Messaline

See also: Messaline (homonymy)

Exit of the nobility of Rome, Valeria Messalina (probably born in 25 after J. - C.) is the grand-daughter of Antonia Major and thus the back-small-girl of Marc Antoine. She is also the niece of Gneius Domitius Ahenobarbus, first husband of Agrippine the Young person and father of Néron.

She married Claude in 39 or 40 and had two children with the future emperor: Octavie (born in 40, future wife of Néron) and Britannicus (born in 41).

Tyrannical once arrived at the first place, it made put at dead the girls Germanicus and of Drusus. To believe the writer Juvénal of it, discharged, she did not hesitate with prostituer openly in the streets of Rome. She had transformed part of the palate into Lupanar.

Among its victims of choice, Sénèque, which was shown of adultery with Julia Livilla, the last girl of Germanicus, and relegated in Corsica. As for Julia Livilla, it was exiled, then assassinated on its order.

Informed by Tiberius Claudius Narcissus, one of its freed, Claude ends up discovering that in addition to its other overflows and its scandals, Messaline had also married his/her lover, Gaius Silius with a marriage contract and a dowry in due form. The emperor then made it summarily carry out in 48 in the gardens of Lucullus.

“One announced in Claude, while he dined, that Messaline had died, without specifying if it were of its own hand or that of another. He did not ask it; he claimed a cut and continued the meal as usual. Even during the following days, it gave any sign of hatred, joy, anger, of sadness, in short of any human emotion, neither when it saw the merry indicters, nor when it saw his afflicted children. ”

After which, he declared with the Praetorian that “the marriages succeeded to him badly”.

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