The life and times of Rome’s most scandalous empress.

This is the story of Messalina – third wife of the emperor Claudius and one of the most notorious women to have inhabited the Roman world.

The image of the empress Messalina as a ruthless, 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 included nightly visits to a brothel and a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a prostitute. Tales like these have defined the empress’s legacy, but her real story is much more complex.

In her new life of Messalina, the classicist Honor Cargill-Martin reappraises one of the most slandered and underestimated female figures of ancient history. Looking beyond the salacious anecdotes, she finds a woman battling to assert her position in the overwhelmingly male world of imperial Roman politics – and succeeding. Intelligent, passionate, and ruthless when she needed to be, Messalina’s 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. Read more.

  • "Honor Cargill-Martin writes Messalina's story with a wonderful combination of passion and precision, in a book that reads like a thriller while delivering a nuanced examination of one woman and her many depictions. There was so much I enjoyed in this book - the sly humour, the burning sense of injustice, the colourful evocation of Pompeii's lupanar - but the most powerful element was the quiet devastation in Honor Cargill-Martin's retelling of Messalina's end. This book will make you laugh and cry - and above all it will make you think."

    Elodie Harper, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Wolf Den trilogy.

  • “Cargill-Martin wields common sense and Occam’s razor, as she guides us deftly through the warren of high politics and the famously confusing Julio-Claudian family tree, deformed by incest, divorce and adoption into a shape more like a pretzel. Her writing…achieves a rare, old-fashioned, waspish elegance.”

    The Telegraph

  • "Written with poise, flair and acute intelligence, brimming with passion and humour, Honor Cargill-Martin's "Messalina" is more than just a corrective biography of a much-misunderstood woman. It is a tour de force, a captivating journey into the wild world of imperial Rome and the most accomplished historical debut I have read in years."

    Dan Jones, NYT bestselling author of Powers and Thrones, The Plantagenets and The Templars.

  • "For all the tales of sexual jealousy, vicious retribution and (occasionally) genuine love, this is also a serious and substantial account of the political machinations of the Roman imperial court in the first half of the first century AD, from a very considerable scholar. It is full of personalities of whom few will have heard – Narcissus, Mnester, Silius, and others – who play intriguing supporting roles in the story of Messalina, whose reputation as a nymphomaniac is rightly discounted, while her role as a serial murderer is persuasively underlined. It left me longing for the surely-inevitable Netflix series."

    Professor Andrew Roberts, NYT bestselling author of George III and Napoleon: A Life.

  • “This is an impressive feat…Cargill-Martin’s scholarly and engaging account of Messalina’s life is highly plausible. Even if the new Messalina may be of less interest to schoolboys and pornographers, she emerges from this book a far more interesting and significant figure.”

    Literary Review

  • “The book is a lesson in ancient Rome, but more interesting is what it says about misogyny, patriarchy, and how women get written in or out of history.”

    The New Statesman

  • “Brisk, fun and fascinating, this delicious début is the perfect marriage of scholarship and wit.”

    Suzannah Lipscomb, Historians and broadcaster.

  • “Lively and sardonic… [Cargill-Martin uses] a kind of historical connoisseurship — a feel for what in the sources doesn’t fit and what, by contrast, fits too neatly.”

    The New York Times

“And so the House of the Princeps had shuddered…”

- Tacitus, Annals, 11.28

The story of Messalina’s fall, as Tacitus tells it, goes something like this.

The wedding procession, winding its way through the imperial palace on the Palatine, was in full swing. The year ad 48 had already reached early autumn but evenings in the city of Rome were still balmy enough for outdoor celebration. The bride was wearing the traditional yellow-red veil, choruses of men and women sang songs to Hymen, the god of marriage, the witnesses were assembled, the guests were fêted and feasted. No expense was spared; this was a wedding party for the ages.

It was unfortunate, then, that the bride was already married. And it was particularly unfortunate that the man she was already married to was the supreme ruler of the vast majority of the known world. Entwined with the handsome young noble and consul-elect, Gaius Silius, on the garlanded marital couch, lay Messalina, empress of Rome and the lawful wife of Claudius, emperor of a territory stretching from the island of Britain to the deserts of Syria… Keep reading.