50 Roman Mistresses

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  But it was Drusilla who died: young, and suddenly.

  Caligula was crazed with grief. He made it a public offense to laugh, bathe or dine with one’s family for as long as the mourning period lasted. He made Drusilla a goddess. She was the first imperial woman to receive this honour (their great-grandmother Livia had to wait until the next reign to be deified) and only the third Roman ever to be made a god, after Romulus and Augustus.

  For the rest of his life, Caligula swore all oaths by the divinity of his sister, and no one dared challenge this assertion. The main reason Drusilla is remembered today is because he ensured that Rome remembered her.

  16. Messalina

  Caligula died without heir, assassinated alongside his baby daughter. For a moment, it looked like a return to the Republic was the only option…but the Palace Guards, desperate to keep their jobs by making sure there was someone on the throne, found themselves another Emperor.

  Stammering, sickly Uncle Claudius—brother of Golden Germanicus and Saucy Livilla, son of strict Antonia and popular Drusus, grandson of Livia and Octavia and Mark Antony, great-nephew of Augustus—had always been left out of the succession because of his physical failings, which made people assume he was stupid. He mostly wasn’t. He was a scholar, and an excellent tactician. Though when it came to women…oh, yeah. Stupid.

  When Claudius was found cowering behind a curtain and forced on to the throne, he was married to his third wife, the young and vivacious Messalina. She adored the spotlight that fell on her when her husband unexpectedly became Emperor. It was all statues, portraits, gorgeous frocks and excellent parties. Her two small children were likewise celebrated.

  Sadly, that isn’t why Messalina is remembered. Her adultery saw to that.

  According to the stories (brought to you, I must admit, by the same historians who were convinced that Livia poisoned every relative of Augustus’ who died over a fifty year period, and that Caligula named a horse as a Senator), Messalina turned sex into an art form. She challenged a famous prostitute to a contest as to whom could bed the most men in one night, and out-shagged the madam with flying colours. She even set up a brothel among the upper classes, so aristocratic husbands could pimp out their wives.

  Funnily enough, it wasn’t sex that was Messalina’s downfall. It was love. And, you know, UTTER STUPIDITY.

  Her latest lover was Silius, and she was so enamoured of him that she kept giving him presents. Little trinkets that she found lying around the palace—the Emperor’s furniture, slaves, shiny things. And then she thought, ‘Oh, gosh, I love Silius so much, why don’t we get married?’

  So she waited until her husband Claudius was out of town, and then those crazy kids got married. Not just bigamy, but Treason with a capital T.

  Messalina wasn’t the only confused one. Apparently, when Claudius hastened back to town after being told the news, he wondered aloud, ‘Am I still Emperor?’ He vacillated between punishing Messalina and forgiving her—his advisors were so worried that he would come down on the side of forgiveness that they had her executed by the sword themselves, and told him it had been his idea.

  As the ultimate example of female transgression in Ancient Rome, Messalina is also one of the most famous Roman women. She has been portrayed on stage, screen and in literature and artwork. In biblical epics like The Robe and Demetrius and the Gladiators, she is presented as a symbol of Roman decadence as opposed to Christian morality. In truth, the Romans were about as conservative and obsessed with chastity as the Christians later were; figures like Caligula and Messalina were exceptions, not the rule.

  In I, Claudius, both the Robert Graves book and the BBC mini-series, Messalina is portrayed as almost child-like in her naiveté as well as being dangerously sexual. In Italian cinema, her story is treated as pornography.

  The popular version of Messalina as the harlot is so powerful that it is impossible for us to learn anything else about whom she was as a person and a historical figure. Even the majority of her portraits from the time before her reputation was ruined are lost to us, because they were destroyed. We don’t know what kind of power and position she had as the wife of the Emperor; what her childhood was like; who her friends were. All we know is that she was promiscuous, and punished accordingly.

