
The life of Valeria Messalina, the third wife of Emperor Claudius, has inspired numerous books, plays, operas, and films due to her reputation for political intrigue, alleged promiscuity, and dramatic downfall.

Roman Provincial, Egypt, Alexandria, Claudius with Messalina, AD 41-54, BI Tetradrachm (24.5mm, 12.61g, 12h), RY 6 = 45/6.
Obv: ΤΙ ΚΛΑΥΔΙ ΚΑΙΣ ΣΕΒΑ ΓΕΡΜΑΝΙ ΑΥΤΟΚ, laureate head of Claudius to right; before, L ς (date, regnal year 6).
Rev: MEΣΣAΛINA KAIΣ ΣEBAΣ, Messalina, veiled, standing left, leaning on column, holding two children and grain ears.
Ref: Dattari (Savio) 130. Emmett 74.6. K&G 12.54. RPC I 5164. Light toning. Very fine.

Birth
Messalina was born around AD 17–20. She was related to emperors Augustus and Tiberius through her mother, Domitia Lepida. Domitia Lepida was the daughter of Antonia Major (the niece of Emperor Augustus) and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus.
Marriage to Claudius
She wed (when she was about 18-22 years old) to the future emperor Claudius (her second cousin once removed, he was close to 50 years old) around AD 38 or 39. When Claudius unexpectedly became emperor in AD 41 (following Caligula’s assassination), Messalina found herself empress at a relatively young age. Generally Claudius is portrayed as weak by the ancient historians. Suetonius describes him hiding behind curtains on the day he was named emperor:
"Having spent the greater part of his life under these and like circumstances, he became emperor in his fiftieth year by a remarkable freak of fortune. When the assassins of Gaius (caligula) shut out the crowd under pretence that the emperor wished to be alone, Claudius was ousted with the rest and withdrew to an apartment called the Hermaeum; and a little later, in great terror at the news of the murder, he stole away to a balcony hard by and hid among the curtains which hung before the door. As he cowered there, a common soldier, who was prowling about at random, saw his feet, intending to ask who he was, pulled him out and recognized him; and when Claudius fell at his feet in terror, he hailed him as emperor."
-Suetonius, Life of Claudius 10.1
Four ancient quotes on Claudius' rule - with Josephus as the outlier in portraying him as a just and merciful ruler.
Suetonius
"His mother Antonia often called him "a monster of a man, not finished but merely begun by Dame Nature"; and if she accused anyone of dulness, she used to say that he was "a bigger fool than her son Claudius." His grandmother Augusta always treated him with the utmost contempt, very rarely speaking to him; and when she admonished him, she did so in short, harsh letters, or through messengers. When his sister Livilla heard that he would one day be emperor, she openly and loudly prayed that the Roman people might be spared so cruel and undeserved a fortune." (Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Claudius 21.3)
Cassius Dio
"It was not these infirmities, however, that caused the deterioration in Claudius so much as it was the freedmen and the women with whom he associated; for he, more conspicuously than any of his peers, was ruled by slaves and by women." (Cassius Dio, Roman History 60.2)
Josephus
"Upon the petition of king Agrippa and king Herod, who are persons very dear to me, that I would grant the same rights and privileges should be preserved to the Jews which are in all the Roman empire, which I have granted to those of Alexandria, I very willingly comply therewith; and this grant I make not only for the sake of the petitioners, but as judging those Jews for whom I have been petitioned worthy of such a favor, on account of their fidelity and friendship to the Romans. I think it also very just that no Grecian city should be deprived of such rights and privileges, since they were preserved to them under the great Augustus.." (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 19.288-289)
Tacitus
"Then came a revolution in the State, and everything was under the control of a woman (Agrippina), who did not, like Messalina, insult Rome by loose manners. It was a stringent, and, so to say, masculine despotism; there was sternness and generally arrogance in public, no sort of immodesty at home, unless it conduced to power. A boundless greed of wealth was veiled under the pretext that riches were being accumulated as a prop to the throne.." (Tacitus, Annals 12.7)
Children
She bore two children by Claudius - I wonder if Britannicus and Claudia Octavia are the two children depicted in her hand on my coin.
Britannicus (b. AD 41) – briefly heir to the throne before being replaced by Nero.
Claudia Octavia (b. AD 39/40) – later married the emperor Nero.
Affairs
Cassius Dio tells a story of Gaius Appius Junius Silanus, a respected Roman senator and former proconsul of Asia, who was killed on the orders of Messalina. The story reinforces the empress's control over the emperor.
"He (Claudius) had sent for this man (Gaius Appius Silanus), who was of very noble family, and governor of Spain at the time, pretending that he required a service of him, had married him to Messalina's mother, and had for some time held him in honour among those nearest and dearest to him. Then he suddenly killed him. The reason was that Silanus had offended Messalina, the most abandoned and lustful of women, in refusing to lie with her, and by this slight shown to her had alienated Narcissus, the emperor's freedman."
-Cassius Dio, Roman History, 14.2
Bigamy
Tacitus reads (11.26) like a bad melodrama: on the affair with Gaius Silius, whom she supposedly married while Claudius was traveling in Ostia.
Death
Tacitus describes the end of Messalina (she was around 28-31 years old when she killed herself):
"Then for the first time she understood her fate and put her hand to a dagger. In her terror she was applying it ineffectually to her throat and breast, when a blow from the tribune drove it through her. Her body was given up to her mother. Claudius was still at the banquet when they told him that Messalina was dead, without mentioning whether it was by her own or another's hand. Nor did he ask the question, but called for the cup and finished his repast as usual. During the days which followed he showed no sign of hatred or joy or anger or sadness, in a word, of any human emotion, either when he looked on her triumphant accusers or on her weeping children. The Senate assisted his forgetfulness by decreeing that her name and her statues should be removed from all places, public or private."
-Tacitus, Annals 11.38
The fall of Valeria Messalina opened the door for Claudius’s marriage to Agrippina the Younger, whose son (Nero) ultimately became emperor. Here is another Alexandrian Tetradrachm from the 10th year of Nero's reign (RY 10 = AD 63/4). with the god Serapis on the reverse.

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