Claudius's Wives: the Nymphomaniac Messalina and the Schemer Agrippina | Early European History And Religion

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CLAUDIUS'S WIVES

Messalina

Claudius I (ruled A.D. 41-54) had four wives. One was the famed nymphomaniac Messalina. Another was his Agrippina, who claimed the emperorship for her son Domitius Ahenobarbus (Nero). Despite rules against incestuous marriages, Claudius convinced the Senate to approve his marriage to Agrippina "for the good of the state."

Suetonius wrote: “He was betrothed twice at an early age: to Aemilia Lepida, great-granddaughter of Augustus, and to Livia Medullina, who also had the surname of Camilla and was descended from the ancient family of Camillus the dictator. He put away the former before their marriage, because her parents had offended Augustus; the latter was taken in and died on the very day which had been set for the wedding. He then married Plautia Urgulanilla, whose father had been honored with a triumph, and later Aelia Paetina, daughter of an ex-consul. He divorced both these, Paetina for trivial offences, but Urgulanilla because of scandalous lewdness and the suspicion of murder. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.) : “De Vita Caesarum:Claudius” (“The Lives of the Caesars: Claudius”), written in A.D. 110, 2 Vols., translated by J. C. Rolfe, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: William Henemann, 1920), Vol. I, pp. 405-497, modernized by J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton]

“Then he married Valeria Messalina, daughter of his cousin Messala Barbatus. But when he learned that besides other shameful and wicked deeds she had actually married Gaius Silius, and that a formal contract had been signed in the presence of witnesses, he put her to death and declared before the assembled Praetorian guard that inasmuch as his marriages did not turn out well, he would remain a widower, and if he did not keep his word, he would not refuse death at their hands. Yet he could not refrain from at once planning another match, even with Paetina, whom he had formerly discarded, and with Lollia Paulina, who had been the wife of Gaius Caesar [Arkenberg: i.e., Caligula]. But his affections were ensnared by the wiles of Agrippina, daughter of his brother Germanicus, aided by the right of exchanging kisses and the opportunities for endearments offered by their relationship; and at the next meeting of the Senate he induced some of the members to propose that he be compelled to marry Agrippina, on the ground that it was for the interest of the State; also that others be allowed to contract similar marriages, which up to that time had been regarded as incestuous. And he married her with hardly a single day's delay; but none were found to follow his example save a freedman and a chief centurion, whose marriage ceremony he himself attended with Agrippina.

Claudius's Nymphomaniac Wife Messalina

Outdoing even Caligula in terms of decadence was Empress Valeria Messalina, the third wife of Claudius I. While her emperor husband was leading military campaigns across Europe to shore up the empire she was having scandalous affairs with palace courtiers, entertainers and soldiers. When a handsome actor refused to leave the stage to be her full-time lover the empress got her husband to order the actor to leave. After threes years of lovemaking the actor was covered with scars for which the empress rewarded him with statue of his attributes. [People's Almanac]

Emma Southon wrote in National Geographic History: One of the greatest villains of the Roman Empire is the empress Messalina. 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. 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 likened 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. [Source: Emma Southon, National Geographic History, March 3, 2023]

During one drunken escapade Messalina danced naked on top of a wooden platform at the forum. On another occasion she gilded her nipples, decorated her bedroom in the palace like a brothel, and invited all comers. And, on yet another occasion she challenged Rome's leading prostitute to a contest, which the empress won by "cohabiting 25 times...within the space of 24 hours." Later she slept with men with large real estate holding and condemned them to death afterwards so she could claim their property. Finally Claudius had enough — when she married another man in a public ceremony in which the newlyweds entertained the guest with some bedroom acrobatics — and ordered her killed. [People's Almanac]

Suetonius wrote: “Among other things men have marveled at his absent-mindedness and blindness. When he had put Messalina to death, he asked shortly after taking his place at the table why the empress did not come. He caused many of those whom he had condemned to death to be summoned the very next day to consult with him or game with him, and sent a messenger to upbraid them for sleepy-heads when they delayed to appear. When he was planning his unlawful marriage with Agrippina, in every speech that he made he constantly called her his daughter and nursling, born and brought up in his arms. Just before his adoption of Nero, as if it were not bad enough to adopt a stepson when he had a grownup son of his own, he publicly declared more than once that no one had ever been taken into the Claudian family by adoption. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.) : “De Vita Caesarum:Claudius” (“The Lives of the Caesars: Claudius”), written in A.D. 110, 2 Vols., translated by J. C. Rolfe, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: William Henemann, 1920), Vol. I, pp. 405-497, modernized by J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton]

Marriage of Claudius and Messalina

Messalina and Britannicus

Emma Southon wrote in National Geographic History: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. [Source: Emma Southon, National Geographic History, March 3, 2023]

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. 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 whose achievements she could not even brag about.

