Valeria Messalina
20 – 48 · Generation IV · Julio-Claudian
Valeria (AD 20 – AD 48). Married Claudius around AD 38. 2 of their children are recorded in this archive. Claudius’s third wife, executed after a mock wedding to another man while the emperor was away. Both her grandmothers were daughters of Augustus’s sister Octavia, and through her mother, Domitia Lepida, she was a first cousin of the future emperor Nero. She wed Claudius in 38, bearing Claudia Octavia and Britannicus, and became empress when the Praetorians raised him to the throne in 41. Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio — all writing long afterwards, the first two in a climate hostile to her line — blame her for the ruin of Claudius’s nieces Julia Livilla and Julia Livia, the senators Appius Silanus and Valerius Asiaticus, and the freedman Polybius. Her “wedding” to Gaius Silius in 48 may have been a bid to unseat Claudius, or merely a Bacchic rite at the vintage festival. As the emperor wavered, the freedman Narcissus sent guards to the Gardens of Lucullus; unable to take her own life, she was run through by a soldier, and the Senate erased her name.
Place in the family
- Valeria Messalina married Claudius Caesar, a great-nephew of Augustus Caesar.
One of 17 people of Julio-Claudian (85 BC–68) in this archive. Rome’s first imperial family: the Julii and the Claudii joined by marriage and adoption, Augustus to Nero.
Partners
- Married Claudius Caesar (10 BC – 54) in 38 — 2 children together
Children
- Britannicus Caesar (41 – 55)
- Claudia Octavia (39 – 62)
Life
- 20 — Born
- 38 — Married Claudius
- 48 — Died