  17. Calpurnia

  We know little about Calpurnia, mistress of Claudius, except that she was an intelligent woman who advised him well. When the various court toadies and ministers found out about Messalina’s second marriage, they were so scared of telling the Emperor themselves that they went into the slum area where Calpurnia lived and begged her to be the one to break the news, on the grounds that Claudius would believe her above the rest of them. In truth, they were probably hedging their bets in case he went wild and started chopping heads. She was a sensible, placid sort of woman, and that Claudius would have been way better off if society allowed him to marry someone like her.

  Instead, after the train wreck that was his marriage to Messalina, he decided to choose his next wife based on experience and good genetics.

  So he married his niece.

  18. Agrippina Minor

  (often called Agrippina the Younger—she had same name as her mother, you get how this works by now)

  This woman had everything: family, power, status. Oh, rumours of poison and incest here and there, but who doesn’t have a skeleton or two in their closet?

  Agrippina was one of the many daughters of Golden Germanicus and angry, political Agrippina Major. She was the sister of Caligula—and, like their other sister Drusilla, was said to have committed incest with him at a very young age.

  Suetonius and Tacitus really did have far too much interest in other people’s sex lives.

  Agrippina had an unstable childhood—both her parents died young, leaving her to the mercy of her strict, elderly aunt Antonia. Agrippina was married to someone mostly-unimportant, and had a son, Nero. When Caligula became Emperor, Agrippina and Julia Livilla were garlanded with honours and status like their sister Drusilla, but both of them soon fell out with their brother and were exiled.

  When Caligula died, Uncle Claudius was put on the throne, and made a pretty good job of it despite the Matter of Messalina.

  Almost as soon as his wife was executed for adultery, Claudius started looking for a replacement. He and his advisors drew up a shortlist of appropriate women. When his eye fell on his 30-something niece Agrippina, recently returned from exile, he threw away the list and went for Totally Inappropriate, Please.

  It was illegal to marry your niece, but Claudius changed the law. Marriage to your brother’s daughter became legal, though marriage to your sister’s daughter was still officially incest (gotta draw the line somewhere).

  Messalina had been specifically denied certain honours as the imperial wife. When her son was born, the Senate had offered her the title Augusta (previously only held by the elderly Livia and Antonia) but Claudius turned it down on her behalf. No thanks, too much honour for such a young and unimportant woman.

  Not Agrippina, though. There was no honour too good for her. She was made Augusta lickety split. She also appeared on the state coinage with her husband (sometimes even on the same coin), something that hadn’t happened since the pre-imperial days of Antony and Octavia. Why was Agrippina allowed these honours when previous imperial wives hadn’t? Well, there is the teeny but important fact that she was descended directly from good old Augustus.

  HERS:

  Augustus>>Julia>>Agrippina Major>>Agrippina Minor

  HIS:

  Octavia>>Antonia>>Claudius

  Livia>>Drusus>>Claudius

  Gender aside, Agrippina had a better claim to the throne than Claudius himself.

  Claudius adopted Agrippina’s son Nero. Which was important, because he was a few years older than Claudius’ own son Britannicus. To the Romans, adoption was exactly the same as a blood relationship (down to the finer points of genetic philosophy, though incest laws don’t apply if you want to marry an adopte
d son to a natural daughter). So Nero had been bumped up to prime heir.

  This has generally been portrayed by historians as a gross injustice, but if you consider Agrippina’s bloodline, it makes a lot of sense. Nero, as Agrippina’s son, had a direct line of descent from Augustus, while the best Claudius or his son could claim were the wife and sister of Augustus. Augustus was the key figure here—none of the later Emperors had the same level of imperial kudos.

  Then there’s the fact that Britannicus was the son of Messalina. No one ever came out and openly said, ‘Hey, she slept around a lot, maybe he’s not Claudius’ son,’ because it was irrelevant. By Roman law, once a father acknowledged a baby as his own, he couldn’t take it back no matter what information might come to light later. In a worst case scenario, Britannicus was another adopted son, without as fine a pedigree.

