VALERIA MESSALINA
The fall of Cæsonia was hardly less romantic than the succession
to her position of the woman who is known to every reader of Roman
history, and to many others, as Messalina. When Caligula entered the
narrow passage leading to the Palatine, after the performance in the
theatre, a few members of his suite walked before him. One of these was
his uncle Claudius, a slow-witted and despised man, in his fiftieth
year, whom Caligula had rescued from humiliation and put in office. He
had already entered the palace when the raucous cries of the German
guard and the flash of weapons informed him of the assassination of
the Emperor. The guards were cutting down such of the conspirators as
they could reach. In instinctive terror Claudius hid behind a curtain,
nor was he reassured when he saw the soldiers pass with the heads of
the nobles they had slain. Presently a soldier of the Prætorian Guard
noticed his feet below the curtain, and drew him out. Claudius fell to
the ground in terror, and implored them to spare his life. The soldiers
had recognized him, however. They put him in a litter, and carried him
on their shoulders to the camp. Citizens whom they passed in the street
pitied the harmless and, as was generally believed, half-witted prince.
At last some one learned, or divined, the purpose of the guards, and
Claudius awoke from his terror to hear the strange cry of “Salve,
Imperator,” and realized that he was to be made Emperor of Rome.
He had been married three years before to Valeria Messalina, who thus
became the fifth Empress. As the youngest son of Drusus, brother of
Tiberius, and Antonia, daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia, he was
the natural heir to Caligula. The Imperial power was in no sense
hereditary, but the attachment of the Prætorian Guards to the ruling
family, and their irresistible domination over Rome, for some time
ensured a kind of hereditary succession. There had, however, been no
deliberate proposal to put Claudius on the throne. While the future
of the Empire was being determined by the rough mercenaries in the
Prætorian camp, where Claudius promised a substantial largess for
his elevation, the Senate was actually discussing the question of
restoring the Republic. Somewhat deformed in person, clumsy in gait
and corpulent, stuttering in speech, deficient at least in the power
of expression, Claudius had always been regarded as a negligible
offshoot of the Julian stock. His mother had spoken of him as “a little
monster,” Octavian had genially treated him as half-witted, and, when
he arrived at early manhood, Tiberius had refused to give him any
rank or office. Caligula, however, had given him consular rank, and
promoted him in the palace, though he treated his uncle with the brutal
jocularity which his mental infirmity was held to justify.
We shall see that this treatment was far from just, for Claudius had
some excellent qualities; but the disdain of his family threw him upon
the society of his servants, and led him to seek consolation in the
pleasures of the table and the dice-board. He had in early youth been
betrothed to a daughter of Julia. This contract was dissolved when
Julia’s vices were discovered, and he was married to a young lady of
distinguished and wealthy family, Livia Medullina Camilla. She died
on the wedding-day, and he married Plautia Urgulanilla, a daughter of
the Empress Livia’s intimate friend, Urgulania. Suspecting, after a
few years, that her friendship with his emancipated-slave friends was
warmer than he intended, he divorced her, and married Ælia Pætina, who
in turn was shortly divorced.
In the year 38 he married the notorious Valeria Messalina, whose
name conveys to every student of history or morals a summary
impression of the worst features of the early Empire. The spirit of
our time is so resolutely bent on visiting the sins of the children
on their fathers--so determined to seek the secret of character
in heredity--that the older biographical practice of drawing out
genealogies cannot be entirely abandoned; though one may wonder whether
the tainted atmosphere of Rome may not have been more deadly than a
tainted stock. It is enough to say that both her parents were of the
Julian family, and were first cousins of Claudius. Her father, Valerius
Messala Barbatus, was a Senator of distinction. He is known to us as
the Senator who, in the old Roman spirit, made a futile effort to
restrain women from invading public life and the camp. Her mother has a
less reputable record. We shall see that she eventually falls under a
charge of conspiracy and magic; but we may find that her more serious
offence was an intense hatred of the Empress Agrippina, who brought the
charge against her.
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.
The plot was reported to the palace, and Messalina and the freedmen
drew up long lists of men whom it was desirable to remove or despoil.
Wealthier men redeemed their lives by paying considerable sums; others
were put to the torture, or were consigned to prison or the grave. A
story is told in the record of this persecution which should guard us
from admitting the common fallacy that the older spirit of Rome was
quite extinct. A distinguished patrician heard that his name was on the
list of the condemned. His wife urged him to escape the ignominy of a
public execution by ending his own life, and, when he hesitated, she
buried the dagger in her own bosom, and then handed it to him with the
words, worthy of a Corneille: “It does not hurt.” Another victim was
Appius Silanus, who had married Messalina’s mother, Domitia Lepida.
The chroniclers say that his crime was to have rejected the advances
which Messalina made to him. Whatever the motive was, she induced the
freedman Narcissus to tell Claudius that he saw, in a dream, Silanus
thrusting a dagger into the Emperor’s heart. Claudius nervously
consulted his wife, who confessed, with artistic horror, that the same
dream had frequently tormented her. They had meantime summoned Silanus
to the palace, and, as he entered at that moment, the Emperor ordered
him to be executed at once.
Such are a few of the dark crimes attributed to Messalina that we
cannot seriously question, and that fully prepare us to believe the
less inhuman misdeeds which it might otherwise be possible to doubt.