The Julia family (Julii) was held in high regard by the Roman people, who looked to the family as successors of Julius Caesar (Emperor Augustus was Julius Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted son). Lineage was a key factor in the match between Claudius and Messalina. The 30-year age gap and general incompatibility between them were overlooked in favor of their heritage. The pair’s marriage formed one of the “purest” connections to the Julio-Claudian dynasty, in that it descended directly from Octavia, sister of Augustus. Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius all descended from Livia, Augustus’s third wife, and were thereby linked also to the Claudian line.

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.

Messalina’s Scandalous Marriage to Another Man

Emma Southon wrote in National Geographic History: Messalina’s actions ultimately brought her down. Roman historians reported her undoing and subsequent murder with glee and snickering delight. Tacitus is again the chief source of information on Messalina’s final scandal. Other authors retold Messalina’s story, including the Roman poet Juvenal who wrote a scathing condemnation of her in his Satires, composed in the late first or early second century A.D. Writing a century later, Roman historian Cassius Dio continued the tradition of rendering Messalina as a villain, calling her “the most abandoned and lustful of women.” [Source: Emma Southon, National Geographic History, March 3, 2023]

The episode begins in A.D. 48, when Messalina starts a love affair with Senator Gaius Silius. Silius’s complicity varies across sources; in Juvenal and Dio he is a passive victim of her dominance, while in Tacitus he is an enthusiastic participant. Messalina lavishes him with decadent gifts, from family heirlooms to houses. Their affair proceeds until it becomes public knowledge. Silius divorces his wife, but Messalina cannot free herself from her emperor husband.

The adulterers then do something so unexpected — so open and shocking — that even the ancient sources can barely believe it. The couple hold their own wedding while Claudius is out of town in Ostia. Messalina dons the yellow veil of a bride and proceeds publicly through the streets to Silius’s home, where they exchange vows. They then throw a raucous party that includes, according to Tacitus, Messalina wantonly letting her hair down.

The actual events and meaning of that day are still debated by modern historians. Was this a real wedding or a performance? Was it an attempted coup rather than a brazen affront? Some characterize the day as an attempt to overthrow Claudius, motivated entirely by political ambition to rule. The truth will never be known because neither conspirator survived the night.

Rumors of their wedding party, whether real or staged, reach Claudius in Ostia very quickly. To break the news, his administrators send his two favorite mistresses to tell him that his wife has publicly divorced him by marrying another man. Claudius, in Tacitus’s telling, panics, believing that Messalina and Silius are attempting to overthrow him. Claudius has them immediately arrested. Guards escort Messalina to the Gardens of Lucullus, and Silius is brought before Claudius at the army camps. Silius and his allies are executed on the spot for treason, and then Silius’s name vanishes from history.

Messalina’s Death

Messalina, the prostitute

Emma Southon wrote in National Geographic History: Claudius procrastinates over Messalina’s fate. She is his wife of a decade, the mother of his children, and a woman he loves by all accounts. He softens and decides to give her a hearing the next day. Claudius’s supporters fear that Messalina will escape punishment, so they take matters into their own hands. They falsely tell Roman centurions and a tribune to go to the gardens and execute Messalina on the orders of the emperor. [Source: Emma Southon, National Geographic History, March 3, 2023]

Messalina is in the gardens with her mother. Tacitus reports that even when she is trapped, Messalina does not give up. She tries to find a way out of the situation, but to no avail. When the soldiers arrive, they give her the option to kill herself, but she is unable to do it. Tacitus sneers that she was so lacking in virtue that she couldn’t even take her own life. One of the tribunes runs her through and ends her life.

Tacitus reported that Claudius is unmoved at the news of his wife’s death: “[H]e called for a cup and went through the routine of the banquet. Even in the days that followed, he betrayed no symptoms of hatred or of joy, of anger or of sadness, or, in fine, of any human emotion.” The Roman government decrees a damnatio memoriae against Messalina, striking her name from public and private places and destroying her statues. But this official erasure did not cause Messalina to fade from memory. Rather, her sexual appetites and bigamous wedding gave rise to rumors, jokes, and gossip that would overtake her every other action in the historical imagination, including her political machinations.

Messalina’s Villainousness Grows After Her Death

Emma Southon wrote in National Geographic History: Most information on Messalina’s relationship with Claudius comes from the first and second-century A.D. historians Tacitus and Suetonius, each writing decades after her death during a time critical of Rome’s early emperors.