  So it made sense to have Nero as the top heir. Also, he was handsome and generally charismatic. Possibly mad as a cut snake, but that has been challenged in recent years and should be treated with the same scepticism as slanders about his predecessors. Nero was no Caligula. If he was mad, it was simmering under the skin, not dancing around publicly in silly hats.

  But this isn’t a story about imperial men—back to Agrippina! As wife of Claudius she had honour, prestige and was a princeps femina in the manner of Livia. As the mother of Claudius’ heir, she was likewise laden with honour, status, etc. Life was good.

  Then she poisoned Claudius with a dish of mushrooms. Allegedly. And everything went to hell.

  Oh, it seemed rosy to start with, when Nero became Emperor. Agrippina was Queen of the World, almost literally. Her son honoured her—and not his wife, Claudius’ meek daughter Octavia—as the princeps femina, standing at his side as he ruled Rome.

  Since Nero was only a teenager, it was Agrippina who ruled Rome at the beginning of his reign. She was on the coins, and making all the political decisions. She also made damn sure that she was glorified as a pious imperial widow. Claudius was deified and, like Livia for Augustus, Agrippina was made her late husband’s high priestess.

  It didn’t last. Nero got comfy in the top job, and with that came a mischievous urge to ridicule rather than commemorate his predecessor. Turning Claudius into a joke did not sit well with mummy dearest, as her own personal status was invested in the notion of Claudius the God. She was also concerned that Nero was under the influence of his mistresses, and that he treated his wife Octavia appallingly.

  Finally Agrippina spoke out, declaring in public that Nero was an embarrassment and unworthy of the position he held. She suggested that his stepbrother Britannicus (surprisingly, still alive at this point) would be a far more appropriate Emperor.

  Nero promptly poisoned Britannicus. Of course.

  Spurred on by his mistress Poppaea, he decided that Agrippina also had to go. He started by exiling her to her riverside estate, but his paranoia grew the longer she was away. He resolved that he was going to have to kill her before she killed him first. Not wanting to be accused of matricide (GOTTA DRAW A LINE SOMEWHERE), he decided to kill her as discreetly as possible.

  Here’s where the whole thing turns into something out of a Carry On film.

  Nero’s first attempt to murder his mother was over-complicated and didn’t actually work. He arranged for an elaborate trap to be built into a bed that was delivered to Agrippina: it was designed to collapse on her. It didn’t.

  Next, he sent a message claiming to forgive his mother for her various crimes against him, and invited her to join him for a religious festival. He provided the boat. Pause for a moment, and give that boat your most suspicious sideways glance.

  Agrippina set sail for Rome, but the boat started ‘mysteriously’ sinking before they’d got far from shore. What Nero had not taken into account was that his mother could swim. Also, she wasn’t stupid. When the sailors called out for survivors, (apparently not all of the ship sank, just the bit that had Agrippina in it), Agrippina’s maidservant lost her head and screamed that she was Agrippina, guessing that only the lady herself would be rescued.

  Nero’s men rowed out to the maidservant, and beat her head in with oars. Agrippina herself, sensibly silent, swam for the shore.

  When Nero got word that his mother was still alive, he gave up on subtlety, and sent a pack of men with big shiny swords. Here’s where it gets rather less like a Carry On film: they slaughtered her.

  It is said that when she was young, Agrippina received a prophecy that her son would become Emperor, and that he would kill her. Her response: ‘Oh, let him kill me, if only he becomes Emperor!’

  It is said that when the men with swords arrived, she realised (as the previous attempts had apparently not) that her son really wanted her dead. She promptly lay down without a murmur and let them do it.

  It is said that when Nero came to the house to view her dead body, he stroked her limbs and talked about how beautiful she was. Icky.

  Agrippina was a feisty, powerful woman who manipulated her way through life. There’s a statue in the National Museum at Naples that shows her as she might have been towards the end of that life: tired, sad, and waiting for the end. But her ambition for her son knew no bounds, and by this measure she was a major success.