In the following year (A.D. 43) Claudius went to Britain, leaving his
Empress at Rome. It seems to have been at this time that, unless we are
arbitrarily to set aside one group of charges in the records and admit
another, Messalina indulged in the practices which have secured for
her an unenviable immortality. The perfectly authentic sequel of the
story will show that she had so extraordinary a disregard for even the
pretence of moral feeling that the statements of the chroniclers cannot
for a moment be set down as improbable. In a word, Messalina surpassed
Caligula both in her own misconduct and in the propagation of vice.
Envying the trade of the lowest women of Rome, she had one of the rooms
at the palace equipped on the model of the chambers of the _meretrices_
in the tenements of the Subura, put over the door the name of one
of the most notorious women of that caste, Lycisca, and offered the
lascivious embrace of an Empress to any who cared to pay the price for
which she stipulated. Others place the scene in an actual brothel. Not
content with her own abasement, she compelled the most distinguished
ladies of Rome to follow her example. She bestowed the honours and
offices, which Claudius left at her disposal, on the husbands who would
complacently witness the defilement of their wives, and offered the
alternative of her deadly lists to those who refused. Uncertain as we
must always be whether these statements are not mere exaggerations of
her conduct in the popular mind of the time, they are consistent enough
with the accredited facts of her career.
In the year 44 Claudius returned with joy to what he still regarded
as the chaste and tender arms of his young Empress. So lively was his
esteem of her virtue that he obtained from the Senate permission for
her to ride in the ceremonious car (_carpentum_), an honour which was
restricted to the priestly rank and rigorously forbidden to women. He
granted her, also, the signal distinction of riding in his chariot on
the day of his triumphal procession. The ease with which she duped him
led her to fresh excesses. It is said that when she saw his wine-soaked
body laid to bed at night, she placed one of her maids with him, and
went with the companions of her debauches. If we may believe a story
which has no inherent improbability, and has some confirmation later,
she made the blind Emperor himself purvey to her vices. She one day
complained to Claudius that the popular actor, Mnester, would not obey
her when she commanded him to leave the stage and enter her private
service. Claudius forced him to do so; and three years later, when
Messalina’s conduct was exposed, Mnester exhibited to the Emperor the
scars on his body which gave proof of Messalina’s brutal familiarity.
Even when she used the bronze coinage of Caligula, which had been
withdrawn from circulation, to make a statue to Mnester, Claudius
suspected nothing.
This licentious conduct continued until the year 47. Messalina was only
in her twenty-fifth year when her long impunity led her to take the
step which ruined her. A bust of her that is preserved at Florence,
and a cameo at Vienna, give a representation of her that we have no
inclination to distrust. The curly golden-yellow hair--Juvenal tells
us its colour--is elaborately dressed over the low forehead, and the
large deep-set eyes are abnormally close. There is some irregularity in
the undeniable beauty of the face; and the thin lips and small mouth,
drooping weakly at the corners, would irresistibly suggest a record of
adventure, if such a story were not assigned to her in the chronicles
of the time. With that record before us it is, no doubt, easy for
physiognomists to detect a moral distortion in the features, and to
discover unknown, as well as verify the known, vices of the Empress
in the truthful marble. Yet any thoughtful observer will be disposed
to see in those pitiless lineaments a revelation of the truth about
Messalina and her race. It is a picture of strength worn to decay by
reiterated storms of passion, of beauty fading with the disease
which foreruns death.
[Illustration: MESSALINA
BUST IN THE UFFIZI PALACE, FLORENCE]
One last crime must be added to the record of Messalina before we come
to the crowning folly of her career. There remained one woman in Rome
more beautiful than she; and one distinguished patrician whose virtue
rebuked her, and whose wealth allured her. She resolved to bury the two
under a common ruin.
Valerius Asiaticus, a patrician of consular rank and great merit,
had withdrawn from Rome to Crete as the madness of Messalina and the
blindness of Claudius increased. Unhappily for him, he owned the
beautiful and famous garden which Lucullus had laid out on the summit
of the Pincian Hill, and Messalina was now eager for it. She employed
the tutors of her children to declare to the Emperor that Asiaticus
was at the head of an important faction at Rome, and had gone to fire
the Eastern provinces with his rebellious spirit. The omens which were
reported from the East seemed to Claudius to make mere human testimony
superfluous. The moon had been darkened by an eclipse, and a new island
had risen from the Ægæan Sea. The Chaldæan sages interpreted these
signs with their customary art, and Asiaticus was brought to Rome.
He listened in disdain to the charge of conspiracy and adultery which
the tutors, Sosibius and Suillius, brought against him, but, when they
proceeded to accuse him of unnatural vice, he broke into an angry
denial of the whole accusation. Messalina was present at the trial--a
wholly irregular proceeding, in Claudius’s chamber--and saw that the
Emperor was moved. She whispered to Vitellius, the sycophant who had
first discovered Caligula’s divinity and shaded his eyes from the
blaze, that Asiaticus must on no account escape, and left the room.
Vitellius, with ready wit, fell at the feet of the Emperor. He enlarged
at length on the great merits of the accused, and concluded with an
artful plea that Claudius would grant Asiaticus the favour of being
allowed to take his own life, instead of handing him over to the
public executioner. Easily confused by this stratagem, and fancying
that he was showing some clemency, Claudius assented. Asiaticus, true
to the finest traditions of his fathers, returned to his palace,
bathed and supped in perfect tranquillity, and then opened his veins.
Messalina secured the gardens of Lucullus.
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.