This is the story of Messalina – third wife of Emperor Claudius and one of the most notorious women to have inhabited the Roman world.<\/b>According to the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, the Empress Messalina was a sexually insatiable schemer. The tales they told about her – including a twenty-four-hour sex competition with a prostitute – have taken deep root in the Western imagination, but Messalina’s real story is much more complex.In her reappraisal of one of the most slandered female figures of ancient history, Honor Cargill-Martin finds an intelligent, passionate and ruthless woman who succeeded in asserting herself in the overwhelmingly male world of imperial Roman politics. Rather than setting out to ‘salvage’ Messalina’s reputation, she looks 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 this book, 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[75],"product_tag":[492,834,1643],"class_list":["post-102794","product","type-product","status-publish","product_cat-history","product_tag-biography-historical-political-military","product_tag-biography-royalty","product_tag-classical-history-classical-civilisation","pa_book_author-cargill-honor","pa_cover-paperback","pa_dewey-937-06092-edition23","pa_imprint-apollo","pa_language-english","pa_pages-8497","pa_publisher-apollo","pa_readership-general-trade-code-k","first","onbackorder","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"yoast_head":"\n