The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

Messalina, as we may now briefly call her—with a passing protest against that uncouth expression, “the Messaline”—was in her sixteenth year at the time of her marriage. An indulgent imagination will be able to appreciate the dangerous situation of the young girl. Entering, in her teens, a world of the most seductive pleasure and the utmost license, with so responsive and impulsive a nature as she had, she needed the guidance of a man whom she could at least respect. Instead of this, she found herself mated to a man of forty-eight years, whose full paunch and long thin legs and tremulous head were the jest of the Palatine, and who spent his hours in the company of Greek freedmen, or in too prolonged an enjoyment of rich dishes and costly wines. Claudius, it is true, adored her, but his adoration only made him the surer dupe of her craving for indulgence. Her misconduct probably began early. When, after the evening meal, she left her spouse intoxicated and snoring over the emptied dishes, when his throat had been tickled with a feather, so that he might disgorge and return to the Imperial dainties, the young girl would naturally yield to the counsels of the unscrupulous courtiers who abounded in such a palace.

The path to the abyss was made smoother for her by her husband’s reliance on his freedmen. In the later years of the Republic, when the dominion of Rome was extended over the East, the practice had grown of employing the more accomplished slaves of Greece and Syria in the patrician palaces. Equally expert at keeping accounts or pandering to vice, they won their emancipation and acquired large fortunes in the service of their new masters. They were usually regarded with disdain, but, as we saw, Claudius had been driven to associate familiarly with them, and they attained great power when he ascended the throne. Rome now discovered a new evil in the Imperial rule it had adopted. All who wished to approach the Emperor with a petition had to flatter or bribe the freedman Callistus, to whom this part of Claudius’s duties was entrusted. His steward of finances, Pallas, his secretary, Narcissus, and his adviser in letters, Polybius, stood at one or other avenue of the palace, and exacted toll of all who approached. Offices were distributed through their avaricious hands, and it was soon noticed that they built magnificent villas in the neighbourhood of Rome. Whether the rumour was true or not, it was believed in Rome that some of the noblest ladies paid an ignominious price to these men for the favours they sought, or were surrendered to them by the Empress. It is at all events clear that Messalina soon came to an understanding with them. Both they and she needed to dupe the purblind Emperor, and it was felt that a friendly co-operation would be better than a precarious contest for supremacy.

Before the end of the first year of Claudius’s reign this corrupt collusion began to show its influence. Claudius had begun well. He set to work at once to redress the injustice and follies of Caligula. A general amnesty was granted, the courts of justice were purified, the administration was opened to the abler provincials, and the public funds were expended on public works of solid usefulness. How far the freedmen were responsible for these measures it is difficult to say, but it seems that we must grant Claudius, not only good will, but some quality of judgment. At the same time, there is evidence from the first of some infirmity of mind. His work as a judge seems to have been more remarkable for industry than enlightenment. On one occasion an angry knight (eques) threw books at him in the court-house; on another, during a shortage of corn, the people pelted him with mouldy crusts in the Forum. Humane he was, apparently, in those early months, but he does not seem to have shaken off his earlier repute and exhibited any personal dignity.

It was not long before even his humanity was warped by the malignant persuasions of his wife and the corrupt connivance of his freedmen. In our age of apologists there has been some effort to relieve the character of Messalina from its heavy burden of infamy, or at least to discredit the evidence adduced for it. I have already said enough about the Roman authorities to justify one in making some reserve in regard to the details transmitted to us about Messalina. When we read Tacitus we have to remember that he had before him the memoirs of her bitter enemy and successor, Agrippina. When we read Suetonius and Dio and later writers we must not forget their love of vivid colours and romantic details. Yet these writers had in their time official records, and something like public journals, belonging to the earlier period, which put the malignant and unscrupulous action of Messalina beyond question; of the less startling stories of her infidelities we have proof enough in the remarkable and authentic episode which will close her career. It cannot reasonably be doubted that the traditional estimate of the character of Messalina is substantially just, though we must use some discretion in admitting particular statements about her.

With this reserve we may follow, in fair chronological order, the career of this young girl of nineteen, who is dazed by the sudden attainment of Imperial wealth and power, until, in her twenty-fifth year, her childish efforts to pierce her bosom with a dagger are ended by the manly thrust of a soldier’s sword. She had borne a daughter, Octavia, before the accession of her husband, and she was far advanced in child-bearing when Caligula was assassinated. Claudius, unable to believe his good fortune, expecting daily that some fresh movement would dislodge him from the throne, kept in the palace with her. A month after his accession she bore a son, Tiberius Claudius Germanicus (later known as Britannicus), and Claudius ventured out, to exhibit his heir to the people and express his joy. He never entirely lost his fear. Soldiers served him at table, and all who approached him were searched. But his clement and comparatively enlightened rule won him some popularity, his gluttony and weak wit were genially overlooked, and he gave promise of a prosperous reign.

