Messalina : empress, adulteress, libertine : the story of the most notorious woman of the Roman world

Messalina Empress, adulteress, libertine : the story of the most notorious woman of the Roman world

Honor Cargill

Book - 2023

The story of Messalina, third wife of the emperor Claudius and one of the most notorious women to have inhabited the Roman world. The image of the empress Messalina as a ruthless, sexually insatiable schemer, derived from the work of Roman historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius, has taken deep root in the Western imagination. The stories they told about her included nightly visits to a brothel and a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a prostitute. Tales like these have defined the empress's legacy, but her real story is much more complex. In her new life of Messalina, the classicist Honor Cargill-Martin reappraises one of the most slandered and underestimated female figures of ancient history. Looking beyond the salacious anecdote...s, she finds a woman battling to assert her position in the overwhelmingly male world of imperial Roman politics--and succeeding. Intelligent, passionate, and ruthless when she needed to be, Messalina's story encapsulates the cut-throat political maneuvering and unimaginable luxury of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in its heyday. Cargill-Martin sets out not to 'salvage' Messalina's reputation, but to look at her life in the context of her time. Above all, she seeks to reclaim the humanity of a life story previously circumscribed by currents of high politics and patriarchy.

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BIOGRAPHY/Messalina, Valeria
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Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor BIOGRAPHY/Messalina, Valeria Checked In
Subjects
Messalina, Valeria, > -48.
41-54
Empresses > Rome > Biography.
Empresses.
Rome (Empire) > History > Claudius, 41-54.
Rome (Empire)
Biographies.
History.
Genres
Biographies
History
Published
New York : Pegasus Books 2023.
Language
English
Main Author
Honor Cargill (author)
Edition
First Pegasus Books cloth edition
Physical Description
xxix, 402 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color), maps, genealogical tables ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 352-363) and index.
ISBN
9781639363957
  • Map of Rome
  • Map of the Empire
  • Julio-Claudian Family Tree
  • Messalina and Claudius's Family Tree
  • Messalma's Family Connections
  • The Imperial Princesses and Their Husbands
  • Timeline
  • Dramatis Personae
  • Introduction
  • Prelude: Messalina's Ancient Chroniclers
  • I. A Wedding and a Funeral
  • II. A Marble Stage
  • III. An Education
  • IV. Eavesdropping on Tiberius
  • V. A Bad Year for a Wedding
  • VI. The Bridge Over the Bay
  • VII. The King is Dead, Long Live the King
  • VIII. Domina
  • IX. Madonna Messalina
  • X. The Court of Messalina
  • XI. The Triumph of Messalina
  • XII. Intrigues and Anxieties
  • XIII. Political Perversions
  • XIV. Adulteresses Have More Fun
  • XV. A Garden to Kill For
  • XVI. Re-Reading an Ending
  • XVII. The Whore Empress
  • XVIII. The Tragedy of Octavia and Britannicus
  • XIX. Epilogue: The Messalinas
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Bibliography
  • Endnotes
  • Image Credits
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

Classicist Cargill-Martin reexamines the life of a notorious Roman empress in this vibrant tome. History portrays Messalina, the wife of the emperor Claudius, as a sexually insatiable adulteress whose final brazen act of bigamy led to her downfall and execution, but Cargill-Martin looks beyond this salacious scandal recounted by sometimes biased historians to place Messalina in the context of the treacherous and often unstable Roman court in which she spent her life. Born in approximately 20 CE to patrician parents, Messalina grew up during the reign of Augustus' paranoid heir, Tiberius, and married Claudius, who was three decades her senior, soon after the ascension of the unstable emperor Caligula. After Caligula's assassination, Claudius had the support of the populace and military, if not the senate. He and Messalina worked together to eliminate his enemies (and a few of Messalina's rivals) to solidify his position. But Messalina's passionate affairs with a freedman, an actor, and others, culminating in her bigamous union to an aristocrat while Claudius was away from Rome, led to her ultimate undoing. Cargill-Martin does an excellent job of bringing the tumult, intrigue, and danger of the Julio-Claudian dynasty to life, mining original sources to get to the heart of who this complicated woman was in the world in which she lived.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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