorant of her infidelities. For some time she was supported in her career of crime by the freedmen of Claudius; but when Narcissus, the most powerful of the emperor's freedmen, perceived that he should probably fall a victim to Messalina's intrigues, he determined to get rid of her. The insane folly of Messalina furnished the means of her own destruction. Having conceived a violent passion for a handsome Roman youth, C. Silius, she publicly married him with all the rites of a legal connubium during the absence of Claudius at Ostia, A.D. 48. Narcissus persuaded the emperor that Silius and Messalina would not have dared such an outrage had they not determined also to deprive him of empire and life. Claudius wavered long, and at length Narcissus himself issued Messalina's death-warrant. She was put to death by a tribune of the guards in the gardens of Lucullus (Tac. Ann. xi. 26-38; Claud. 17-39; Juv.x. 333).