MessalinaThe story of Messalina third wife of Emperor Claudius and one of the most notorious women to have inhabited the Roman world. The lubricious image of the Empress Messalina as a ruthless, predatory, and sexually insatiable schemer, derived from the work of male historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius, has taken deep root in the Western imagination. Here, the classicist Honor Cargill Martin puts this traditional narrative of Messalina on trial. She