It is possible that opinions of Messalina changed over time, but when Tacitus’s narrative picks up around A.D. 47, six years into Claudius’s reign, the historian thinks Messalina’s a monster. Tacitus’s first mention of the empress describes her manipulating her husband to punish two of her personal enemies: Valerius Asiaticus and Poppaea Sabina. Asiaticus owned the lovely Gardens of Lucullus, which Messalina coveted. She spread rumors of an extramarital affair between Asiaticus and Poppaea (who had taken a lover Messalina desired for herself). Claudius had the pair arrested and Asiaticus killed. Poppaea was imprisoned, and Tacitus reports she died by suicide after repeated harassment from Messalina’s agents. [Source: Emma Southon, National Geographic History, March 3, 2023]

In Tacitus’s telling, Messalina frequently uses the judicial system and the functions of the state for her own selfish ends. Through them, she obtains revenge on those who cross her, reject her sexual advances, or spark her envy. She exiles relatives and executes rivals. She lies about omens and circulates rumors to scare her husband into doing her bidding. She makes the personal political.

Rumors, innuendo, jokes and whispers about Messalina started early. Pliny the Elder, who was a young army officer serving in Germany during Claudius’s early rule, wrote an encyclopedia of natural phenomena, in which he included musings on mammalian sexuality. Humans, he notes, are the only animals who don’t have breeding seasons and who are never sated when it comes to sex. As an illustration, he tells the reader about Empress Messalina, who engaged in a competition with a sex worker to see who could take the most lovers. After 25 “embraces,” Messalina won. [Source: Emma Southon, National Geographic History, March 3, 2023]

A generation later, the anecdote grew even more outrageous when it was related by noted misanthrope Juvenal in his Satires. Messalina appears in the section on why he hates women. Calling her the “Imperial Whore,” Juvenal claims that every night Messalina disguised herself in a blonde wig — a hair color associated with barbarians — and worked at a low-class brothel, where she would have sex until the sun came up. She would be sent away “exhausted but not yet satisfied.”

By A.D. 220, when Cassius Dio was writing his Roman History, Messalina’s imagined brothel has moved into the imperial palace, where she invites men to buy sex from her and from other aristocratic women, some of whom are forced by Messalina into sex work. Dio also related a tale concerning a dancer, Mnester, who finds himself the focus of Messalina’s unwelcome advances. He rejects her repeatedly until Messalina complains to her husband that Mnester will not obey her, pretending that he is merely insubordinate. Claudius, none the wiser, orders Mnester to do whatever his wife commands, and thus Mnester must submit. This scene seems ripped directly from Greek and Roman comedy: The cuckolded husband and the unfaithful, sexually rapacious wife are stock characters. The story shows that Messalina’s real fall was so dramatic that anything could be said about her and be believed.

Agrippina the Younger

Agrippina married Emperor Claudius after Valeria Messalina was he executed. According to Live Science: At different points in her life, Agrippina was the wife, niece, mother and sister of some of the most famous emperors of ancient Rome, according to Emma Southon, author of "Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World" (Pegasus, 2019). In A.D. 39, her brother, Emperor Caligula (A.D. 12-41), exiled her for plotting against him, but she returned to Rome after he was assassinated in A.D. 41. [Source Live Science, October 23, 2021

Eight years later, she married her uncle, Emperor Claudius. The emperor even changed the laws surrounding incest in order to marry his niece, who wielded a great amount of control over her new husband. "Claudius was bad at politics and bad at ruling, and he was happy to accept help, even from his wife," Southon wrote. "Within a year, she had taken the honorific Augusta, making her Claudius' equal in name. Agrippina became intimately involved in the running and administering of the empire. She was her husband's partner in rule in every way. She broke every rule of appropriate female behaviour by refusing to be a quiet, passive wife."

Agrippina had her husband murdered by poison in A.D. 54, enabling her son Nero to take the throne, according to Tacitus's "Annals". While this secured her influence over the empire through her control over her young son, Nero soon conspired to kill Agrippina, whom he grew to resent because of her control over him. Tacitus describes how Agrippina survived several failed assassination attempts ordered by Nero before she was finally killed in A.D. 59.

Agrippina and Nero

To pave the way for her son, Nero, to become Emperor, Agrippina had Claudius's son Britannicus married off to Octavia, Claudius's daughter. With the help of the famous poisoner Locusta, Agrippina then tried to get rid of Claudius by arranging for him to be served a stew filled with poisonous mushroom. According to Tacitus Claudius began gasping almost immediately after eating the stew and lost his ability to speak. He was taken to bed and suffered through the night. When it became clear the dossage was not large enough, another dose of poison was administered either in his food or possibly by an enema. Claudius was dead by the next day.

Britannicus was later killed while dining with Nero and the entire royal family. Killing only Britannicus was a difficult task because the food of each member of the royal family was tasted first by a servant. Locusta devised a powerful poison that was given to Britannicus in a glass of cold water that was delivered after he complained about his first drink being too hot. After drinking the poison he fell backwards gasping for air. Some members of the family ran from the dinner table in horror while Nero looked on coolly, explaining that Britannicus was only having a epileptic seizure and would soon recover.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024