No Honour in Death: Analyzing the Debaucherous Death of Empress Valeria Messalina

Abstract

It is not a certainty that the life of the Julio-Claudian empress Valeria Messalina was any different from the lives of the empresses who preceded her. The written historical record is largely silent on her life before she married the emperor Claudius in 38 CE. During her time in the role of empress, the visual record is reasonably conventional, depicting her as modest, in draping garments, often with one or both of her children at her side. Little was written about her during her tenure as empress. What is securely known is that an official damnatio memoriae, the act of erasing a figure from history, followed her death. Statues of her were likely destroyed or stored. Inscriptions had her name damaged or gouged out. Coins with images of her ceased to be minted and may well have been destroyed. Messalina did not, however, disappear from the historical record, either visual or written. Some seventy years after her death Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio wrote her – and her misdeeds – into the historical record. Her death scene is treated with such force that it is difficult to raise the possibility that Messalina was a conventional empress. A powerful death narrative, either positive or negative, colours the life of the deceased; to this day the name Messalina has not recovered from the condemnatory narratives surrounding her death. A comparison of the extant material evidence and written evidence will show the power of a negative death narrative and highlight how the memory of the empress Messalina suffered the consequences.