The first indication of the evil of his feeble dependence on Messalina and the freedmen occurred before the end of the year 41. Claudius had recalled from exile Caligula’s sisters, Julia Livilla and Agrippina, and restored their property. Agrippina, whose character and career will occupy the next chapter, was in her twenty-fifth year, Livilla in her twenty-third. Both had the beauty of the Julian women in its ripest development. Agrippina quickly realized her situation and discreetly concealed her ambition, but the younger woman was too proud to be diplomatic, and she was suspected of an ambition which she possibly did not entertain. Messalina became jealous, and denounced her to Claudius for adultery. Claudius was persuaded that an open trial would entail scandal on the Imperial family, and the unfortunate woman was exiled without the chance of defence. She was starved to death in her prison shortly afterwards, and, when the further course of this story has been read, one will hardly hesitate to accept the assurance of the chroniclers that this grave crime was committed by the orders of Messalina.

That the charge against Livilla was malignant cannot be doubted when we learn that her lover was said to be the famous Stoic moralist, Seneca. The disease of Rome had already evoked a natural remedy. The austere code of morals which Zeno had formulated some centuries earlier in the marble colonnade at Athens was now adopted by the best of the Romans. Pointing to the enfeeblement and degradation which this epidemic of Eastern vice and luxury had brought on their city, the philosophers argued that the curb must be placed once more on sensual impulse, and the old virility of Rome restored. Seneca was the most distinguished representative of this growing school at Rome, and, ambiguous or even reprehensible as his conduct may seem to us at a later stage, we should in this case prefer to attribute his punishment to the known vice of Messalina rather than to a frailty on his part of which we have no indication. The wise and just counsel that he gave to Claudius was probably distasteful to Messalina and the freedmen. Without trial or defence he was banished to Corsica. It is sometimes said that, as Seneca nowhere impeaches the virtue of Messalina, we may distrust the charge of vice against her which we find in all the later chroniclers; but Seneca also fails to refer to her greater and quite indisputable misdeeds, so that the omission has no significance. Seneca remained in exile six years, and had no more personal knowledge than Suetonius of the debauches of Messalina.

Her first success emboldened the Empress. Within a few months she selected another lady, Julia, the daughter of Drusus, and denounced her to Claudius. Such virtue or discernment as Claudius may have possessed was now attenuated by the sensual excesses in which his wife and his ministers encouraged him to indulge, and his humanity was contaminated by the passion for gladiatorial displays which he gradually contracted. We must not too hastily admit the lowest estimate of his powers. If Octavian could be so long and so easily duped by Julia, we may admit that Claudius’s ignorance was consistent with some measure of good sense, which he still displayed in provincial administration and the accomplishment of public works. But from the end of the first year of his reign he lends himself so basely and ignobly to the schemes of Messalina that it is impossible to defend him. No sooner did his wife accuse Julia than she was banished, without trial, and it is easy to believe that her speedy death at the hands of the centurion in charge of her was due to the orders of Messalina. It was said that Julia had excited the Empress’s suspicions by too tender a regard for Claudius.

The more prudent Agrippina now sought the protection of a husband. She is said to have chosen the future Emperor, Sulpicius Galba, and urged him to divorce his ailing wife; but the wife’s mother took her part, and ended the intrigue by boxing Agrippina’s ears in public. The wife died soon afterwards, but Galba feared the resentment of Messalina too much to wed Agrippina. She then induced Crispus Passienus, a wealthy and distinguished noble and a famous orator, to divorce his wife and marry her. She had inherited a moderate fortune from an earlier husband—the father of her son, the future Emperor Nero—and the great wealth and distinction of Passienus put her in a much stronger position. Passienus died soon afterwards, leaving his fortune to Agrippina and Nero. How the fortune was used for the advancement of mother and son, and how Agrippina was eventually murdered by her son, will be told in the next chapter. Serviez repeats without hesitation a rumour, lightly reproduced in one of the chronicles, that she murdered Passienus to secure the wealth. The charge is of the most frivolous character. Her husband had afforded her some protection: a fortune without a husband would rather attract than divert the passion of Messalina.

The year 42 was marked by a conspiracy that unhappily disposed Claudius more than ever to confide in Messalina and the freedmen. The troops in Dalmatia were to be employed in the dethronement of Claudius. At the last moment, however, the soldiers were startled by so many and such undeniable signs of the anger of the gods that they returned to their loyalty and slew their officers. The standards could not be dragged out of the ground—a not unnatural event, one would think, in a Dalmatian winter—and the wreaths had fallen from the eagles.