Wow! I've kind of wondered about MESSALINA ever since Lehndorff but now is of course the appropriate time to ask :D Thank you!
mother of the Poppea who would end up as the second Mrs. Nero
And the subject of an opera by Monteverdi! (Which I haven't seen, though I've listened to some of the music.)
And a guy who owned the gardens of Lucullus (yes, that Lucullus, dead for a century at this point)
Wait, no, am I supposed to know this? sorry!
(because a chief criticism ancient historians have of Claudius was that he listened to his Freedmen and his wives instead of Senators)
Ha, lol!
plus of course there's the possibility at least some of this stuff comes from the memoirs of her successor as Empress who at the very least blamed her for the death of her sister, i.e. Agrippina.
Ohhhhh!
And then she decides she'll divorce Claudius while he's out of town, inaugurating a new harbor in Ostia, and marry Silius. Given that Claudius is not the family joke anymore but the almighty Emperor, this immediately begs the question what the plan was here?
...this does seem like a very not-well-thought-out plan!
Claudius (undoubtedly remembering how Caligula died) asks whether that means he's no longer Emperor, and are the Pretorians still on his side? They are.
Okay, I had to look up how Caligula died -- it looks like he was assassinated by Pretorian tribunes? So basically the important question is whose side the Pretorians are on, right?
Exit Messalina. (Also exit Mnester the Actor
And Silius, presumably?
Messalina might have a blood connection to us Julians, but clearly I'm the only one of our generation who inherited a sense of strategy.
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Re: Death of Britannicus: Tacitus / Messalina
Date: 2026-03-12 05:19 am (UTC)mother of the Poppea who would end up as the second Mrs. Nero
And the subject of an opera by Monteverdi! (Which I haven't seen, though I've listened to some of the music.)
And a guy who owned the gardens of Lucullus (yes, that Lucullus, dead for a century at this point)
Wait, no, am I supposed to know this? sorry!
(because a chief criticism ancient historians have of Claudius was that he listened to his Freedmen and his wives instead of Senators)
Ha, lol!
plus of course there's the possibility at least some of this stuff comes from the memoirs of her successor as Empress who at the very least blamed her for the death of her sister, i.e. Agrippina.
Ohhhhh!
And then she decides she'll divorce Claudius while he's out of town, inaugurating a new harbor in Ostia, and marry Silius. Given that Claudius is not the family joke anymore but the almighty Emperor, this immediately begs the question what the plan was here?
...this does seem like a very not-well-thought-out plan!
Claudius (undoubtedly remembering how Caligula died) asks whether that means he's no longer Emperor, and are the Pretorians still on his side? They are.
Okay, I had to look up how Caligula died -- it looks like he was assassinated by Pretorian tribunes? So basically the important question is whose side the Pretorians are on, right?
Exit Messalina. (Also exit Mnester the Actor
And Silius, presumably?
Messalina might have a blood connection to us Julians, but clearly I'm the only one of our generation who inherited a sense of strategy.
Hee, I must agree, really.