The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

The lady with whom Asiaticus is said to have offended was Poppæa Sabina, the only woman in Rome who surpassed Messalina in beauty. That would be quite enough to arouse the jealousy of Messalina, but we are told that she had the still greater mortification of believing that Poppæa was too intimate with the actor Mnester, whom the Empress had appropriated. The daughter of Poppæa will presently come before our eyes in the gallery of Roman Empresses, and, if we may infer from her conduct the nature of her mother’s precepts and example, we cannot set aside the charge as improbable. There is, however, no need for us to discuss it. No sooner was Asiaticus condemned than Messalina sent the news to Poppæa, and she put an end to her own life. Sosibius received a million sesterces, in the form of a special reward for his service in instructing the young princes; and other ministers to the cruelty, avarice, and passion of the Empress were richly endowed.

Messalina now ventured upon so flagrant a violation, not merely of decency, but of the moderate discretion that had hitherto concealed her conduct from her husband, that her career of infamy was brought to a violent close. She had for some time entertained and indulged a passion for Caius Silius, one of the most handsome men among the Roman nobility. Tacitus assures us that there was no secrecy in the amour. She persuaded Silius to divorce his wife, visited his house with a large retinue, and made him repeated gifts of slaves and other property belonging to the Imperial house. An obscure passage in Tacitus seems to imply that her impatience of all laws led her to form the design of marrying Silius while married to Claudius, and the details of what immediately followed have come down to us in contradictory versions. It is said by some that Silius proposed to her to remove Claudius and share the throne with him, and that she hesitated only from fear that Silius might divorce her as soon as he had secured the purple. Other writers say that the phœnix appeared in Egypt, as it had done before the death of Tiberius, and that the nervous Emperor was further told of a prediction that the husband of Messalina would die before the end of the year. In order to cheat this decree of the fates, Suetonius says, Claudius signed the divorce of Messalina, and went down to the coast, leaving her free to marry Silius. He intended to return and recover her as soon as Silius had fulfilled the prophecy by dying.

It is clear that a good deal of legend has mingled with the true account of the events which led to Messalina’s downfall, and one can merely try to construct a plausible story out of the discordant versions. Tacitus, the highest authority, knows nothing of the prophecy, or the divorce which it is said to have occasioned. His silence is not conclusive, and the course attributed to Claudius, however extravagant it may seem, is not inconsistent with his abnormally timorous nature. On the whole, however, one is disposed to agree with Merivale, that Claudius heard of no prophecy, signed no divorce, and knew nothing of the liaison until a later stage, as Dio implies. But Merivale is plainly wrong in suggesting that the marriage of Messalina and Silius is a libellous legend borrowed from Agrippina’s memoirs. When he submits that such a marriage could not have taken place without the Emperor’s knowledge, he forgets that, as all the authorities state or imply, Claudius had left Rome and gone down to the coast. The Emperor returned to the city as soon as he heard of the marriage.

The real course of events seems to be that Claudius was vaguely informed of the existence of a conspiracy against him. He complained bitterly to the Senate, confined himself for some time to the palace, and then, in October, went to Ostia to inspect certain public works which were in progress there. Delighted at his removal, Messalina went through the form of marriage—the laxer, not the more solemn, form (confarreatio)—with Silius, and cast aside the last shade of reserve. Base as her nature was, she must have been weary of the nightly spectacle of the repulsive old man sinking back in satiety on his couch, while slaves tickled his throat with a feather to induce a vomit. Silius was young, handsome, and not without wit. A better future seemed to open before her. Perhaps the slow-witted Emperor would make no struggle for his throne; perhaps the city and the guards would gladly sacrifice him for this handsome young Imperial pair. There is calculation in the carven face of Messalina. But the news was speeding to Ostia, and the dreadful end was near.

Shortly after the marriage came the festival of the vintage, the Bacchanalia, which was celebrated by the bride and bridegroom and their friends with the wildest merriment. That last scene in the licentious career of Messalina must have made a deep impression on the feeling of Rome, and it is lit up for ever by one of Tacitus’s most vivid flashes of description. Messalina had bestowed on Silius the Imperial palace and its contents, and in the garden of the palace they paid full honour to the orgiastic cult of Bacchus. Wine-presses were set up, and the women of Messalina’s company, their white limbs and bosoms scantily covered with strips of fawn skin, sang and danced the Bacchic dance round the large vats of grape-juice. Messalina, her golden hair flowing loose under her ivy wreath, shook her thyrsus and led the wild dance. Silius lay at her feet, crowned with ivy, nodding his head to the air of the lascivious chorus. Wine flowed freely on that autumn afternoon, and the gay world and distant Ostia were forgotten; or so little heeded that when Vettius Valens, one of Messalina’s discarded lovers, had, in boyish exuberance, climbed a high tree, and they crowded round and asked what he saw, he gaily cried: “A hurricane from Ostia.” But before the evening was out the hurricane came from Ostia and scattered the revellers in terror. News was brought to the garden that Claudius was hurrying to Rome to avenge his dishonour.