  My favourite historical tidbit about Agrippina is that she wrote a book. Many of our surviving historians used her book as a source. Tacitus claimed that this is how he knew she killed Claudius, though I find it highly unlikely that she would have publicly confessed this major crime.

  Other sources suggest that it was a book about her family—her mother Agrippina, father Germanicus, great-grandfather Augustus, great grandmother Livia…oh, it sounds like a hell of a book. If any of you get hold of a time machine, that’s the item I’m putting in an order for.

  19. Claudia Octavia

  We know little about Octavia, daughter of the Emperor Claudius and his doomed wife Messalina, except that she was used and abused quite outrageously in service to the imperial family.

  As a teenager, she was married to her stepbrother/adopted brother Nero, to further promote his role as her father’s heir ahead of her own brother Britannicus. Mostly, Nero ignored her, which was the best outcome for everyone.

  When her father died (cough–poison mushrooms–cough), Octavia found herself no better off than she had been before—except that now, the husband who was ignoring her was an Emperor. It was Nero’s mother Agrippina, not his wife, who stood at his side as consort. Various exotic mistresses filled Nero’s bed, and his mother helped him rule the Empire. Then Britannicus was poisoned, and Octavia was left alone.

  Nero wanted to divorce Octavia, but hadn’t realised just how popular she was with the ordinary people of Rome. There was an outcry, and Nero dropped the idea quickly. Instead, he framed her for adultery, and had her exiled, then executed.

  Seneca, one of Nero’s chief advisors, wrote a tragedy, ‘Octavia’, which is particularly notable for the vicious caricature it makes of Agrippina’s character. In fact, Agrippina had fought for Nero to treat his wife more kindly, and to stay married to her. Though to be fair this was probably because she feared what might happen if Nero started choosing his own brides.

  20. Claudia Antonia

  Antonia was Octavia’s elder half-sister, daughter of Claudius to one of his pre-Messalina wives. There is only one story told about Antonia. Towards the end of his life, having rid himself of various wives by various methods, Nero had a bright idea to reclaim the popularity of his first marriage to Octavia by marrying her sister.

  Antonia said no.

  Nero killed her.

  21. Poppaea

  Poppaea is another Roman woman in the vein of Messalina—the historians tell us she was promiscuous, and very little else. She appears in various biblical epic and/or Italian porn films (Claudette Colbert and Brigitte Bardot, yay!) as the decadent Roman tart who makes the early Christians look extra virtuous.

  Poppaea was Nero’s mistress long before she was his wife. According to Ta
citus, that well-known promoter of ladies, she was depraved, sex-mad and unable to love any man. But she had other interests, such as Judaism, astrology and bathing in ass’s milk. She was born in Pompeii, where they were so impressed about their ‘local girl makes good’ story that they briefly changed the name of their city to Poppaensis.

  Poppaea bore Nero a daughter, and he was so delighted that he gave them both the title Augusta, and spent a fortune on ostentatious celebrations and thanksgivings. Then the baby died, and Nero was devastated. He made his daughter a goddess. History does not record how Poppaea mourned.

  Some time later, when Poppaea was pregnant again, she dared to complain about Nero staggering home late after the races. He promptly kicked her in the stomach, which brought on a miscarriage and Poppaea’s own death.

  Nero made Poppaea a goddess along with their daughter. Supposedly he did this because he was grief-stricken at losing his beloved wife.

  Let’s all take a moment to feel sorry for him, shall we?

  22. Claudia Augusta

  Claudia Augusta, daughter of Nero and Poppaea, is an anomaly. She is the only baby (and only unmarried female person) ever to receive the title ‘Augusta’. She is the only baby of the Roman imperial family to be deified. She lived only eight days—barely long enough to be named.

  As a goddess, she was named ‘Diva Claudia Virgo’, and later shared a cult with her mother, Diva Poppaea. Their cult didn’t last very long. After Nero was killed (another strategic assassination), it wasn’t politic to support anything associated with him. Nero’s divine wife and daughter were firmly swept beneath the carpet, deliberately forgotten by everyone.