This is the story of Messalina - third wife of Emperor Claudius and one of the most notorious women to have inhabited the Roman world.
According to the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, the Empress Messalina was a sexually insatiable schemer. The tales they told about her including a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a prostitute have taken deep root in the Western imagination, but Messalinas real story is much more complex.
In her reappraisal of one of the most slandered female figures of ancient history, Honor Cargill-Martin finds an intelligent, passionate and ruthless woman who succeeded in asserting herself in the overwhelmingly male world of imperial Roman politics. Rather than setting out to salvage Messalinas reputation, she looks 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.