The freedman Narcissus had disliked the idea of Silius obtaining power, especially as Messalina had recently taken the ominous step of securing the execution of his colleague Polybius. In the suite of Claudius at Ostia were two female attendants, to describe them courteously, Calpurnia and Cleopatra, who were taken into counsel by Narcissus, and learned their parts in his scheme. Calpurnia flung herself at the feet of the Emperor, crying, “Messalina is married to Silius.” Cleopatra and Narcissus were summoned by the Emperor, and they assured him that his life was in danger, and he must hasten to Rome. Other advisers, who had been trained to their part by Narcissus, were drawn into the group, and the dazed and vacillating Claudius yielded to their guidance. He was at once placed in his chariot, and Vitellius and Narcissus rode with him. Claudius feebly discussed the news as they travelled, and Vitellius, not sure which party would triumph, remained silent; but the freedman assiduously fed the slow-kindling anger of the Emperor.

Silius had fled from the Bacchanalian garden to the Forum, and tried to conceal his part by a zealous absorption in business. Messalina saw all the companions of her revels fly for safety, and leave her to face the storm alone in the palace-garden. From the disordered relics of the feast she hurried to her Lucullan gardens on the Pincian. There her courage seems to have revived, and she determined to make an effort to disarm her husband. Directing the head of the Vestal Virgins to follow with her children, she went out upon the road which entered Rome from Ostia. The news had now spread over Rome. With three companions only out of the gay throng of her followers, and Vibidia, the Vestal Virgin, whose person was sacred, she braved the pitiless gaze of the citizens, who had so long seen her chariot flash by in triumph, and walked on foot to the gate of the city. There her strength failed, and she was forced to mount the common cart of a gardener. When they had covered a short distance from the gates, they saw the Emperor’s chariot approaching, and she dismounted. Whether from real affection for her, or from an indolent dislike of trouble, Claudius hesitated once more when the piteous figure of his young wife appeared in his path; but Narcissus reminded him of her marriage, and ordered the charioteer to drive on. Her last despairing appeal was unheeded. The chariot galloped on, and left her standing on the road. A little further on the Vestal Virgin, relying on her high position, demanded that Claudius should grant his wife an opportunity of defending herself, and thrust his children before him. The sight of his beloved Octavia and Britannicus again moved the wavering Emperor. Narcissus bade the charioteer drive onward, and Messalina slowly turned to meet her fate in Rome.

In order to dispel the last shade of tenderness from the Emperor’s mind, Narcissus conducted him first to the house of Silius, and showed him the treasures of the Imperial palace which Messalina had showered on her lover. He then led him to the camp of the Prætorian Guards, and induced him to make a speech to the soldiers. The feeble spirit of the Emperor was cowed by the full revelation of Messalina’s perfidy. Now completely docile to the masterful freedman, he took his place at the tribunal, and passed sentence of death, which was at once carried out, on Silius, Mnester, Vettius Valens, and all Messalina’s accomplices. Mnester vainly stripped off his robe, to show that he had received from the Empress rather the imprint of her anger than the embraces of which he was accused. The Emperor signed the doom of all, and returned wearily to the palace. Restored by food and wine, he began to resist the dictation of Narcissus, and ordered him to inform Messalina that he would hear her on the morrow. The freedman knew that a delay would ruin his design. He left the room, and told the guard that the Emperor had commanded the immediate execution of his wife.

Messalina had returned to her garden on the Pincian, where she was joined by her mother. Night had come on, and they sat in an arbour debating the mad brilliance of the past and the terrible gloom of the future. Domitia Lepida felt that there was no hope of recovering the favour of Claudius, and urged her daughter to end her life as Roman tradition prescribed. Strong only in her clinging to life, like most of the other frail women of the Julian house, Messalina fell at her mother’s feet and sobbed. Presently the stillness of the deserted garden was broken by the tramp of soldiers and a summons at the gate. Still Messalina shrank from the eternal darkness which she had so suddenly confronted. Only when the officer of the guard told her the order that Narcissus had given him, and the freedman who had come with the guard began insolently to revile her for her crimes, did she take the dagger from her mother’s hands. In the light of the single lamp of the arbour the little group looked on with pity and disdain, as the nerveless hands of Messalina lacerated her white bosom with futile gashes. Then the tribune mercifully drove his sword through her heart. Her children came up, and found their mother’s lifeless body in a pool of blood.

This authentic closing of the career of Messalina must dispose us to think that there may be little or no exaggeration in the stories that are told of her. Stahr, in his brilliant apologetic study of the Empresses, ventures to say that Seneca did not reproduce these stories about Messalina because he knew that they came from the pen of an embittered libeller; and it is safe to assume that Tacitus did derive much of his material from the memoirs of the woman who had shrunk from the vindictive cruelty of Messalina, and came in time to replace her. But so much crime is authoritatively laid to the account of the Empress, and her last adventure reveals so shameless a disregard of either law or decency, that not a single detail is incredible or improbable. We shall find such excesses ascribed to later Emperors, by writers who were not merely recording rumours that may have gathered volume during decades of passage from mouth to mouth, that nothing can be deemed impossible to a Messalina. The humane biographer can but plead that she entered a world of the most dazzling allurement of vice and crime with a nature already tainted and distorted by the sins of her fathers, and that the horror of that last scene in the gardens of Lucullus may be left as a merciful shroud over her unhappy memory.