Messalina: The Life and Times of Romes Most Scandalous Empress

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

This is the story of Messalina third wife of Emperor Claudius and one of the most notorious women to have inhabited the Roman world. The image of the Empress Messalina as a sexually insatiable schemer, derived from the work of Roman historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius, has taken deep root in the Western imagination. The stories they told about her of nightly visits to a brothel and a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a prostitute have defined the empress's legacy, but her real story is much more complex. In Messalina, Honor Cargill-Martin reappraises one of the most slandered female figures of ancient history, and finds a woman who succeeded in asserting herself in the overwhelmingly male world of imperial Roman politics. Intelligent, passionate and ruthless when she needed to be, Messalinas story encapsulates the cut-throat political manoeuvring and unimaginable luxury of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in its heyday. Cargill-Martin sets out not to 'salvage' Messalina's reputation, but to look 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.

Author Bio

Honor Cargill-Martin is an author, classicist, and art historian from London. She read Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Oxford, winning a scholarship and graduating with a first-class degree in 2019. She has masters degrees in Greek and Roman history and Italian Renaissance Art. She is currently studying for a doctorate focusing on political sex scandals in Ancient Rome at Christ Church College Oxford. She has published a number of children's fiction titles. Her upcoming biography of the oft-slandered Roman empress Messalina is her first non-fiction title.